Saturn Returning
Author: Kim Narby
Date: 2026-05-05 07:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Contemporary; Adult; Romance
Description: A smoldering, soul-splitting debut that tracks three friends through the celestial chaos of adulthood, love, and queer identity. Jordan Caleb is a freshman at McCallen College when she meets Trace. From the moment the confident, tattooed Trace compliments Jordan's Alanis Morissette T-shirt, their friendship feels fated and electrically charged. When the two friends meet mercurial transfer student Silvia, she catches Trace's eye. Their instant attraction eclipses the nascent pull between Jordan and Trace, forming a messy constellation among the three women. Over the course of a decade, their or
Publisher: Bindery Books

praise for

“With Saturn Returning, Kim Narby has . . . crafted a book so delicious that it’s nearly impossible to put down. What does it mean to love someone for so long that you’re no longer capable of seeing what they’ve actually become? I loved these beautifully messy characters and their twisty, yearslong friendship. Gorgeously written and wonderfully funny, Saturn Returning is a sexy stunner of a novel.”

—Kristen Arnett, author of Mostly Dead Things

“If you’ve ever wished Chappell Roan’s ‘Kaleidoscope’ was a novel, Saturn Returning is for you. Kim Narby’s debut brings a delicate spareness to sapphic love as it traces the messy intricacies of a trio of college friends as they grow into adulthood while falling in and out of and in love again. ‘It’s complicated’ never felt so satisfying.”

—Chelsea G. Summers, author of A Certain Hunger

“Reading Saturn Returning felt like having drinks with an eloquent lesbian as she spills her intimate, messy, and vulnerable gossip. Propulsive and lyrical; a vivid, tender, and incisive story about aging, queer love, and friendship.”

—Emily Austin, author of We Could Be Rats and Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead

“The lines between true love and true friendship queerly blur in this tender and beautiful debut. With a laser focus on the painful years between finding yourself and becoming an actual adult, Kim Narby deftly weaves a messy love triangle that entangles the reader as much as her finely wrought characters. I can’t wait to read more from her.”

—Gabrielle Korn, author of Yours for the Taking and The Shutouts

“In Saturn Returning, Narby taps into the sapphic collective unconscious. What appears to be a book is actually a mirror for any woman who has ever loved another woman. You won’t be able to look away.”

—Casey Tanner, author of Feel It All

“Saturn Returning is, affectionately, a big queer mess. Addictive, sexy, and psychologically astute, I couldn’t put this book down. The characters are incredibly alive, the prose vivid and honest. Narby writes with clarity and wisdom about attachment, identity, and the turbulence of life, love, and friendship, capturing the pain and joy of queer relationships that resist easy categorization. It’s hard to believe this is a debut novel. I can’t wait to see what she comes up with next.”

—Marisa Crane, author of A Sharp Endless Need

“Saturn Returning perfectly depicts the messiness of relationships, the depth of sapphic friendship, and the delightful lesbian drama that can surround both. Kim Narby has written a truly excellent debut: a book I didn’t want to end and am still thinking about long after the last page. I’m now intimately bonded to these three women, the lasting impact of their Saturn returns, and the many ways they break and heal one another’s hearts.”

—Genevieve Hudson, author of Pretend We Live Here and Boys of Alabama

“Tender, intimate, and raw, Kim Narby’s novel is an ode to the messy and life-sustaining complexities of found family. I felt like I was growing up alongside Trace, Jordan, and Silvia; they reminded me that to be a friend is to be in love.”

—Jade Song, author of Chlorine and I Love You Don’t Die

“Kim Narby’s Saturn Returning explores a love triangle over the span of ten years and calmly, sweetly asks us to consider relationships as The Argo—but how many kinds of change can they endure before they are no longer the same ship that set sail?”

—A. E. Osworth, author of Awakened

“Overflowing with heart, humor, and enough dyke drama to power a fleet of Subarus, Saturn Returning is the novel I didn’t even let myself dream about wanting, because who would ever write a book this gay? I devoured it in one breathless, voyeuristic sitting. Saturn Returning is a stellar debut, and Kim Narby is a refreshing new voice in lesbian fiction. I will read anything she writes.”

—Mia Arias Tsang, author of Fragments of Wasted Devotion

Published by Sapph-Lit, an imprint of Bindery Books, Inc., San Francisco
www.binderybooks.com

Copyright © 2026, Kim Narby
All rights reserved. Thank you for purchasing an authorized copy of this book and for complying with copyright laws. No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews, without express written permission of the publisher.

no ai training: Any use of this publication to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

Acquired by Nina Haines
Edited and designed by Girl Friday Productions
www.girlfridayproductions.com

I Await the Devil’s Coming by Mary MacClane (Melville House, 2013) referenced on page xi.

Cover design: Charlotte Strick
Cover illustration: Ekaterina Zagorska
Interior image credits: NookPaper/Etsy (wine glass, martini glass, champagne flutes), TeresaArtStore/Etsy (ring), Smashicons/Freepik (cards), Victoruler/Freepik (Saturn), freepik.com/Freepik (camera)

ISBN (paperback): 978-1-967967-08-7
ISBN (ebook): 978-1-967967-09-4

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data has been applied for.

First edition

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

For my parents, who never once told me this was something I couldn’t do

Are there many things in this cool-hearted world so utterly exquisite as the pure love of one woman for another woman?

—I Await the Devil’s Coming, Mary MacClane

Lesbians have trouble letting go.

—Perfume and Pain, Anna Dorn

1

Trace

December

Saturn Is Returning

The day had been anointed. Trace wasn’t sure what it was, maybe the unusual slant of the December sunlight pushing through her blinds that morning, or the scent of cedar and bergamot in the air, lingering from the candle Silvia had lit the night before. Or perhaps it was the sweet satisfaction of opening her eyes three minutes before her alarm sounded. Either way, she woke up resolved. She made herself coffee and thought about what she would say to Jordan. She steamed her shirt and anticipated the reaction she’d face: confusion, sure. There would likely be a long discussion. Lesbians love to process. They like dissecting their Co-Star compatibility, treating their cats like children, and talking about their feelings, often long into the night. Trace was prepared. She would block off at least two hours on her calendar when she got to work.

There was an urgency Trace felt, a pressure at the base of her throat. It had been building since her last therapy session. The questions Wendy asked cut through Trace the wrong way, allowed slivers of doubt to push through. She wanted to have the conversation before those slivers became shards. She wanted to do it before she lost her nerve. Christmas was approaching. The timing couldn’t have been worse. But it was never the right time for something like this. Trace’s life felt like a lie. She itched to reveal her truth.

Trace stepped into khakis, buttoned the soft cotton shirt up to her neck, still warm from the steamer, and threaded a brown leather belt through the loops as she took deep, meditative breaths, hoping to slow her heart. Breathing was a self-regulating tool Wendy had given her. They’d done it in sessions in the past, when Trace couldn’t stop crying to speak. In for two beats, out for three. It didn’t usually work. But this morning, a sense of calm came over her.

Jordan had left them a year and a half ago, shortly after Silvia and Trace got engaged. She took the job in New York, a new adventure, and Trace had felt a twinge of jealousy, so slight it dissipated with a glance at her own left hand, the base of her fourth finger surrounded in gold. Things changed after Jordan left. Silvia and Trace settled into life on their own, routines and cadences that made Trace feel as if she were standing still. Trace still spoke to Jordan often, on group chats or Instagram or drunken FaceTimes with Silvia when they made it out to the Wildrose—the historic Seattle dyke bar they frequented, often referred to as the Rose by locals—and needed to summon Jordan’s presence to feel close to each other again. In some ways it was like their best friend had never left. In others, the past year and a half had felt like twenty.

Trace rubbed product between her palms and pushed her hair back with short swipes of her fingers. Everything stayed where it was supposed to, like the universe knew she needed a win. Trace zipped up her North Face windbreaker—sensible and also somehow stylish in the Pacific Northwest—and realized her hands had begun to shake. So much for calm.

By the time Trace was ready to leave the apartment, Silvia was awake, sitting at their kitchen table with a mug of steaming peppermint tea in front of her, bag bobbing on the surface. She was reading something from a magazine and didn’t lift her eyes from the glossy page as Trace said goodbye, just tilted her chin upwards for a kiss. Their lips touched, a feeling as familiar now as her own thumb moving across the pane of her phone, and Trace was surprised not to feel an aftershock of guilt, even when she said “I love you” and Silvia responded with “Love you too, babe.”

From the moment Trace stepped onto the bus that took her from Phinney Ridge into downtown Seattle, the day became a blur, a black hole she would later only be able to recover bits and pieces of. In the morning, she sat through three client meetings, nodding her head and smiling so hard her cheeks began to ache. Today, she would give them whatever they wanted. Most days, she would give them whatever they wanted. Trace was excellent at reading people. Her instinct was to please. It was why she’d put off the call for so long.

At lunch she took two bites of a Caesar salad before the dressing curdled in her stomach. Trace threw the rest in the compost bin in the kitchen. Her only meeting in the afternoon, right before she was planning to make the call, was with Marketing. A strategy meeting for a new brand deal. They presented a deck to Trace that she hardly glanced at. When they asked for feedback, she nodded and said, “We’re definitely heading in the right direction, keep at it,” and then quickly left the room, unsure what direction it was they were taking or if it even made sense. Her brain was ten steps ahead, voices pinging back and forth as she imagined Jordan’s response, her own explanation in return.

The only conference room available was in the center of the floor. Trace worked in a tall building sheathed in mirrored glass in the middle of downtown Seattle. The conference room was surrounded by interior windows to let in light, which meant that those passing in the hallway could see in. Trace hoped it seemed like she was on an important call with her doctor or a family member. One could argue that Jordan was family.

If she craned her head, Trace could see the green ripple of Puget Sound through the nearest window. A ferry was passing, moving away from the city. The sky was blue, a confusing color to see in mid-December. Trace had learned to love shades of gray after years in Seattle.

When Jordan picked up, the connection wasn’t great. Her voice sounded like she was in a remote part of Mongolia instead of tucked inside the largest city in America. Jordan asked “What’s up?” so casually, so unprepared for what was to come, Trace almost changed her mind. She opened her mouth and something burst apart inside her. When she finished speaking, her chest heaved, like she’d run a marathon.

There was a crackling on the line, like Jordan was readjusting, pressing the phone closer to her face or moving it to the other side.

“I love you too, T,” Jordan said. She didn’t get it.

Trace clarified, “No, Jordan, I’m in love with you.”

The pause then was long. It stretched on for so many seconds that Trace pulled her own phone away from her ear to check that the call was still active.

“Jord—” Trace started, but Jordan cut her off.

“Is this a joke? Is Silvia there? Silvia? Is this some funny way of asking me to officiate the wedding?” Silvia was five miles away, at the café she managed near their apartment. Trace could see her, bandana wrapped around her head to control her dark brown curls, rag stuck into her waistband swinging as she pulled espresso shots. Or maybe she was in the back office, a room just big enough for a desk, one scuffed Blundstone pulled onto the edge of the chair as she adjusted the schedule for the upcoming week.

“No,” Trace said. “It’s just me.”

Trace wondered where Jordan was. There was no background noise, so Trace figured she was either still at the office or already home. Trace imagined Jordan sitting on the edge of her bed, her camera bag—a black backpack nearly as large as she was—propped up next to her.

The silence stretched on again. Jordan was the quiet one. She processed internally, revealing her thoughts only when she was sure. When they’d met in college, ten years earlier, Trace spent months wondering if Jordan even wanted to be friends with her, before realizing Jordan was a sponge, silently soaking up each environment she was in.

“And by in love with me, you mean . . . ?” Jordan asked.

“I think I want to be with you.”

“What the fuck, Trace. Is something going on with you and Silvia? Did she do something?”

“No, I just—”

“I can’t talk about this right now,” Jordan interrupted, her voice further away, like she’d lifted her head up to look across the room, her mouth pulling away from the microphone. “I have to go.” Jordan paused. “Please don’t text me, Trace. I just . . . I need time.”

Trace heard the click when Jordan ended the call. She put her phone down, ran a hand over her head. She was overdue for a cut, she realized, her sides were too long. The product from that morning had lost its hold. So much for winning. So much for processing. She felt messy, uncomfortable. A coworker walked down the hallway and glanced at Trace. Trace focused on adjusting her features. She was never good at hiding her thoughts. Every emotion that passed through her body was visible on her face, a constant exasperation for Silvia.

On the table her phone lit up with a text from Silvia. She was asking about dinner. They had pizza every Friday night but still debated their takeout options throughout the day as if suddenly Indian might be more appealing on a given week. It was only then that it occurred to Trace she might have gone about this the wrong way. She should have talked to Silvia first. What if Jordan told Silvia herself? What if Silvia figured it out because Jordan was acting weird? Trace was scared of Silvia’s reaction. The rush of realization was overwhelming: The hardest part was yet to come.

Trace responded: Pizza sounds great.

She stood up, smoothing out the front of her pants, and slipped her phone in her back pocket. Trace left the conference room and walked back to her desk. She made sure her speed was normal, not too fast or too slow, as if it were a regular Friday afternoon, and not as if she had just ruptured her entire world.

2

Silvia

December

Saturn Is Returning

Silvia sucked on the cigarette in her left hand as if it were a life force, then dropped the butt to the ground and stepped on it. She stood with her back against Jordan’s building, head ducked against the wind. The sun had slipped below the horizon line as her plane landed. The streetlights were on now, and a chill seeped through Silvia’s jacket. New York was abrasive, almost comforting in its indifference. It hummed under her feet. For a moment, Silvia understood why many, including her fiancée, longed to live here. Then a horn startled her. It was held for so many beats, her ears began to echo with the sound. She lit another cigarette, stalling, steadying herself. Her breath hung in front of her in white clouds between drags. Rats wiggled between sour bags of garbage piled shoulder high on the curb, but through the choking scent of trash came the sweet smell of pine needles. There was a man selling wreaths on the corner. Every so often a bell would jingle. Astonishing, how holiday joy could coexist with such waste.

The box of cigarettes in Silvia’s jacket pocket was new. Its pointed corners pierced her palm, along with the crystal nestled next to it. A chunk of obsidian: to help process emotions, to assist with release. Silvia had fingered it as she flew across the country. She’d bought the cigarettes at a corner store two blocks away when she’d exited the subway that had taken her from JFK to Harlem. Silvia took another drag and thought about how each moment was bringing her closer to death. It was a measure of relief.

Her stomach turned over at the influx of tobacco and nicotine. Silvia dropped the half-smoked cigarette to the ground and let it lie there, smoke drifting up into the air as she tried to remember Jordan’s apartment number. 6L? 6R? 5B? Some floor that involved a lot of stairs. Silvia moved towards the front door and pressed the small knobs next to a few apartment numbers before selecting 6R, holding the button down for three, four, five seconds. The only way to not be ignored in New York was to get louder.

The door did not open. She reached for her phone, in her other pocket, and tapped Jordan’s name in her pinned messages. i’m downstairs, let me in. A few seconds later Silvia heard the latch click, and she pushed her way into the building.

Jordan didn’t know Silvia was coming. They’d spoken the week before, in the group chat with Trace, some tea about a famous lesbian couple who’d just split. They’d all thought it would last forever. Ironic. Silvia liked to surprise people. Oftentimes, she depended on escape a little too much. Removing yourself was such an easy way to get rid of a larger problem.

By the time Silvia reached the sixth floor, her hairline was damp and her chest burned. She banged a fist against the door—6B, Jordan had texted her as she climbed—and dropped her bag at her feet. As the door swung open it was Jordan’s hand that caught Silvia’s eye first, a fist, grasping the neck of her sweatshirt.



The night before, Silvia had watched Trace’s hands, how they curled into each other as Trace was speaking, how they shook along with her voice as she confessed, and the thought that came to Silvia’s mind first was how she would miss Trace’s hands the most. Trace’s hands had touched Silvia’s face for almost a decade, tender strokes across her cheeks, grasping her neck when requested, and holding doors open, unsolicited. Her hands clutched pens as if they were weapons. They always gave Trace away. Hands are just a thing you notice. Trace was well groomed. Dykes in college didn’t know how to clean the dirt that got trapped under the lip of their nails. Trace had cleaned hers every other day.

Trace was sitting on the couch as she spoke fast, looking down at her lap, talking in circles. The couch was many years old by that point, blue corduroy that had faded to a light green. It was a place their relationship had almost ended many times before. Trace said that maybe she’d been confused all this time and she wasn’t sure why it took her so long to realize, but when Trace said, “It’s someone else,” Silvia understood.

When Trace finished speaking, Silvia was surprised by how quickly she uncoiled in rage. She stood and yelled and watched Trace get smaller and smaller, pressing her body into the cushions as if she longed to become a part of the furniture and then Silvia stopped. She went into their bedroom, shut the door, and by the time she came out the next day, Trace had already left for work.



The shock on Jordan’s face was tight, uncomfortable.

“Silvia, what the fuck?”

Silvia knew, instinctively, who Trace’s confession was about, just as she knew, without question, who she needed to see to process the news. Jordan. Her family. Her worst nightmare. It felt like a gut punch, the air being sucked from her lungs. Silvia had suspected from the beginning; she’d always had an inkling.

She let herself look at Jordan now, standing in the doorframe. She tried to see Jordan as Trace might. Silvia wanted to feel every sharp edge of her shortcomings. Jordan was wearing sweatpants. Her hair was flat on one side and slightly greasy. She was right at the threshold of the door, not quite letting Silvia inside. It had never been something Silvia could see with her eyes.

“Five flights,” Silvia said, her breath still jagged. “That shit is ridiculous, Jor, make them put an elevator in.”

Despite the fire burning in the pit of her stomach, Silvia felt her entire body being pulled towards Jordan. She threw her arms around Jordan’s neck. After a beat, Jordan wrapped her own arms around Silvia’s waist. Silvia felt her anger begin to diminish, boxing itself away in a small corner of her body.

In the ten years they’d known each other, since Silvia had first met Jordan at McCallen College, Jordan had hardly changed. She still cut her hair right above her shoulders, simple and blunt. She still preferred sneakers—Converse or Reeboks. She still smelled the same, powdery and slightly sweet. Silvia knew that Jordan had used the same Garnier Fructis shampoo since middle school. It was something Jordan had seen in a magazine stolen from her older sister, marketed as affordable and sophisticated. Jordan looked as if she could still be nineteen, almost frozen in time.

“What are you doing here?” Jordan asked, her face buried in Silvia’s shoulder. The five-day gap since they’d texted wasn’t unusual anymore. The longer Jordan lived in New York, the more the silences stretched out between them. Silvia wondered if one day it might become weeks, months, even years.

“I thought it was time for a visit.” Silvia pulled back and pushed past Jordan into the apartment.

“Don’t worry, I’ve got the bags,” Jordan said, dragging Silvia’s duffle inside.

“Thanks, darling!” Silvia sat on the couch, started drinking from the half-full wine glass on the coffee table. “This is so cute.”

It was in desperate need of sageing, Silvia thought.

Jordan stood awkwardly to the side of the couch as if she were waiting for permission to sit. The air in the room had been stirred. Silvia knew she had a profound ability to disturb a space, for better or worse.

“It’s great to see you, Sil,” Jordan said. She put one hand on the back of the couch, fingering the blanket that was thrown across it. It was one of the three Jordan’s mom had made for their college graduations. It had thick bands in the McCallen colors—maroon and silver. “But what are you doing here?”

Silvia lifted the glass of wine to her lips again. It was room temperature, and she held it in her mouth before swallowing. The bottle was half empty on the table, a ten-dollar magnum from Australia. Silvia wondered if Jordan had bought it at the grocery store, she was always a sucker for a bargain. She felt the heat of Jordan’s glance on her left hand, the one wrapped around the glass. Silvia was still wearing her engagement band. Jordan had already looked away by the time Silvia’s eyes reached her face.

“Oh, well, I’m sure you know. I can’t imagine she wouldn’t have told you.” Silvia leaned forward to refill the glass. There was a red path down the bottle’s neck, a dried errant drip. “Trace is in love with some girl. Some girl who is not, apparently, me.”

Silvia hadn’t been sure what exactly she would tell Jordan until she was speaking the words aloud. She was never afraid of confrontation, yet it seemed the idea of cutting this one last tie was too much for her.

Jordan came towards Silvia, sitting next to her on the couch and putting an arm around Silvia’s shoulders. She apologized. She said that Trace had mentioned something to her but it was vague. It was all very textbook: How to Comfort a Heartbroken Friend. Silvia didn’t want to be treated like a victim. It was pathetic. She shook Jordan’s arm from her shoulders and took another sip of wine.

“How long are you staying for?” Jordan asked.

“There’s no real timeline. A week? Two weeks, tops.”

“You’re staying for Christmas?”

“So are you,” Silvia shot back. It wasn’t until she heard the edge in her own voice that she realized how upset she was about Jordan staying in New York for the holidays.

“You know I have work,” Jordan said.

“I know.”

“What about your work?”

Silvia managed a café near her and Trace’s apartment in Seattle, a job that felt like a dead end. She didn’t know how to pivot from it. She saw Jordan’s camera bag, tripod strapped to one side, sitting just inside the door of her room, and felt a wave of envy pass through her, hot, in the pit of her stomach.

“I told Sherrie. She said I could take as much time as I need.” Silvia lifted the wine glass again and the bracelets that encircled her wrist tumbled down her forearm with a comforting clink.

Jordan started saying something about clearing it with her roommates, but she stopped talking when her phone, face up on the coffee table, began to buzz. A picture of Trace at Pride a few years back filled the screen. She wore sunglasses and a backwards snapback, caught mid-laugh, mouth open, dimples cutting deep into her cheeks. The caller ID read T-dawg, a long-forgotten inside joke.

“Wow, that girl,” Silvia said. “What timing.” She looked at Jordan. “Are you going to answer?”

“No, no.” Jordan turned her phone over. “I’ll just—I can talk to her later.”

Good, Silvia thought.

“What do you need?” Jordan asked. Her brows yawned towards each other. Jordan held one of Silvia’s hands between both of hers. Silvia felt the urge to punch her. It passed and she squeezed Jordan’s hand once before taking hers back to finish the glass of wine.

“I need to not talk about it.”

“Done.”

“I need to have a really good fucking time.”

“Done.”

“And drink a lot of alcohol.”

Jordan was already moving towards the kitchen, which made up one wall of the same room. A wooden Ikea island demarcated the end of one space and the beginning of another. Jordan twisted the top off a fresh bottle of wine. Silvia held the glass in both hands and accepted Jordan’s pour like it was an offering.

Silvia felt like a monk, a deity, or the devil someone wanted to warn away.

When the wine was finished Silvia coaxed Jordan into jeans and a coat. They took the subway downtown past the park and exited at Forty-Second Street. Silvia stepped into Times Square and felt the warmth of the lights. It was as if they were feeding on her. Silvia had never wanted to live in New York, but she’d wanted to experience it, at least once. She and Trace had always intended to visit. But life kept getting in the way. She tossed her head back and spread her arms out, as Jordan stood ten feet away, taking pictures of Silvia on her phone. Ads for Nike and H&M flashed two hundred feet above them. The names of Broadway shows were surrounded by bulb lighting. Pictures of a new reality show on Netflix blinked across the screens: women whose ribs pushed against their glistening skin, bodies adorned with triangles of fabric as they stood on a beach. News banners moved quickly, updates on the Nasdaq, a new explosion on the sun’s surface, Congress, Republicans, Democrats, another showdown. Democracy was always close to ending. It was too much. Silvia felt the energy press down on her. She thought she might let it crush her completely. It was mesmerizing and horrific that humans had created this place; that they continued to flock to it, no better than moths. She would let New York distract her. She would let New York cup her in its palms until she could figure out what to do, who to be angry at, how to let go.



That night, Silvia slept next to Jordan, her face buried in one of Jordan’s pillows. Being next to Jordan felt like resting her limbs in the cool earth. Jordan calmed Silvia. She was the only person who understood Trace as well as Silvia did. It was hard to be mad at Jordan. It was like being mad at a baby squirrel. Even as they got older, Jordan still felt like their little sister, despite the fact that Silvia was a few months younger than her. But there was always something different in the energy that passed between Trace and Jordan, how few words they needed to communicate. Jordan cared about Silvia’s relationship with Trace, perhaps too much; she was their peacekeeper. Jordan was both one of Silvia’s favorite people to be around and a constant reminder of her failures. Jordan was family. Silvia didn’t have anyone else.

Under the covers, Silvia found Jordan’s hand and intertwined their fingers. She squeezed once, and Jordan pressed back. Silvia’s eyes began to close as she thought about the wedding dress she’d tried on the week before. Almost two years she’d been engaged to Trace, and it was one of the first steps she’d taken towards their wedding. She didn’t buy anything at the appointment. When she stood on the pedestal, surrounded by mirrors, a woman with a too-wide grin standing next to her, the material was rough against her skin. Silvia felt like she was performing; she was waiting for the applause to die down so she could finally get off stage and let her costume fall to the floor.

3

Jordan

September

Ten Years to Saturn Return

Jordan met Trace on her second day at McCallen College. Jordan was sitting in an auditorium on the west side of campus, surrounded by her fellow residents at the Sears Tower for Welcome Day. The name on the building was Lawrence Hall, but it had been dubbed the Sears Tower (colloquially, the Tower) in the ’80s, when the building was first constructed. At six stories, the freshman dorm was the tallest structure on campus. Back then, the Sears Tower was the tallest building in the world. This backstory was included in Jordan’s Welcome email, as they wanted to ensure students weren’t confused when searching for the dorm on day one, since it was also labeled the Tower on the official campus map. Jordan wasn’t sure why they didn’t just call the dorm Lawrence Hall in documentation to avoid the need for so much additional explanation, but assumed this flouting of convention was just part of McCallen’s whimsy.

To her left, Jordan’s roommate, Ruby, was engaged in a passionate conversation with a girl who lived on the fourth floor about upcoming auditions for the fall play, taking place in two weeks.

A link to Ruby’s Facebook page in their brief email correspondence over the summer had revealed a slim girl with long blond hair wearing a tank top and a wraparound skirt. She was sitting in the dirt beneath a tree whose girth was four times the size of her body. Her eyes were closed, palms resting on her knees. The caption read Counting down the days until next summer in the redwoods. Ruby seemed so sure of herself and what her future held.

In person Ruby was far more delicate than she’d seemed online. She had a soft presence that unsettled Jordan. When they’d first said hello, Ruby had put a hand on Jordan’s arm and stared into her eyes for several seconds before saying with earnest, “It’s so nice to meet you.” Jordan had fought the urge to shake off her touch.

All around the auditorium new freshmen were grouped off. Voices filled the room, bubbling up to the ceiling. Who were these people? And how had they found their people so quickly?

The night before, someone had gotten hold of a bottle of Admiral Nelson’s. It made its way through every room in the hall, ending with her and Ruby’s. Jordan took a swig, feeling the sweet burn in the back of her throat. A game of Never Have I Ever was held in room 204, where two girls named Hallie and Sarah lived—best friends from high school who’d decided to room together freshman year. Jordan wondered how long the friendship would last. Articles she’d read in Seventeen’s college issue warned that it never did.

Eventually, the parade of girls made their way up to the third floor—one of the boys’ floors—where a promise of beer had been made via recently exchanged phone numbers. Each floor of the dorm was single sex, alternating boys and girls. Jordan figured this was to prevent inappropriate mixing of the genders, though clearly someone had overlooked the fact that most people master the art of stairs by age three. Jordan decided to go to bed instead.

Ruby crept back into their room two hours later with the clumsy thuds of the inebriated. Jordan flipped over and faced the wall to avoid the light from Ruby’s side of the room. When Ruby woke up that morning she complained about her headache and joked about her hangover in a tone that told Jordan she’d never used the word in a first-person sentence before. Granted, neither had Jordan.

Now, at Welcome Day, Jordan realized she was one of the few people sitting in silence, and she wondered if she’d made a mistake by going to bed early. Maybe college was all about talking to people you don’t like about things you’re not interested in. She folded her arms over her chest and scrunched down in her seat.

“Good morning, everyone! I’m so excited to officially welcome you to McCallen College!”

A tall brunette sat on the edge of the stage with four other students in maroon Resident Assistant T-shirts. Jordan recognized the speaker as the RA for her floor, who had been overly attentive on move-in day, lingering in her room as Jordan’s parents asked question after question about her safety on campus, dining halls, help with classes. She’d clapped her hands together after every question, each time responding with “Great question!” before delving into a detailed explanation.

“My name is Kaylyn, and I’m a sophomore theater major and the RA for the second floor in the Tower. I am so looking forward to getting to know each and every one of you, and helping to make this next year the best ever!” Kaylyn clapped once between each of the last three words, her face arranged in a practiced smile. Her voice echoed throughout the room. It was not her first time enunciating from a stage.

Each RA introduced themselves: Kenneth, lighting design, first floor. Hannah, philosophy, fourth floor. Steve, French literature, third floor. Mark, gender studies, fifth floor. The last girl stuck her hand in the air when it was her turn—a half-hearted wave. “I’m Trace Swanson,” she said. Trace wore chinos, and the sleeves of her T-shirt were cuffed neatly, revealing three thin black lines inked into the skin encircling her left bicep. Despite the tattoo, she looked slightly too polished for McCallen; a sheen set her apart from the others. “I’m a sophomore business major, and you can find me on the sixth floor in room 607.” Trace’s hair was buzzed short. When Kaylyn started talking again, Trace leaned forward slightly, her hand coming up to rub the soft hair at the base of her skull. Jordan felt a tingle on the back of her neck.



Attending McCallen was a promise Jordan had made to herself as soon as her parents announced the divorce. It took her mom months after the accident to meet Jordan’s eyes again. Summer, Jordan’s sister, had been gone for two years when her parents signed the papers. Even then, she could still taste her mother’s grief in every room of the house.

Her mother hadn’t wanted Summer to go to McCallen. They’d sent a brochure, which Cynthia Caleb had immediately thrown in the trash. “That’s not your kind of school, honey,” she’d said to Summer, and Jordan fished it out that night after bed, poring through the pages, wondering what kind of school it was, and what her kind of school might be.

Growing up, Jordan’s mom always said Summer would be president of Alpha Phi someday, just as she had been. Her mom whispered this during games Summer was cheering at, almost under her breath like an incantation, and at dinner on Friday nights, reaching across the table with a smile to squeeze Summer’s hand. Summer always had the grace to look embarrassed. “Oh, stop, Mom,” she’d say. Jordan’s parents had met at the University of Oregon, two hours south of where she’d grown up in Portland. Summer was supposed to go there too. So was Jordan.

Jordan’s parents didn’t know she’d applied to McCallen until she got the acceptance, along with a $20,000 scholarship that felt like a lifeline. Her parents had extra money for college since Summer wouldn’t need it anymore, but they had budgeted for in-state tuition, not a small private school. Jordan would take out loans for the rest.

When her parents separated, they had told Jordan they weren’t going to get a divorce. It was temporary. They were taking space to mourn on their own. It only took a year for this lie to reveal itself. Given this, Jordan was surprised when, come August, they followed through with their pledge to take her to school together. It took them four days to drive to Ohio from the Portland suburbs. They all took the same car; her mother had stopped driving on the highway after the accident. Jordan watched as the green of the Pacific Northwest gave way to the jagged terrain of Utah and Wyoming. Most of the drive was filled with deafening silence, punctuated only by the polite exchange of directions between her parents. The wide-open spans of the Midwest made Jordan feel as if the car were barely moving. Her mom periodically turned around in the front seat to provide updates on their ETA. “Four more hours!” Jordan felt embarrassed by her forced enthusiasm, even in the privacy of the car.

Jordan vividly remembered how car rides used to be with Summer. They played punch bug on road trips to the Oregon Coast and Lake Coeur d’Alene, her sister always hitting Jordan’s arm a bit too hard, and sang along to outdated Kidz Bop CDs. The car had been balanced out then—two on each side. Everything was uneven now, with only three of them remaining. An odd number. The kids in her high school had always described Jordan that way—odd. Not quite an insult, but unquestionably not a compliment. Jordan wondered if people at McCallen would think the same thing. The oddness of McCallen was part of the draw. People studied the humanities, or art, or made up their own major. Grades were optional. Jordan wanted to learn more about photography, perhaps turn it into a thing she could survive on, something she could do every day.

McCallen would be the first school she’d enter without Summer going first. It scared Jordan in a way that felt exhilarating.



“Hey, nice shirt.”

Jordan turned to her left as she was walking out of the auditorium and saw Trace standing at the entrance with Kaylyn, staring straight at her.

“Oh, thanks.” Jordan’s hand instinctively went to her stomach, and she glanced down as she paused among the throng of exiting freshmen. She lifted her eyes to meet Trace’s again. She felt flushed, both embarrassed and pleased to be singled out.

“Are you a fan?”

“Yes, definitely a fan.” She didn’t know what Trace was talking about. Trace’s eyes were the same shade as Summer’s, like a cloudless July afternoon.

“What’s your favorite album?”

Shit. “Trick question.” Jordan hoped the words hadn’t come out with a lilt, like she was asking a question. “I can’t possibly choose.”

Trace laughed, and Jordan felt like she’d won something. “Fair point. I’m Trace.”

She stuck her hand out and grabbed Jordan’s with a tight squeeze, like a grown-up. Then Trace crossed her arms and leaned a shoulder against the doorframe. Jordan had never seen someone look so at home in a doorway. She wanted a picture of this door to hang above her desk, a suggestion of something—a sense of self, perhaps—she might one day attain. Trace began listing out more artists Jordan wasn’t familiar with, asking if she listened to them as well.

Jordan shook her head.

“You’re going to love them. Stop by my room sometime and we’ll do a listening party. I’m in 607.” Four floors above Jordan. The numbers were etched into her inner eyelids. Before Jordan could respond properly, Trace began shouting at someone behind her.

“Hey, Amanda, did you hear what Kenneth said about what just three shots can do to your developing brain? Let’s learn that lesson early.”

Trace moved past her into the room. “See you later, Jordan.” Jordan couldn’t even remember telling Trace her name.



Jordan’s classes that semester were mostly required core curriculum—math, first-year English, Spanish. But Jordan was most looking forward to Introduction to Sculpture, the one art class she had managed to sneak into her schedule. The three-hour studio met once a week on Friday mornings. Jordan figured most of her cohort were upperclassmen. The class had required a portfolio submission to get in, and looking around the room, everyone seemed more experienced, with well-defined mediums and visions. Then she overheard two guys sitting at a neighboring table talking about their rooms at the Tower. How was everyone so advanced? Jordan felt like she was already behind. As they worked, a girl at Jordan’s table—a sophomore—talked about how she would use the digital drafting skills they were supposed to learn in the class to enhance her senior thesis. She’d already turned in an outline to her advisor. Meanwhile, Jordan was still figuring out how to define art in her life.

“This is a representation of my sketchbook.” One of her classmates was standing at the front of the room holding a rectangular-shaped piece of cardboard, the edges of which had been frayed and colored with bright reds, oranges, and yellows. The smooth surface in the middle held waves in shades of blue. They had been told to create something of importance to them with the materials found on their table—colored paper, pipe cleaners, cotton balls, and other craft items normally found in a five-year-old’s art bin.

“The outside world is chaotic to me,” he continued, gesturing to the edges of the cardboard, “but when I open my sketchbook and start working, everything makes sense, the universe feels calm.”

“Hmm,” the professor said. He was a serious man with a receding hairline and glasses with sharp rectangle frames. Jordan noted that he seemed to be about the right age to be the parent of a five-year-old. “I can sense soothing in this linework you’ve done with the blues. Quite a contrast from the fiery colors on the perimeter. Nice job, Liam.”

Jordan leaned across the table to whisper to the overprepared senior-thesis girl, “Are we supposed to have a whole explanation like that?”

“Yes, of course,” the girl said.

“What if my piece doesn’t have any meaning?”

The girl tilted her head to the right. “All art has meaning.” The sound of the t felt like a flick to Jordan’s temple.

Jordan looked down at her creation—pipe cleaners that had been twisted together and molded to vaguely resemble a camera—and swallowed hard.



Friday night Jordan stood on the sixth floor of her dorm in front of room 607. The door was ajar, but she knocked anyways, adding a quiet “Hello?”

“Hey!” a voice responded from inside. “Come in, come in.” Jordan pushed the door open tentatively, keeping her feet in the hallway.

“Jordan!” Trace said, voice deep with recognition. Trace leaned back in her desk chair. “How can I help you?”

“You said you’d show me some music?” Jordan had googled the name Alanis Morissette, which was printed in white lettering on the back of the shirt she’d worn for Welcome Day. On the front, a woman’s body was silhouetted against a red background. The shirt had been left at her house by a friend years earlier, who had most likely stolen it from her older cousin. Jordan had never listened to Alanis’s music before that week.

“Right, for sure!” Trace waved to her bed, pushed up against the opposite wall from her desk. “Come in, sit down, I’ll cue some stuff up.”

Jordan stepped into the room and walked over to Trace’s bed, which was covered in a navy comforter. Warm light glowed from a small lamp on the desk and a floor lamp near the window. A navy rug in a shade slightly lighter than the comforter covered most of the gray linoleum floor. Her walls were lined with images, edges evenly spaced. Jordan wondered if Trace had used a tape measure to ensure consistency. There were some prints of old pictures, a couple band posters—including one of Alanis, held in a thin black frame—a poster for the movie Ghost, and some random art prints, including a nude sketch of a woman that Jordan’s gaze lingered on as Trace found the song. She turned to face Jordan, her body only a few feet away in the narrow room.

“I love your room,” Jordan said, just to offer something. She was amazed that this space existed in the same building she lived in. It felt like a safe haven.

Trace smiled and looked around the room. “Me and the double-sided tape got intimately familiar this year.”

Jordan laughed. “It’s a great collection.” She spotted a four-by-six snapshot near the head of the bed. Two girls, one of whom appeared to be Trace, sat on a low stone wall. Their arms were wrapped around each other’s shoulders, and they were bent towards each other, mid-laugh. Trace’s hair was long in the picture, past her shoulders, dirty blond and pulled back in a low ponytail. She wore a white hoodie and flared jeans over a pair of black high-top Converse. Jordan wondered how long ago the picture had been taken. The only thing that hadn’t changed was the shoes.

“Thanks. It’s just a bunch of things that I love.”

Jordan felt a rush of desire to be the girl in the picture with Trace, to be a part of something that Trace loved.

“Okay, we’re starting with Fiona Apple. Very similar vibe to Alanis, part of the grungy girl-rock era.” Trace pulled out a pen and started writing on a piece of paper. “I’m going to give you some names to check out later.”

“I don’t actually like Alanis.” Jordan hadn’t planned on telling Trace, but it popped out, almost of its own volition.

Trace stopped writing.

“Sorry, I was just caught off guard when you asked me last week, and I don’t have many friends here yet, and you offered to hang.” Jordan was horrified to find herself saying this. She was nervous, the words kept coming. “But I did listen to Alanis this week, just out of curiosity, and I don’t really like her. She’s a bit whiny, no?”

Trace was still staring at her.

“And like, this,” Jordan gestured upwards, at the air she supposed, or the sound in the air around them, “this is also kind of annoying, right?”

Suddenly, Trace was laughing. Jordan stopped talking, unsure how to read Trace’s reaction. In her experience, it wasn’t good when someone started laughing. It was typically followed by a devastating insult about one of her greatest insecurities. This was what having an older sister was like. Sometimes she didn’t miss it.

“Well, Jordan, no one can say you aren’t honest.” Trace ripped the paper in half and threw away the piece she’d already written on. “So, what kind of music do you listen to? Please don’t say the Beatles.”

“What’s wrong with the Beatles?”

“They’re just so overplayed.”

Jordan rolled her eyes. “Well, I don’t mind the Beatles, but normally it’s like Death Cab, or Jack’s Mannequin, sometimes Green Day.”

“Got it. So you hate women.”

Jordan smiled. “Precisely.”

Trace clicked a few times on her computer. A new song began playing. “Cool, so we’re going to start with the Shins, then.” She began writing again. “The New Pornographers are another one you should check out.” Trace continued writing, and then stopped.

“I’m sorry you haven’t made many friends yet.”

Jordan shrugged. “It takes time, right?”

“Right,” Trace agreed.

“Plus I was held back a year when I was eight because we had to move to Texas for my sister to do some competitive gymnastics program that she got cut from after she got hurt and then we moved back halfway through the year and the school systems were so different they just had me repeat third grade but I always felt like I didn’t really get along with people in my grade after that and I’ve wondered if it was because I was older than them.” She was rambling again. Trace was smiling.

“What’s your thing?” Trace asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Everyone at this kooky school has a thing—like they want to paint a mural back in their hometown, or they want to write a memoir about the ayahuasca trip they did in Peru at nineteen on Daddy’s credit card, or they want to become the foremost expert on a lesbian poet from the eighteenth century no one has heard of.”

“I guess I’m a photographer.”

“You guess?”

“Okay. I’m a photographer.”

“You learn quick.”

“What’s your thing?” Jordan asked.

Jordan thought she saw something shift behind Trace’s eyes. It disappeared quickly.

“My thing is boring. Don’t worry about me.”

Jordan felt an urgency to keep poking, to get beneath the slick surface of Trace, but something told her she had overstayed her welcome. She stood up. “I should go.”

Trace handed her the new slip of paper. “Thanks for swinging by, Jordan. Come back anytime.”

As she left Trace’s room, Jordan’s fingers gripped the paper, pressing deep into the words Trace had written. When she got back to her room, letters were stamped across the pad of her thumb.

4

Trace

November

Ten Years to Saturn Return

It was the Wednesday afternoon before Thanksgiving and the dining hall was quiet, nearly empty. Trace felt unsettled hearing the scratch of her tray as she pushed it past food stations. She stopped to grab two slices of pizza and a scoop of chicken teriyaki, then filled a cup with Dr Pepper from the fountain before sitting down at a table across from her friend Blake.

“I feel like I should be whispering,” Trace said.

“I know, it’s eerie.” Blake fished the last two Froot Loops out of her bowl with a spoon. There were only two other occupied tables. Each person sat alone.

“I wonder how many people will even be around tomorrow.”

Blake shrugged. “Who knows. Maybe we planned a whole dinner just for us.”

Blake and Trace had organized a semifestive meal from a local restaurant for those still on campus the following afternoon. There would be the classics: turkey, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, sweet potato casserole, and cranberry sauce, as well as a slab of marinated tofu that was purchased at a grocery store since no restaurant within an hour of McCallen had vegetarian Thanksgiving options. The invite had encouraged students who remained on campus to dress up, and promised decorations. Trace and Blake had purchased balloons in amber colors and paper cutouts of turkeys which would be plastered across the walls of the common room in Trace’s dorm.

Trace had volunteered to stay on duty over Thanksgiving break so she didn’t have to go home. Home meant hours in front of the TV watching football with her dad to avoid alone time with her mom. It meant dodging requests from her sister to go get their nails done. It meant making creamed corn with a bright red apron tied around her waist while her mother shouted out cooking instructions along with “You’ll want to know how to make this for your future husband.”

Her mother’s disappointment on the phone when Trace shared the news of her absence was pronounced, but also seemingly performed. Trace wondered who else was in the room with her. An aunt? A cousin? Trace’s entire extended family lived within a twenty-square-mile radius in Wichita, Kansas. They were constantly stopping by unannounced, and weekends growing up were packed with birthdays, anniversaries, baby showers, christenings, and countless other celebrations where Trace’s presence was required. Trace promised to be home for Christmas, offering that she was sad to miss her mom’s pecan pie—a simple, pure truth, but not worth everything else the trip would entail. The conversation with her mom was over in less than three minutes.

In actuality, Blake had volunteered to be the RA on duty over Thanksgiving months earlier. Her parents had decided to take a trip to Iceland over the long weekend. Trace wasn’t really needed on campus. Blake called her a fun bonus.

Trace took a bite of her pizza and saw Jordan walk into the dining hall. Like a reflex, she raised a hand, waved it in the air.

“Who—” Blake said, and then turned to look. “Ah, okay.”

Jordan walked up to their table. “Hey.”

“Are you around for the holiday or are you getting ready to leave?” Trace asked.

“I’m around.” Jordan pushed a hand into one of her front pockets. She seemed unsure if that was the right answer.

“Sick,” Trace said. “Are you coming to the dinner tomorrow?”

“Dinner?”

“The school sent an email out,” Trace said.

“I knew this would happen,” Blake said.

Jordan glanced at Blake with wide eyes, like she might be in trouble.

“Okay, we’ll ask them to send another,” Trace said.

“We really should have posted signs.”

“We can do that too,” Trace said.

Trace turned back to Jordan, who had looked over her shoulder briefly, like the food might have run out in the time she’d spent talking to them. “It’s a Thanksgiving dinner, in our common room, around four. You’ll come, right?”

“Sure.”

“Are you eating now? Come sit with us,” Trace said.

Jordan glanced over at Blake again quickly before agreeing. “Okay, let me just grab some food.”

As she walked away, Trace felt Blake staring at her.

“What?”

“I think you need to leave that girl alone.”

“What are you talking about? We’re friends.”

“Oh, I see,” Blake said. “You’re into her.”

Trace took a sip of her soda. Her fingers made greasy prints on the plastic cup. “I’m not into her. She doesn’t swing that way, Blake. I don’t think.”

“Exactly,” Blake said. “You’re thinking about it.”

Trace had met Blake the year before when she’d joined a coed service fraternity at McCallen. Gamma Alpha Upsilon’s letters in Greek were G, A, and Y, a fact that was mentioned in bold on the web page for the group. The service aspect would look good on her résumé, and Trace could feel the queer in the room during the first meeting she attended. Blake had dropped out of the group after the first few meetings. She’d joined almost every club the school offered, she told Trace, mostly to find friends, but it wasn’t sustainable, and she needed to focus on her priorities, which involved a law school application if her acting career didn’t take off. Trace understood priorities. They were both RAs this year, though Blake had been assigned to an upperclassman dorm and her on-call nights tended to be quieter than Trace’s.

Jordan returned to their table and Trace realized she had her camera slung across her body. Jordan took it off when she sat down and delicately placed it on the table next to her tray.

The month before, Trace had helped throw a Halloween party in the student center. She had asked Jordan to take pictures, assuming Jordan wouldn’t attend otherwise. After the party, students’ profile pictures morphed, almost overnight, into Jordan’s art. The school added one of the photos to its website, Jordan’s name in tight letters in the lower right-hand corner. It’s my first published picture, Jordan texted Trace. Thank you for convincing me to do this.

Trace felt quite confident that she did not have a thing for Jordan. But there was something about her. She reminded Trace of herself in high school. Trace was touched by Jordan’s difficulty conforming at McCallen; her deep humility was endearing.

Jordan kept visiting Trace during nights she was on call, at first to share her reactions to the music Trace recommended, and then to complain about the conceited art majors in her sculpture class and her roommate’s new friends who spent most nights in Jordan’s room running lines for the fall play, their lips throwing spit across the room to Jordan’s bed. Trace ate meals with Jordan sometimes, and they began texting more frequently, especially as Jordan went through her first round of midterms. Trace felt like an older sister, a mentor. It was her duty as an RA to look out for the freshmen.



Trace liked people. She liked to watch the way someone walked, or how they used their hands when they spoke. She thought what someone did with their legs when they sat on a couch conveyed their level of self-assurance, whether they crossed at the knee or ankle or had one heel perched on the edge of the cushions or two feet curled up beneath them. She liked learning about people’s passions and the things that made them itch with frustration. Because Trace liked people, being a resident assistant was a role she slid into easily. Being at McCallen, however, had been a more difficult transition.

It wasn’t that Ohio was so much different from home, it was that it was too similar. Though multiple states sat between them, Kansas and Ohio felt too close for comfort, too easily traversed by car, the terrain and climate too familiar. Trace hated the long winters, where the cold came to rest in the marrow of her bones for months on end. She did not like the flat plains that stretched on into nothingness. She couldn’t stand living in a part of America that no one would ever choose to visit on purpose. It annoyed Trace that most towns had more churches than bars, more bars than coffee shops. Sometimes, when Trace was alone in her room, she closed her eyes and pictured herself in an apartment rising above the streets of Manhattan. A chorus of horns, snippets of various radio stations, and shouts from disgruntled locals swirled in the air around her. She was manifesting her own future.

Trace was determined to succeed. She understood that the key to success was mostly who you knew. And college was the place to get to know people. McCallen wanted to be a Bennington but had the campus of a defunct state school, which they quirked up with cute names and furnishings meant to dispel the rigidity of a typical institution of higher education. The dining hall on campus was made up of mismatched dining room tables. Rumor had it they were found at estate sales in the area, and students joked that they ate lunch every day with the dead. McCallen attracted the black-sheep children of coastal elites, an eccentric group who wanted to be far from their families to express themselves. Because of this, it adorned many a list of “hidden Ivies,” next to Cornell and Georgetown and Duke, and carried a price tag of $50,000 per year. Trace had graduated high school with a 4.3. She’d gotten 2150 on her SATs. McCallen had given her a full ride and Trace had accepted without a second thought. Her fellow students had parents who were on Wall Street, who had graduated from Ivy League business schools. Trace could garner connections at prestigious firms, or high up in government. Even at seventeen, Trace had understood that this was what college was for.



The afternoon of Thanksgiving, Trace pulled on a collared shirt from Gap for dinner. She tucked it in, looked in the mirror, and then untucked it again. Trace lived by the maxim that you should dress for the life you want, not the life you have. She’d heard it on a TV show once, an offhand remark that lodged deep in her brain, slotted behind her right ear, a pulsing reminder. She wasn’t sure anyone else would bother dressing up for dinner on campus, even when it was requested, but she liked to set the tone.

Trace ran a hand over her head. The short hairs tickled her palm. The decision to cut it off had been made when she was home over the summer. She’d sat on a stool in front of her best friend from high school, gripping a coarse towel tightly around her neck as clumps of hair began to fall to the floor. When Trace returned to her house that night, her mom’s eyes filled with tears. Her mother shut herself in her bedroom for hours, dinner going cold on the stove.

The first time Blake saw Trace back at McCallen, she called her Jailbird. The nickname stuck. Trace had never felt more like herself. It took months to get used to the cut. She still sometimes reached up to push phantom strands behind her ears, only to realize they were gone. Trace found herself looking people directly in the eye more often now, appearing much more confident than her inner monologue would suggest.

A table in the common room at the Tower held paper plates and napkins along with large aluminum containers filled with food. Trace and Blake had spent the early afternoon decorating, then gone back to their rooms to change. In the fading light everything looked cheap, like a four-year-old’s birthday party long past the point when everyone had gone home.

Trace moved a small bunch of balloons next to the door, then changed her mind and moved them back to where they’d been by the table. She adjusted the cups until they stood in a straight line. Trace looked at the table and had a brief, overwhelming desire for no one to show up. The thought of a smile plastered across her face for hours, brain churning with questions and topics accessible to all, was too much. But as soon as the feeling moved through her, it was gone.

Jordan and Blake arrived at the same time. Trace found herself delighted to see them in similar outfits—dresses and soft, scuffed sneakers. Jordan looked uncomfortable, tugging the hem down so it covered more of her thighs. She had clips in her hair, pulling strands back from her face. Jordan normally wore her hair parted in the middle. It hung around her face in a curtain until it stopped just past her chin. There was very little fanfare to it. Trace realized it was the first time she’d seen Jordan’s ears and noted they weren’t what she expected. Three studs glimmered in Jordan’s left ear—two in her lobes and one in the notch of her ear. A black chrome industrial caught the light. Trace wondered what else about Jordan might surprise her.

She threw her arms around Jordan’s and Blake’s shoulders. “Y’all look great!” As soon as her fingers pressed into the warm flesh on the upper part of Jordan’s arm, Trace dropped her hand back down to her side. She’d never touched Jordan before. Was it okay for RAs to hug their residents? She suddenly couldn’t remember.

Eleven students ended up gathering for the meal. One barely spoke, and another, Megan, told Trace her entire life story, from her near death at birth via umbilical cord to her debate between Amherst College and McCallen. By the time Megan got to her sweet sixteen, Trace was grateful that she only had nineteen years to recount. Trace looked across the room to where Blake and Jordan sat with a small group and wondered what they were talking about. Jordan laughed at something Blake said, Blake’s arms moving rapidly through the air.



Two hours later they were in Trace’s room, sipping cups of vodka and orange juice. Blake had sworn Jordan to secrecy as she’d tipped the clear liquid into Jordan’s cup, and Trace had seen a flush spread across Jordan’s face that she hoped was excitement.

“It wasn’t the words she said, it was just the tone she was texting in, you know?” Blake said, on a typical rant about her girlfriend. “I’ve talked to her about it and then she just does it again. It puts me on edge. Especially when we’re far apart.”

“Maybe you should break up.” Trace was joking, mostly. She knew they wouldn’t break up.

Blake looked stricken. “Well, I don’t think it’s that bad.”

“Okay.” Trace shrugged and looked down at her phone. Jessica, a girl she’d been seeing, had texted her a few hours ago, but Trace hadn’t responded yet. She looked up and saw Jordan sitting on her bed, leaning her head against the wall behind her, staring at the pictures that covered the opposite wall.

“Fine, I get it, let’s change the subject,” Blake said. “How are things with your girl?”

Trace froze at the words. She glanced over at Jordan again, but Jordan hadn’t reacted to Blake’s question, her eyes still scanning Trace’s wall.

“She’s not my girl,” Trace said.

“Okay then, what is she?”

“We don’t believe in labels,” Trace said, sounding more evolved than she felt. She and Jessica had been hooking up since mid-September. Jessica was studying public health and had grown up mostly in Spain. She was tall, with long chestnut hair, a heavy accent, and boobs so big they both overwhelmed and thrilled Trace. She spoke in a wispy voice that made it seem as if she were about to run out of breath, and Trace loved the feeling of Jessica’s lips on her ear. But, as Jessica continuously reminded Trace, she was definitively not gay. Jessica came over late at night to let Trace fuck her in the narrow twin XL in Trace’s dorm room. The morning after, Jessica would always refuse to let Trace kiss her goodbye. She’d slip out of the room just after dawn to avoid being seen. Trace was good at pretending it was exactly what she wanted too. But she found it embarrassing. It wasn’t the first time a girl had thrown herself at Trace because she looked so obviously into girls. Just once it might be nice for a girl to hold her hand in public.

Trace struggled to understand the attention she’d been getting since starting at McCallen. In high school Trace was a sports dyke, her lean legs often covered in bruises or scrapes from sliding around the bases in softball season. During the first year of college, her body softened and her face filled out. Trace wanted more defined biceps and wished there were some way to melt away the fat that curved her hips and made fitting into men’s pants impossible. Trace saw herself as a bit too loud, sometimes incredibly awkward, making the wrong jokes at the wrong moments. But apparently that was appealing to a certain type of college girl, at least at night, while drinking, on a campus far from her family.

“Have you said ‘I love you’ yet?” Blake asked.

Trace shot Blake a look and she held her hands up. “Okay, fine, never mind.” Blake turned to Jordan. “Do you have any fun love interests, Jordan?”

Jordan looked over at Blake, and for a moment it seemed as if the question confused her. “No, um, nothing to report there.”

“Alright, well, I think it might be time for me to go to bed, then.” Blake was the kind of in love where she wanted everyone around her to be in love as well. She gave Trace a pointed look, and Trace suddenly realized she was leaving to give Trace and Jordan time alone.

“No, dude, don’t leave yet,” Trace protested, sitting up in her chair.

Blake already had her coat on. “All that decorating and turkey eating wore me out. I’ve got to dash!”

She waved her fingers in the air. For a moment Trace thought she might hate Blake. The door shut behind Blake and an awkward silence descended upon the room.

“Let’s play some music,” Trace said. “Who have you been liking recently?”

“The Dirty Projectors,” Jordan said.

“Sold,” Trace said, searching for the band in her iTunes.

“Where’d you get this hat?” Jordan asked, fingering a beanie on Trace’s bed.

“I actually made it.”

“You made it?” It felt good to impress Jordan.

“My mom is a firm believer in every young girl knowing how to sew and knit.” Trace had taken sewing classes every Tuesday and Thursday from the age of six until middle school, when she’d finally convinced her mother to let her play basketball instead.

“Super traditional?”

“Very.”

There was a long pause. Trace was about to fill the silence and say something stupid about stale vodka, gaps in conversation made her wince, but then Jordan said, “Kansas, right?”

Trace nodded.

“So, were they disappointed?” Jordan asked.

“Disappointed?” She wasn’t sure if Jordan was asking what Trace thought she was. The gay thing. Yes, they’d been disappointed by the gay thing. Trace pictured her mom and dad on the couch in their living room three years before. Their cat, a large tortoiseshell, sat atop a knit blanket that was thrown across one arm. Her mother’s lips had entirely vanished, folded against each other, her eyes stony. She said nothing, just stood up to return to the kitchen and the pot roast she was making for dinner. Trace’s father did not meet her eyes.

“That you’re not studying agriculture,” Jordan said, “to go back and help on the farm.” Jordan looked at Trace and a slow smile spread across her face.

“Oh, shut up,” Trace said, swatting at her leg. “I will have you know I did take a leadership position in my local 4-H.”

“I have no doubt,” Jordan said.

“How are your parents?” Trace asked. “Why didn’t you go home this weekend?”

“Annoying,” Jordan said. She looked into her cup, lifted it to her lips, and drained the remainder. Trace was on the verge of asking why when she continued. “They got divorced a couple years ago after my sister died in a car crash. It’s hard to be around them now.”

“Shit.”

“They can’t stop talking about her. All the time. Like she’s still alive, in the next room, about to pop in for dinner. It’s fucking painful.”

Trace hadn’t ever heard Jordan swear before.

“I’m sorry.”

Jordan shrugged. “Whatever, I’m here now.”

“Do you ever think about what you’re going to do after McCallen?”

“Never. Do you?” Jordan seemed surprised, like she didn’t know this was something they were allowed to do.

“Every day. I can’t wait to leave, move to a big city, travel.” Trace had always longed to be older. She had strained against her lack of agency as a child. She wanted her own money, to make her own choices.

“Travel would be cool.”

“New York would be cool,” Trace said.

Trace offered Jordan more to drink but she refused. When she slid off the bed, Trace noticed Jordan scramble to get her footing and it occurred to her that this might be the first time Jordan had ever had alcohol.

That night as Trace fell asleep, she thought about Jordan’s sister. Trace wondered what she had looked like, if she had the same tight curve in her nose as Jordan, whether she’d taken Jordan to get any of her piercings. It all made sense. Jordan seemed to have a piece missing. Trace felt a desperation to fill that gap. She wanted to make Jordan whole again.

5

Silvia

January

Nine Years to Saturn Return

Silvia moved to Fulton Springs, Ohio, halfway through her sophomore year. She’d transferred to McCallen from Pomona to get further from her mother and to immerse herself in the seasons; her last couple years in California, time had seemed to stand still. She hoped McCallen would be weird in a productive way. She wanted to be an artist, but always seemed to be chasing a discipline. Nothing ever quite fit. McCallen would be her playground.

Bob & Betty’s Diner sat in the middle of town on Main Street, between a bookstore no bigger than Silvia’s bathroom and a bar called Frederick’s. It was a ten-minute walk to campus in one direction and five minutes to Silvia’s house in the other. It only took twenty minutes to walk through the entire town. There was something about places like Fulton Springs—towns small enough to have a street called Main—that both comforted and terrified Silvia. She passed a Unitarian church with a rainbow flag outside during her first week and hoped it was a sign of wider tolerance.

The job was easy to land. Silvia walked into the diner in early January, her hand waving to the We’re Hiring sign in the front window. The woman at the counter asked Silvia about her serving experience and then handed her an apron and two T-shirts. As the woman began saying, “Well, if you’re not doing anything now . . . ,” a small girl with straight brown hair and a T-shirt two sizes too big squeezed past her behind the counter, obviously in the weeds. Hearing the woman’s words, she stopped.

“Tam, just tell her to come tomorrow.”

“Oh, well, fine, then.” The woman—Tam—looked at Silvia. “You free tomorrow morning? Six o’clock?”

Silvia smiled. “Absolutely.”



Silvia had grown up everywhere and nowhere. Her mom picked up and moved every year or two. She’d spent time in Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, Texas, Utah, Chicago, New Jersey, Florida, and two achingly sweet years in Montana. Every town she’d ever been to had a diner. Every diner spoke the same language: cheap, fast, familial. The definitions of those words changed in each part of the country she lived in. Before her mom’s career took off, she would leave Silvia at diners because she couldn’t afford a babysitter. But even once Silvia had a nanny, she was a regular patron at her local diner, with friends, or for a birthday milkshake, or for first dates where she kissed boys who didn’t know how to use their tongues and first dates with girls who did.

Once Silvia developed enough to pass as a legal worker, diners were a way for her to get out of her house for long stretches of time. Silvia’s relationship with her mother deteriorated the older she got. When her mother was home, she was constantly berating Silvia: “Why are there dishes in your room?” “You didn’t use a coaster on the coffee table.” “I hate that shirt; go put on something else.” Her standards were unattainable. When Silvia got a 4.0, her mom asked why it wasn’t a 4.2.

Rhonda Wilder grew up rich but was cut off when she met Silvia’s father. He was gone before Silvia entered the world, and unfortunately, so was Rhonda’s trust fund. “You can’t just stop being wealthy,” she would say. “It’s in your blood. Like culture.” Silvia was prepared to spend the rest of her life trying to prove her mother wrong. Meanwhile, Rhonda figured out how to make her own money. And she loved to show it off.

Silvia’s mother hosted large work-related parties—catered events where servers paraded small round trays of canapés around their house. Silvia started sneaking champagne when she was eleven. As Silvia got older, Rhonda and her friends became less careful. The first time Silvia tasted cocaine, she was thirteen. Powder was scattered across the vanity in her bathroom. She swiped a finger through it and held it to her tongue.

When her mother was away on work trips, the house was frighteningly silent. Her mother liked a large house: five bedrooms just for the two of them, with an expansive rec room in the basement. When Silvia was alone, she opened each closet in the house before she went to bed, checking for anything that could hurt her.



No matter where Silvia lived, serving was always the same: Treat your tables as if you have a crush on them, be overly attentive, at their side whenever they turn around, accommodate their every need, smile too much, and laugh at every joke. If the restaurant was more casual, which Bob & Betty’s was, throw in a pet name—a darlin’ or a sweetie. The old men ate that shit up. Every coffee machine was essentially the same, each POS software was a variation of another. By the time she got to college, Silvia had used them all.

At Bob & Betty’s they kept their own cashboxes—no shared tips. Silvia preferred this. She knew she was good at what she did; she knew how to coax 25 percent out of a regular 15 percent tipper. She always managed to get an extra dollar or two out of takeout orders. (Compliment them every single time. Find something you like about them and say it out loud, with a bit of awe. But don’t make too big of a deal about it. Don’t stop ringing them up. They’re ordering food to go, they’re in a hurry.)

Food was the primary benefit restaurant work offered. There were no actual benefits—insurance, paid time off, maternity leave. When you worked, you got money. If you didn’t work, there was no money. At one restaurant she’d worked at in Flagstaff, one of Silvia’s coworkers came back to work ten days after she gave birth. Every hour she went to the bathroom to change her pads. But the majority of your meals were either taken care of or heavily discounted while on the clock. Silvia took advantage of this as much as possible, keeping very little in her own pantry, not only because she hated to cook—not that she’d really tried—but also because she felt security in seeing the numbers rise in her bank account, an amount that would allow her to live for six, eight, twelve months without working. She didn’t really need the money. Her mother paid for school and flights home and sent her a credit card that Silvia avoided using because it felt like a tether. But this was one of the few things Silvia’s mother had taught her that she’d held on to: Make as much money as you possibly can. Just in case.

The staff at Bob & Betty’s was no different than any other restaurant Silvia had worked at before. The kitchen was filled with older men, most of them immigrants from Central America. Front of house was a mix of women in their fifties who had never had any other job—lifers, who were de facto managers—and McCallen students. The girl with the baggy shirt’s name was Jordan, and she’d been assigned to show Silvia the ropes on day one. Tam—short for Tammie, she explained—had been at the restaurant for twenty years and had clearly graduated out of leading orientation long ago. Jordan told Silvia that Tam had a sister and a sister-in-law who also worked at Bob & Betty’s. Vicki (“with an i”) was a senior at McCallen, and only exchanged five words with Silvia during the first shift they worked together. Silvia understood clearly: Jordan was her go-to girl.

Most of Silvia’s shifts were shared with Jordan, who was a grade younger and a head shorter than Silvia. When training Silvia she repeatedly told the seventeen-year-old busboy to “move your fucking ass” and joked about dropping a drink tray on the screaming child at table seven. Silvia was shocked to learn Jordan had only been serving for a couple of months.

At the end of their third shift together Silvia reached out to touch Jordan’s forearm. “What’s your sign?” Silvia asked.

Jordan looked up at Silvia from where she stood at the counter merging jelly jars together. “You know that’s bullshit, right?”

Silvia smiled and knew in that moment that Jordan was someone she would hang on to. “Yes, but it’s our culture.”

Jordan looked puzzled but responded, “I’m an Aries.”

“We’re going to be great friends,” Silvia said.



There were three sections at Bob & Betty’s, each with only six tables. Deep booths with ripped red vinyl padding lined the walls. A family of four could fit comfortably, but McCallen students squeezed up to six or seven, often pulling chairs up to the end of the table so they could remain at the booth even while their party size grew. It was a low-budget Johnny Rockets. Silvia had done six months at one in Southern Nevada during high school. She was glad there was no singing expected at Bob & Betty’s. The tables and chairs in the center of the restaurant were mismatched. One wall was covered in black-and-white images of old movie stars, vintage advertisements for Coca-Cola, and cheeky signs that read “Beat the heat, get a frozen treat” and “3 easy steps to instantly make your day better: Smell the coffee, drink the coffee, wake up,” while the other walls were nearly bare. The linoleum on the counter was cracked. The plastic menu holders were edged with a bruised maroon, in shameful contrast to the red of the booths. It seemed like someone had long ago given up on the space. Silvia felt right at home.

The first thing Silvia had learned when she’d started working in restaurants was to find a husband in the kitchen. You needed someone who would take pity on you when you fucked up an order or slide you strips of bacon during a morning rush when you didn’t have time to eat. The girl who told Silvia this was nineteen, a third-generation server with a waist the circumference of one of Silvia’s thighs. It was impossible not to have a crush on her. Silvia would have followed her to the ends of the earth if Rhonda hadn’t decided to move four months later. In any case, Silvia was well practiced in flirting with cooks.

Jordan gave Silvia a paper copy of the menu to take home and study. On one corner she wrote their five bread options, three different kinds of sausages, and six salad dressings.

Jordan said, “I know it seems like a lot, but I can tell you’re a pro. You’ll get the hang of it in no time.”

“I’m sure I will.” Silvia immediately felt more relaxed in Ohio. All the sun in California made her feel on display. There was something about being new to a place, anonymous, not having to worry about running into anyone you know, that calmed her. No one in Fulton Springs had any expectations of her yet.



Silvia was one month into her tenure at McCallen, still learning the ropes at the diner, when she saw the girl for the first time. It was a Thursday night shift. The girl came in and sat at a two-top alone around nine p.m. A purple snapback covered her short hair. Something cracked within Silvia, followed by a wave of relief.

The girl was sitting in Jordan’s section. Silvia felt as if the atmosphere in the room had shifted. She straightened her shoulders, standing slightly taller. Her face became a bit warm. She wondered whether she was being watched. Silvia felt an urge to stick a bandana in her back pocket. The skin on her arms prickled as she set plates down on table four. Would the girl see Silvia’s thumb ring and short nails, the black ink snaking up the back of Silvia’s neck, and assume?

Silvia watched Jordan stand next to the girl’s table. The girl didn’t open her menu. Jordan never touched her, but there was a clear familiarity in their body language, in the ease of their smiles. As Jordan walked back to the counter, Silvia stared at her and thought, I knew it.

The girl came to Bob & Betty’s three Thursdays in a row. She always sat in Jordan’s section, always arrived in the span of time between the dinner rush ending and the late-night student crowd beginning. A different colored hat adorned her head each night—purple, then blue, then green. Silvia wondered if she was purposefully working through the rainbow backwards, if eventually the full spectrum of the Pride flag could be found atop her head. Jordan never wrote down the girl’s order, and sometimes sat down at the table across from her for a few minutes, eating fries off the girl’s plate.

Over the past two months, Silvia and Jordan had worked up a tentative friendship. A mutual respect grew whenever Jordan ran Silvia’s food after three new tables were seated in Silvia’s section, or when Silvia restocked the orange juice fridge just as Jordan ran out, a glass on the counter sitting half full. Silvia was always willing to refill the ketchups, which she quickly learned was Jordan’s most despised side work, and Jordan gladly took over cleaning the syrups, a task that made Silvia gag from the thick, sweet scent of hot water collecting inside the sticky glass containers.

The first shift Silvia worked, Jordan sat her down at table fifteen, a rarely used four-top near the kitchen entrance, to show Silvia how to close out her receipts. They both had to pay the house what it was owed for any bills paid in cash. Their cash tips were what remained, and any credit card tips came to them in a check tacked to the board in the office a week later.

After that first day, Jordan and Silvia found themselves at table fifteen at the close of every shift they worked together. Silvia teased Jordan about her need to keep the tea packets as organized as possible, and Jordan would respond with a comment about Silvia’s earrings, often shining long and heavy from her lobes: “One day those are going to catch on something and rip right out of your ears.”

Silvia looked forward to shifts with Jordan. When it was early and Silvia needed coffee just to string a sentence together, Jordan stayed quiet. During rushes they kept each other entertained by making jokes about the regulars. Jordan fed Silvia bits of information about their coworkers—who to avoid working a night shift with, which McCallen student would always try to get out of side work, and which veteran would always avoid picking up the phone when it rang. Jordan had a small-town magnanimousness to her, but seemed reserved. Silvia had a feeling they could talk for hours and she’d still know very little about Jordan.



On the fourth Thursday that the girl with the hats appeared, Silvia walked up to Jordan while she was dumping coffee grounds into a filter and asked about the mystery woman. She nodded towards the table where the girl sat, now wearing an orange hat. “Is that your girl?”

Jordan’s hand jerked, spilling coffee grounds on her sleeve and the floor. “No, um . . . I’m not—I don’t . . .” Jordan started, scrambling to clean up the mess.

It amused Silvia to see Jordan flustered. “Gay is not a dirty word, Jor.”

Jordan’s face reddened and then hardened. “I know, I just meant—Trace and I are just friends.”

Silvia grabbed the coffee filter from the counter in front of Jordan and dropped it in the filter basket, slid it back into the machine, and flipped the switch to On. “Is she single?”

Jordan shrugged, still brushing coffee grounds off her arm. “As far as I know.”

Jordan seemed a bit off the rest of the night. She dropped Trace’s food at her table but didn’t sit to chat, which gave Silvia the chance to make eye contact with Trace as she ran food and dropped off checks. Silvia was ready for a new girl. Boys were too easy sometimes. Silvia enjoyed the honeymoon phase. She was a Leo; she couldn’t get enough of watching someone fall head over heels for her. She liked the tickle in her stomach at the sight of their name on her phone.

It was fun finding out what a new person did with their eyes when they kissed you—open, shut, slits like a snake. Silvia liked discovering the sound someone made when they came, the movements their body would make before an orgasm wove through their limbs. They all had a giveaway. Would they be silent? What noise might emit from their throat as they lost total control? Would they even allow themselves to lose total control? One girl, Erica, in LA, had gone motionless before she came, as if she were worried she might scare her orgasm away. Others would lift their pelvis in the air, or sink the short, blunt tips of their nails into Silvia’s arm. She loved the way some men sounded as if they might cry before their release. The power she held in those moments was electrifying. Addicting. It made her feel important. It was the one time, outside of serving, that Silvia knew she was doing something right.

When Silvia got home later that night, she threw her clothes in the laundry and immediately stepped into the shower to scrub the diner smell off her skin. She wondered what Trace’s face looked like in that moment of ecstasy. The thrill of a crush buoyed Silvia through the day. She never knew when she might run into them, so she dressed each morning thinking there might be a sighting.

Soft butches like Trace were Silvia’s favorite. Often, they were even softer inside than she expected. Silvia only ever stayed just long enough to prod the dough of their desires. If she held on to a girl too long, the girl asked questions about her childhood and her family. The girl wanted to know how the air of Silvia’s summer vacations smelled. She wanted Silvia to talk about her first love—sperhaps hoping that Silvia was still waiting for it. Girls always wanted more of her. They wanted to know if Silvia could be the one. Silvia was never able to tell them what they wanted to hear. She could not be the one for anyone but herself.

6

Jordan

December

Saturn Is Returning

To get to her office on the thirty-second floor of Hudson Yards, Jordan took the six train from 110th Street and transferred to the seven at Grand Central, which spit her out into the bright, cavernous Thirty-Fourth Street station, still gleaming like a shiny new penny. She rode escalators a quarter of a mile long up to the street level. It took her forty-one minutes from leaving her front door to sit down at her desk. Fifty minutes if she stopped for a bagel anywhere but the cart on Thirty-Fourth and Eleventh Avenue, and closer to an hour if there were delays, which occurred far more frequently in the winter months. Jordan always gave herself an hour. She hated to be late. Being late felt like she was disappointing someone.

On the ride to work the morning after Silvia arrived, a man stood behind Jordan, gripping the pole above her head. Her hair brushed against his arm, occasionally sticking to the wool of his coat. Jordan’s body was stuck between somebody’s large backpack and an older woman with two full tote bags. Every other stop one of the bags slid off her shoulder and lodged against Jordan’s leg. “Sorry, sorry,” the woman whispered, pulling the bag upwards again.

Jordan had felt relief as soon as she stepped onto the subway. It grew as the train took her further downtown, through the Upper East Side. Silvia was safely tucked in Jordan’s East Harlem apartment. Jordan remembered the jolt of panic the night before when she’d gotten Silvia’s text. The feeling had run through her whole body, still simmering in her fingers and toes when she opened the door to see Silvia standing on the landing. She had expected anger, quiet resentment, or blistering rage. She had not expected Silvia’s body pressed against hers, Silvia staying for a week, two weeks, maybe more.

The train stopped at Eighty-Sixth Street. The jingle started—“Stand clear of the closing doors, please”—and Jordan stepped to the side as one more person squeezed onto the train. She had to hold her arm at an awkward angle to read her phone screen properly, her hand only inches away from someone else’s face. Her boss had started sending her emails two hours earlier. She had a text from Trace, which she ignored.

Jordan’s office was full of sharp edges and steel. The desks were white and multiplied to infinity across the open floor plan. Conference rooms with floor-to-ceiling glass walls were clustered in the middle of the space. Offices with doors that closed took up the north-facing wall. Only VPs and above were assigned such coveted real estate. The drawers in the kitchen were packed with “wellness” snacks that had the same amount of sugar as any bodega candy bar. The only perk that Jordan allowed herself to overuse was the Keurig.

Coffee was always her first stop. The machine hummed to life when she snapped the lid down. The kitchen was quiet. It was a week until Christmas, and the office was thinning out. Jordan stood at the window and looked out across the Hudson. New Jersey spread out beneath her. Jordan had gone to the Newark Airport once, a year earlier when she’d gone back to Portland for Christmas. She had watched as Jersey towns flashed by her window on the train. They looked like the suburb Jordan had grown up in—wide-open spaces, large grocery stores, movie theaters with ten-dollar tickets. It felt appealing. Jordan wondered if people hated Jersey because they were scared by how much they wanted it. It didn’t scare Jordan to want it.

“Hey there, neighbor.” The sound of Felicity’s boots on the tile shattered the silence of the kitchen. “How are you settling into your new desk?”

Jordan’s new desk—identical to her old one—was a mere fifteen feet from where she used to sit. Her boss, Anthony, had pulled her into a conference room for a “quick chat” to inform her of the move the week before, his face adorned with a small frown. Her former deskmates received the news as if it were a cancer diagnosis, small noises of concern, a hand on her shoulder for support. Jordan knew Anthony was expecting a similar reaction from her, instead of the “Okay, when should I move?” he’d gotten when he informed her she’d be switching teams. It had been over five years since Jordan had sat down at her first ergonomic desk chair beneath hanging fluorescents, and she still didn’t understand the intricacies of office politics.

“It’s going fine.” Jordan glanced at the Keurig, which had slowed but was still dripping light brown liquid into her mug.

“How was your weekend?” Felicity leaned against the counter, plastic pod for the machine ready in one hand. Felicity had been out the last two days. This type of question was useful until Wednesday afternoon each week, when everyone began inquiring about plans for the upcoming weekend. Jordan didn’t understand why people even asked. When she used to answer honestly, before she understood the illusion of small talk at work, she watched eyes glaze over or widen in shock at her transparency, smiles becoming tight. People didn’t care about your hobbies or the fuck buddy who’d broken up with you via text or your cat who might be on the verge of passing.

At Felicity’s question, Jordan thought about picking up Trace’s phone call on Friday night. She remembered the rush of words, “I’m in love with you,” the confusion, repeating it back to Trace until she realized what Trace meant. She imagined telling Felicity that her best friend had confessed her love for her. That her other best friend had shown up unannounced four days later, that her life felt like it was spinning out of control. Jordan imagined the look on Felicity’s face.

“It was okay,” she said to Felicity.

This was what everyone wanted to hear. They wanted to know that your weekend had been just as uneventful as theirs. They wanted to confirm that their own boring lives were on par with everyone else’s. “What about you?”

“Oh, nothing exciting,” Felicity said.

Jordan could have guessed.

“Just lots of time inside, on the couch, watching Christmas movies.”

Jordan reached for her mug now that the Keurig had quieted. “Yeah, it was really cold this weekend.” Nothing like weather commentary to bring a conversation to a halt. It was the most important thing Jordan had learned in her professional life. “See you in a bit!” Jordan said as she left the kitchen.



Trace was the one who had pushed Jordan to take the job in New York a year and a half earlier. It was a promotion to headquarters at the agency, Clark and Bell, they had both worked at for years.

“You’ve always wanted to move to New York,” Trace said, and Jordan realized there was some part of her that had yearned for it, that saw the street photography of New York and wondered if it was her calling. The job was more money and was a role that would allow her to regularly touch a camera, even give some creative direction. Jordan wouldn’t have to lug around equipment at shoots or spend days retouching a single image to someone else’s specifications.

Trace was persistent, asking Jordan about the role daily, if she’d applied, if she’d accepted it, had she found an apartment yet, would she need help with neighborhood research. This persistence was one of the reasons Trace had become a director at the age of twenty-seven. The youngest ever, by at least three years, Trace liked to remind people, her smile performatively bashful. Trace found ways to bring it up even in the most mundane conversations, like when talking to a stranger in line at the coffee shop about her and Silvia’s cat, or complaining about the traffic in Seattle during a happy hour. Seattleites had endless opinions on traffic.

But ultimately, Jordan left because Trace and Silvia had finally gotten engaged. She needed to give them space, move out of the apartment. And besides, she’d begun to feel stuck between Trace and Silvia, the various ongoing complications of their relationship an overwhelming drama. In New York she felt less like a Chinese finger trap, tugged in two different directions, and more like a child wandering a fairground, overstimulated and aimless.

When Jordan told her mom about the promotion and the move, her mom had gotten so choked up that she’d said she had to call Jordan back. Her dad went very quiet and then said, “Well, darling, that’s very impressive.”

For the first few weeks in New York, Jordan spent her lunch hours sitting in the kitchen eating at a table alone. It reminded her of being eighteen at McCallen, having to sit in the dining hall by herself. Back then, her face would burn. There was something so inherently embarrassing about eating by yourself in college. Trace had saved her then, and countless times since. Eventually, Jordan migrated to eating lunch at her desk on the days she was in the office. She read articles on photography so she could claim to have worked through lunch and started leaving thirty minutes early every day. The urge to escape confused her. Jordan had wanted to be a working artist. Here she was, doing it, with medical and dental and a 401(k), a New York City salary. It was a position many would dream of. Why was she so unhappy?

Trace had always been interested in Jordan’s life in New York, but in the weeks leading up to the holidays it had ramped up. She wanted to know where Jordan and the girl she was dating went out. Trace sent Google Maps links to confirm. Is this it? Like she wanted to envision herself there next to them. She sent Instagram posts about drag shows and comedy clubs to Jordan’s DMs. Do you ever go to stuff like this? I bet drag brunch in the city is amazing. At the time, Jordan thought Trace might be planning for a bachelorette party in the city. Now, the fixation felt like foreshadowing, something ominous Jordan should have paid attention to.



An hour after her conversation with Felicity in the kitchen, Anthony pulled Jordan into a conference room. Jordan wondered if she was being moved once more. Anthony sat with one ankle resting on his opposite knee, tipped back in the chair. He held his phone far out in front of him, squinting at it as his lips moved silently along with the words he was reading. When Anthony wasn’t at work, he was at the theater. He took the most minute details (see: seating assignments) far too seriously, and spent every major holiday with a pack of friends he referred to as “the girls” in Key West. He wore sports jackets most days, even though the dress code was casual, his neck adorned with a bow tie, often in bright colors like cobalt or chartreuse. Today it was a cotton candy pink that reminded Jordan of the color of the uniforms in But I’m a Cheerleader. Part of Jordan wished she could be friends with Anthony, the other part was exhausted by him.

“How’s it going?” Jordan sat down across from him. On either side of the room’s glass walls, people walked by. No one would make eye contact with her. Jordan was used to this. It was one of the things she hated about New York. It was the densest city in the United States and everyone liked to pretend like they were the only one in the vicinity. A city full of narcissists.

“Oh, not good.” Anthony was still frowning at his phone. “I’m struggling to get tickets to Six for opening weekend.” He finally looked at her. “It’s coming over from London.”

“I’m so sorry. I’ve heard it’s really good.” She hadn’t, but she knew it didn’t matter.

Anthony put his phone face down on the table and leaned forward. “It is. I’ve already seen it twice.”

Jordan sucked the skin inside her bottom lip between her teeth to keep the corners of her mouth from curling outwards. Anthony’s fingers tapped a folder on the table in front of him. Jordan didn’t know if it was nerves, or a tic, but he only seemed to do it when the two of them were alone.

“Let’s get to it then. I appreciate you making the time to meet with me today,” he said.

Jordan didn’t realize she’d had a choice.

“I know we’ve had some conversations recently about your interest in the projects you’ve been working on, and the caliber of the work I’ve seen.”

They’d had one conversation. It had ended almost as quickly as it had begun. But Jordan understood what the company thought about her work. Her recent accounts were their least important customers—rollerball pens, a candle company, not a single brand you’d ever heard of.

“We, um, I, thought it would be beneficial to create an official plan to get you up to the place we need you to be at to meet standards for Clark and Bell,” Anthony continued.

Jordan could tell he’d been instructed to use first-person. She wondered if Felicity had known about this when she’d caught Jordan in the kitchen that morning. She and Anthony got drinks every week at Porchlight in Chelsea. Jordan knew this because it was on his work Google Calendar, not because the invitation had ever been extended to her.

Anthony flipped open the folder and took out two copies of a stapled packet. One he pushed across the table to Jordan. Anthony began speaking about the expectations they had for the photo department. His voice took on a robotic quality, like he was reciting a memorized speech. He used words like passion, dedication, sense of urgency. But Jordan could only focus on the title at the top of the page he’d slid across the table: PIP for Jordan Caleb.

PIPs were corporate America’s insurance policy. It was such a cheerful word—pip—for what essentially meant “We’d really like to fire you but don’t want to get sued for wrongful termination.” Jordan knew she wasn’t doing great at her job. It wasn’t because she was a bad photographer or disorganized, or didn’t have a clear creative point of view. It was because when she looked at her future—the chance to work on accounts for large social media conglomerates and fast-fashion companies—she didn’t want it. She had figured out quickly that her function was to make something inherently bad for humans or society look appealing, desirable, utterly irresistible. Anthony thought her work was too experimental, with a softer focus than was needed to sell french fries or tax prep or five-dollar eyeshadow palettes. If this was the job she was supposed to want, the thing that would launch her career, Jordan didn’t know if she even wanted to be a photographer anymore.

Anthony was still talking. Jordan knew he tended to fill silence with more words. He was reviewing the plan in detail and was now on page three (three!) of who knew how many. She pulled the packet towards herself with the tips of her fingers and slowly turned to page three.



When Jordan returned to her desk, Felicity wouldn’t meet her eyes. Jordan looked at her phone. Nothing more from Trace. She’d sent another text an hour before that Jordan had also left unread. There was a text from Grace asking to make plans for that week before she left for the holidays. Jordan had been seeing Grace for a little over two months. It was moving slowly. The week before, Grace had slept over for the first time. There was something so deeply intimate about sleeping in the same bed as someone—trusting them with your body as you lost consciousness, trusting them to still find you attractive as you woke up with crust in your eyes, a pillow print across your cheek.

Grace had a long bob reminiscent of Jonathan Taylor Thomas, with a face to match. She wore black boots with carpenter pants most days, and had a carabiner with her keys clipped through her belt loop, a stereotype that made Jordan smile every time she encountered it in the wild. Grace was from Ohio and was benevolent in the way that only the Midwest can breed. She worked in publishing and wanted to write, and this desire had led to long talks between the two of them about what type of art they wanted to put out into the world. When Grace had introduced Jordan to a friend two weeks before, she’d referred to Jordan as an “artist,” which caused a stirring in Jordan’s stomach that now arose whenever she thought of Grace. Now that Silvia was in town, Jordan knew she would have to introduce the two of them. The thought felt like an incoming summer storm in Oregon: disruptive, dark, scary, and rare. Introducing someone to Silvia or Trace meant it was real.

On the train home Jordan held a bottle of wine between her thighs, hand wrapped tightly around the neck. They were planning to order in—pizza, pasta, an Italian feast, consumed on the floor of her living room, “as one must do in New York,” Silvia told her. It was less about what New Yorkers actually did, Jordan realized, than how Silvia envisioned their lives to be, informed most likely by Trace and Friends.

At Seventy-Seventh Street, a backpack narrowly missed Jordan’s face as the car emptied out. The subway smelled like garbage and BO, fried food, and Chanel No. 5 wrapped up in a bouquet that was simultaneously nauseating and nostalgic. During her commutes, Jordan found herself pressed closer to strangers than she’d normally get on a first date. She could smell the creamer in her seatmate’s coffee, feel the curved thigh of a woman whose face she’d never even seen pressed up against her own. As Jordan stood on the platform, day after day, it amazed her how open the tracks were, how close they all lived to catastrophe. There was a part of her that was fascinated with how easy it would be to harm oneself in New York—jump in front of a train, into traffic, off a bridge or a tall building. The city seemed designed for death.

But nothing was easy in New York. Blocks took several minutes to traverse on foot. Bodegas were abundant, but sometimes Jordan had to go to three just to find the specific brand of cereal she liked. Once, for two weeks, the entire city was out of scallions. Rarely did her pharmacy have the iron supplements she needed in stock. Running errands could be like a frustrating, never-ending scavenger hunt. Jordan, once a weekly washer, now went nearly a month between loads since the chore involved lugging heavy bags down multiple flights of stairs and across a block, in all types of inclement weather.

Jordan had stayed in New York because it felt cowardly to leave. It was the first big solo move she’d made since going to college. She didn’t want to be seen as someone who couldn’t hack it in the big city, who needed the security blanket of her best friends to be a fully functioning adult.

Then there was the awe she sensed in other people when they spoke about her life in New York. Her parents, Trace, coworkers back in Seattle, girls from high school in her DMs. It gave Jordan an unexpected ripple of pride. Though she was sure she mostly hated the city, she did feel a small amount of satisfaction in lasting as long as she had, as well as a twinge of contempt for the people, even Trace, who hadn’t done it yet, who hadn’t even dared to try. At times Jordan wondered if this smugness was what it meant to fully become a New Yorker.

On a recent call, her mom said with a small sigh, “Summer would have loved it there.” Jordan felt herself bristle, as she did whenever her sister was brought up, still far too often. Her mom had no idea what kind of woman Summer would have become, what she might have wanted. Jordan responded with a “Maybe” and changed the subject to her second cousin’s recent divorce.

As her local train moved between stops, an express train inched up next to them on a parallel track. For a few seconds, both trains were going at the same speed. Jordan made eye contact with a man in a gray beanie on the other train. He quickly averted his gaze, as was custom in the city, but Jordan didn’t. This was what New York felt like to her—thrusting through space at high speeds, seemingly in the same direction, but with a pane of glass between her and everyone else. No one else seemed to mind this isolation and lack of control. Or perhaps they were all under the impression that they were actually in control.

7

Jordan

April

Nine Years to Saturn Return

The echo of Silvia’s question reverberated through Jordan’s mind as she sat in front of the main administration building in the heart of campus, waiting for Silvia to meet her. Is she your girl? Silvia’s arms had been crossed, one hip cocked and pressed against the counter as she studied Jordan. Jordan wasn’t expecting the inquiry and had made a mess of the coffee grounds. She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it since. Jordan knew what Silvia meant and had answered as such. On the other hand, Trace was her girl. Her best friend. Her sister, in a way that Summer never had been. Jordan felt protective of Trace. She had watched Trace crumble during the winter when a girl she’d been seeing had ended things. The girl had acted as if she and Trace had never met, proceeding to make out with men in front of Trace at parties. Jordan had realized that Trace’s heart was fragile, even though she seemed willing to fling it at any girl in the vicinity who smiled at her in just the right way.

Jordan and Silvia were going on a walk around campus. Two nights before at Bob & Betty’s, Silvia had mentioned getting lost between classes, and Jordan found herself offering her Saturday afternoon to show Silvia around, even though she had an essay to write and was fifty pages behind in reading for her Indigenous Arts of the Americas class. Jordan wasn’t sure how to define her relationship with Silvia. They were hovering in a space between coworker and friend that seemed tenuous, fleeting. This was their first time seeing each other outside work. It felt like a test. Jordan hoped to pass. Months earlier, when Silvia had asked Jordan about her sign, Silvia had told Jordan it was part of their culture. Jordan didn’t know what that meant, but she knew she wanted to be a part of Silvia’s culture.

The sound of Silvia’s shoes on the brick pathway announced her arrival. Jordan looked up and saw Silvia turn the corner. Her boots were a soft brown and disappeared beneath a long suede skirt. She wore a leather jacket and sunglasses, even though it was overcast, and a scarf was wrapped loosely around her neck. Silvia carried herself like a Thoroughbred. Every step she took was deliberate. Shoulders squared, her body moved with the confidence of someone who could walk through walls, who would barrel past whatever might get in her path. Her self-assurance was astounding.

Jordan stood up from the step she’d been perched on. Her ass felt cold and damp from the concrete. There were goosebumps on her arms beneath her denim jacket. She lifted her hand in a wave, unsure if they had reached the hugging stage yet. Jordan never initiated physical contact. Silvia stepped up next to her and wrapped her arms around Jordan’s neck. Jordan let go of a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

“Thank you so much for meeting up,” Silvia said. “I’ve been working so much I haven’t been able to explore the campus at all.”

“Sure, no problem.” The muted light smoothed out Silvia’s features. It was the perfect weather for pictures. Her dark hair popped against the sky in perfect ringlets. Summer used to blow her hair out, or would twist it into braids and buns that sat on her head like sculptures. Jordan used to study the girls who sat in front of her in high school, how they weaved bobby pins in a specific path through their strands. She tried to replicate it at home, locked in the bathroom, but no attempt stuck; she always heard the quiet ping of the pins hitting the tile floor when she took her hands away from her head. Jordan never felt like she was doing femininity the right way.

“I thought we’d start at Kenmore and loop around campus that way,” Jordan said as they made their way to the bottom of the steps. “It’s just one big, uneven circle.”

“Sounds good to me.” Silvia smiled. One of her two front teeth was slightly shorter than the other. “Lead the way!”

“I’m surprised they don’t give transfer students a tour when they start.”

“They do. I missed half of orientation to cover a shift for Vicki, and I thought I’d be able to figure it out on my own. Which I guess was very wrong.”

“We could have found someone else to cover for you!” Jordan was distressed on Silvia’s behalf. It would never occur to her to not attend a required session. She liked to be informed. She liked to check boxes. She always worried about being left behind.

“Don’t worry about it,” Silvia said. “I preferred the money.”

Jordan led them down a path to the left. She looked down at the ground, unsure of how to continue the conversation, and noticed they’d fallen into step together, left leg then right leg, kicking forward at the same moment. This gave Jordan a thrill, as if she were seven years old again, pretending they were starting in on a synchronized dance. She imagined looping her arm through Silvia’s and pulling her down the path, knees lifting in skips that took them higher and higher.

Jordan felt a similar desperation to be Silvia’s friend that she’d once felt with Trace. It was something she wanted to tamp down inside herself. It seemed so embarrassing to pine for friendship, but something about Silvia was addictive. It was hard to look away from her.

“Wow, it’s pretty here,” Silvia said.

Jordan followed Silvia’s gaze to the edge of the Lawn (its official title), the grassy expanse around which all the academic buildings stood. The leaves of the sugar maple trees that surrounded the circular field had begun to fill in, the branches, recently bare, were finally covered with vibrant, fluffy green leaves.

“Was it not pretty in California?” Silvia had shared very little about her life before transferring to McCallen. Jordan didn’t know if her reticence was due to the reason for her transfer or if Silvia didn’t like discussing her history in general. Jordan knew about Silvia’s exes, but nothing about her family. It was curious.

Silvia paused so long before responding Jordan thought she might have missed the question. “California was pretty, yes. Almost offensively pretty. It hurt a little to look at it.” Silvia turned to Jordan. “You know how they say that everyone in LA is gorgeous because they’re all actors and models and they’ve all spent thousands of dollars on plastic surgery?”

Jordan didn’t know this. “Sure.”

“Well, geographically, California feels like that to me. Painfully pretty. Almost unreal. I couldn’t get anything done. I sat on the beach and stared at the ocean and hours would just slip away from me.”

Jordan wanted to laugh but she thought Silvia was being serious. Who sat and stared at the ocean outside of an indie movie?

“I was also smoking a lot of weed.”

Ah. Okay then.

“The Midwest is a more manageable pretty. It’s not too distracting. Plus the seasons.” Silvia looked up at the trees. “You get to watch the leaves change and fall and come back again.” Jordan didn’t say anything. A year at McCallen had wiped out any romantic notions she might have had about Ohio.

Silvia stopped in front of a statue of a man crouched over the ground, head bent. He was wearing a T-shirt and shorts, skater shoes on his feet, a modern-day Atlas missing his world. “What’s this for?”

“This is to remind us that life sucks and you might as well give up.”

Silvia laughed. She pressed her fingers into the plaque next to the statue, feeling the name carved into its surface. “James Caleb.” She looked at Jordan and raised an eyebrow, an act that impressed Jordan more than she liked to admit. “A relative of yours?”

Jordan nodded. “It’s my uncle.”

“Whoa, I was joking,” Silvia said.

Jordan laughed awkwardly. “Sorry, so was I.”

Silvia pushed an arm against Jordan, nudging her two feet to the left. “Okay, Jordan.” Jordan liked the way Silvia said her name, drawing the first syllable out, like it was a joke, her intonation always a bit of a tease. Silvia stepped away and Jordan found herself longing for Silvia to move closer again.

“People rub the back of his head for luck before exams.” Jordan pointed at a patch on the statue’s head, shiny from repeated touching. “I think some alum made this and donated it. A self-portrait or something.”

“Gotta love male artists and their egotism,” Silvia said.

“What’s wrong with self-portraits?” In high school Jordan had bought a remote for her digital camera. She would stand in front of the trees in her mother’s backyard, her camera on a tripod, as she contorted her body and pulled her hair in front of her face, remote hidden in the hand she held behind her back. She’d started and failed to finish the 365 photo challenge many times. A couple of these images had ended up in her McCallen portfolio.

Silvia stared at her for a minute before saying, “There’s just so many more interesting things to make art from than myself.” Strike one, Jordan thought, her face reddening. She worried she only had two more remaining.

They continued walking.

“So where do your Calebs originate?” Silvia asked.

“They’ve been in the Pacific Northwest for a while. Spokane, Seattle, Bend, Portland, that area.”

“Do you have a big family?”

“Nope. My parents are only children,” Jordan said. “What about you?” she asked, so Silvia wouldn’t inquire about siblings or request more information about her immediate family.

“Very, very small,” Silvia said. “Okay, tell me about this.”

They stopped at an archway between two buildings. It was covered in vines, the path beyond it pebbled. The walls on either side were painted in muted jewel tones.

“Ivy Lane,” Jordan said.

“Original,” Silvia said. They both looked up at the plants wrapped around the arch.

“People get engaged here,” Jordan said.

Silvia gasped.

“Yeah, it’s romantic, I guess.”

“No, in college? They get engaged in college? We’re still children,” Silvia said. “That should be illegal.”

“I imagine the divorce rate is high for those couples.”

“One would hope.”

“It’s also part of a haunted house in October,” Jordan said. “The gym is back there, on the second floor of the Greenhouse.”

“We have a gym?” Silvia asked.

The second floor of the Greenhouse was made up of two rooms, one a space for yoga, the other outfitted with three treadmills and a StairMaster. “Gym might be a generous term.”

“Ivy Lane takes you to the Greenhouse. They really like to stick to a theme here, huh?”

“One might say they take it too far,” Jordan said.

“One might,” Silvia agreed. “One might.” She put her arm around Jordan’s shoulders and Jordan felt the muscles in her neck begin to loosen. She kept her hands in her pockets, afraid to break the spell. They continued walking. Silvia left her arm on Jordan. The weight was comforting. Grounding.

“Do you like it here, Jordan?” Silvia asked.

“I like that it pissed my parents off that I wanted to come here.” This was true. It was the main reason she’d applied. It was only later that Jordan realized McCallen might be a good fit in other ways too.

Silvia laughed then, a burst of sound that startled Jordan. Silvia took her arm away so she could bend in half, one hand on a knee.

“Where did they want you to go?” Silvia asked when she’d straightened again, replacing her arm around Jordan’s shoulders.

“University of Oregon.”

“Cheaper?”

“Yeah, but also they met there.”

“Ah, so you were supposed to be a legacy,” Silvia said. “Who knows, maybe you’ll meet your person here too.”

“Unlikely.”

“That’s the spirit.”

Silvia wanted to walk across the Lawn, so they turned left down a narrow path through the trees. The expanse, normally dotted with students sprawled on Adirondack chairs, was now covered with blankets. Jordan had forgotten that all the student groups were gathering that afternoon for informal informational sessions. She felt immediate annoyance at having to twist through the maze. A flash of orange winked in her peripheral, the color of Trace’s fraternity’s shirts, and Jordan remembered Trace telling her earlier in the week that she’d be on the Lawn all Saturday afternoon. An extreme sense of urgency washed over Jordan, and she picked up her pace, looking for the shortest path through the crowd.

“Hey, wait,” Silvia called.

“One second, I just want to get out of this.”

“But I think that’s your friend, the one from Bob & Betty’s?” Silvia stopped, forcing Jordan to turn around to respond.

“No it isn’t.” She didn’t look in Trace’s direction. “Come on, let’s go.”

Silvia looked confused. “I think she’s waving at us.”

Jordan began to shake her head, but a lull in the crowd allowed a booming “Jordan Caleb” to echo across the grass. Jordan then shared with Silvia three of the most awkward seconds of eye contact she’d ever experienced, before turning to look at Trace—who was indeed waving—thirty feet away from where they stood. Jordan reluctantly waved back, and they both started towards the blanket that Trace stood on. Blake was sitting behind her, with a small group of other students, eating what appeared to be grapes and brownies.

“Man, I was screaming your name, didn’t you hear me?” Trace called out as soon as they got closer. “I can’t believe you were going to come here without stopping by to say hi.”

“Sorry, I didn’t know you were going to be here.”

“I told you on Thursday I would be here.”

“I must have forgot.” Jordan looked over her shoulder, as if scanning the area for a different group she might be interested in, to avoid the look on Trace’s face.

“Are you going to introduce me to your friend?” Trace asked, and Jordan heard it in her voice—the crush. Trace dropped her register when talking to girls she wanted to impress. She slowed her cadence and carefully pronounced her words so that no hint of the Midwest would reveal itself in the pronunciation of a vowel.

Jordan sighed, a small exhale of air most likely noticed by no one in the vicinity. So much for being friends with Silvia.

“Trace, this is Silvia. She works at Bob & Betty’s with me. Silvia, this is Trace.”

Jordan watched in amazement as Silvia pulled her sunglasses down to perch on the tip of her nose and stared at Trace over the rims. Were they in Clueless?

Trace stuck her hand out and Silvia took it, holding on to it for so long it almost seemed like she’d forgotten what she was doing. Silvia never once broke eye contact with Trace, and Jordan might have been impressed with her game if she weren’t so annoyed. Jordan thrust her hands deep into her pockets. A smile was forming in the corner of Trace’s mouth.

“Pleasure to meet you, Trace,” Silvia said once she’d finally let go. “Tell me about your group.”

“Gamma Alpha Upsilon is a service fraternity. We partner with organizations in the area to do volunteer work. We also do fundraisers and lend our time to other groups on campus to help with event planning or setup.” Trace bent and grabbed a brochure from a stack on the blanket—an eight and a half by eleven piece of paper that had been folded twice into a column.

“Gay,” Silvia said. It wasn’t a question. Her sunglasses had been pushed back up to a reasonable place on the bridge of her nose.

“Yes.” Trace smiled, and Jordan knew Silvia, at least, had passed a test today.

“You should totally join,” Blake called from the blanket.

“Maybe I will,” Silvia said. “When do you meet?”

“Wednesday nights at seven.”

“Bummer, I’m usually working.”

Trace looked over at Jordan, the first time she’d done so since being introduced to Silvia. “I’m sure Jordan will swap shifts with you.”

Silvia laughed—or was it, Jordan thought, horrified, a giggle?—and slung an arm around Jordan’s shoulders. “Unfortunately, Jor already works Wednesday nights with me.” Which Trace absolutely already knew since Jordan had been working Wednesday nights at Bob & Betty’s for the past seven months. She felt like an extra, hired only to assist their flirtation.

“But maybe I can figure something out,” Silvia said.

“I hope so.” Trace leaned down and scribbled something on the corner of the brochure before handing it to Silvia. “Here’s my number in case you have any questions about it.”

Silvia took the paper and very delicately folded it into a square before placing it in her pocket.

“We should probably keep going,” Jordan said.

“Yes, we should. So nice to meet you, Trace.”

“The pleasure was all mine,” Trace said, and Jordan half expected Trace to kiss Silvia’s hand and bow before they turned away.

Jordan and Silvia continued walking, and Jordan began explaining the background of the new dorms on the east side of campus, but she could tell that a part of Silvia wasn’t listening anymore. She could see Silvia’s hand in her pocket, fingering the edge of the folded piece of paper Trace had given her.

8

Trace

May

Nine Years to Saturn Return

Silvia texted Trace for the first time on a Thursday in May. It had been so many weeks since Trace had given Silvia her number that Trace had stopped expecting it. She’d spent a week touching her phone too often, waiting for the flash of light on her BlackBerry to indicate a new message was waiting, only to feel extreme disappointment when it was just Jordan or Blake or a new email from the resident director. Trace had gone to Bob & Betty’s the two Fridays following her introduction to Silvia that spring. The first Friday, Silvia came around to refill her coffee and said, “Hi, Trace, what’s up?” The sound of her name in Silvia’s mouth turned Trace on. But besides the usual exchange of pleasantries, nothing further transpired. She didn’t stick around Trace’s table long enough for Trace to flirt with her. On the second Friday, Trace had begun to wonder if Silvia was playing a game. Silvia never even looked her way, and Trace sat eating the french fries Jordan brought her, feeling more and more like a fool. Trace had promised Blake to stop chasing girls. It was embarrassing to keep showing up at the restaurant, hoping for an interaction. She stopped going to the diner on Friday nights, switching to Sunday afternoons when Silvia wasn’t there.

hey trace, its silvia. where and when does your gay group meet again?

GamUp (though gay was an acceptable substitute) wouldn’t meet again for two more weeks. For thirty seconds Trace thought of all the excuses she could give for setting up an impromptu, unnecessary meeting for the group in hopes of seeing Silvia sooner, but every reason she came up with felt desperate, a reach that she would likely be called out for. Dejected, she texted Silvia back, Hey! It’s normally Wednesday nights in Lounge A in Landry, but we’re not meeting again until the third Wednesday in May. See you then? Trace pressed send and then looked at her punctuation and capitalization and wondered if it was uncool to be so formal.

Silvia responded to Trace’s text with for sure. Trace tried to keep the conversation moving, asking about Silvia’s summer plans, but Silvia never responded, and for the next two weeks, Trace berated herself for being so eager.



On the third Wednesday in May, Trace spent her day pushing away thoughts of Silvia’s lips, the way she smiled at customers when she was pouring coffee at the diner, like they were the only person in the world. She showered after her last class of the day, sprayed cologne on her neck, and left her room for Landry only to return a minute later to pull on a blazer. She was president, after all.

When Silvia walked into Lounge A, Trace felt her muscles tense up. Silvia stopped in the back of the room to pick up a seltzer from a pile of snacks that Trace had set up earlier. Trace stood in front of the room and became acutely aware of the way her eyebrows were moving. She tried to relax them. She pretended to be listening intently to what Jillian, a fellow GamUp member, was saying about a protest the following week, despite tracking Silvia’s movements around the room in her peripheral. Silvia paused to talk to Blake. Trace would not go up to Silvia. Trace would not acknowledge her unless Silvia acknowledged Trace first. It wasn’t a game, she was just saving her dignity. Trace could feel the heat of Silvia’s body from fifteen feet away.

At five after, Trace turned to the room and said, “Let’s get started.” Silvia sat in the front row, like a teacher’s pet, and smiled directly at Trace.

“Hey,” Trace said, “good to see you.” And then she started the meeting.

Later that evening Trace’s phone buzzed. thank you for an excellent meeting tonight Mr. President. Silvia was flirting. Was she flirting? Trace let herself stare at the message for three minutes before putting her phone down and waiting an hour to respond. Anytime! So glad you could make it. Hope the conversation wasn’t too intense, the gays get very passionate about t-shirt design. Silvia responded quickly, said she loved every minute of it, especially the cute girl in the blazer.

Definitely flirting.

Trace covered her face with her pillow and screamed into it. She texted back, waiting only twenty minutes this time, and fell asleep two hours later with her phone in her hand after learning where Silvia had transferred from (Pomona), why (more arts classes), and what she was hoping to do after college (no idea).

Trace added Silvia on Facebook three days after the GamUp meeting. Obviously, Trace had already seen Silvia’s Facebook. She’d looked it up after the first time they had officially met, when Silvia had held Trace’s hand for so long Trace feared she might faint. Trace had never met a girl like Silvia before. She felt a twinge in her gut: Silvia was the one she’d been waiting for.

It took Silvia thirteen hours to accept the friend request. Trace checked every thirty minutes, refreshing her browser in case the notification hadn’t come through. Once they were officially friends, Trace lay on her bed, laptop resting on her stomach, and clicked through Silvia’s pictures. She stopped and squinted at any photo that might be with a previous girlfriend. There was one from eight months prior—Silvia and a girl were sitting on the beach, both wearing sunglasses and staring off to the right. Then another from two years earlier—Silvia was standing in a lake, her feet submerged, her arms wrapped tightly around the waist of a different girl who was wearing shorts and a sports bra. As Trace’s fingers shifted across the trackpad, she accidentally clicked the thumbs up on a picture from four years ago. Mortified, she quickly unliked the picture and hoped that Silvia wasn’t online at that exact moment to get the notification.

Jordan walked into Trace’s room when she was halfway through her stalking session and Trace slammed her laptop shut, grateful her screen wasn’t facing the door. She felt ashamed of her desire to excavate Silvia’s entire digital history. At some point Silvia might tell Trace about these people, and Trace would listen without letting on that she’d already seen the pictures and could visualize the characters clearly in her mind.



Trace waited four more days to officially ask Silvia out. She made sure to never let their text conversation die. They’d begun to delve into deeper subjects, the messages turning into paragraphs. Trace asked if Silvia had any siblings, and when the answer was no, Silvia wanted to hear all about Trace’s sister—what toys they had fought over, if they were still close, how often they talked. its a sick obsession of mine, Silvia explained, i like to hear about what I missed out on, i need to know how much different it could have been, for better or worse. normally for worse. being alone is hard.

A masochist, Trace responded.

Exactly, Silvia said.

Trace asked Silvia about her classes, what she hoped to do with her art (idk just keep doing it), and what kind of art she did (everything for now. im trying to figure that out. i can’t quite put my finger on where my energy should go. the purpose of college is for trial and error right? identify what you want your life to be?).

Trace read Silvia’s texts out loud when she was alone in her room, to feel as if they were having a conversation in person. Silvia’s sentences sounded alive, enriched in a way Trace didn’t realize texting had the space to hold. She liked that Silvia didn’t seem worried about her future, was ready to let life roll out in front of her without too much concern for where it might lead. It felt reckless and exciting.

Eventually, Trace slipped in, Do you want to continue this conversation over dinner? feeling somewhat suave. She was already checking her phone too much, flipping it face down, then back over a minute later. She was constantly waiting for that green flash.

that sounds lovely, Silvia responded, and Trace felt a swoop in her stomach, like she was cresting the hill of a roller coaster.



They agreed on a Tuesday night. It was the last day of finals and most people were heading home. you can help me celebrate surviving a whole semester here, Silvia said. Trace was supposed to be on call, but she found someone to cover for her. Silvia would be staying for the summer working at Bob & Betty’s, Trace had finally found out, and Trace was an orientation leader. She tried not to let her imagination run wild, envisioning the next three months in Fulton Springs with Silvia. Suddenly, Ohio was her favorite state. Trace never wanted to leave.

Trace put on a collared shirt, not sure whether to tuck it in or leave it untucked, but once she buttoned her pants on top of the shirt the bottom half was wrinkled so she left it tucked. The tip of her collar was slightly curved in from months of sitting in a drawer, which Trace attempted to smooth out with water. She had grown her hair out a couple inches but was still figuring out how to style it, and as she ran the gel through her strands, she realized quickly she’d put in too much, but she didn’t know how to undo the mistake, so she arranged things as best she could into a slicked-back pouf. She stared at herself in the mirror when she was done. Her clothes looked a little messy. Her hair was stiff. It was too late to change anything. Trace hoped it would all come across as endearing.

Trace chose a restaurant named Mr. Giano’s that sat on one end of Main. Though the menu held Italian classics like carbonara and cacio e pepe, the napkins were paper and the utensils were made of soft, thin metal that could be bent using two fingers. There were nicer restaurants near McCallen. Trace liked Mr. Giano’s for first dates because it was far enough from campus that not many students ended up there, which was helpful for the questioning women she found herself going out with.

Trace sat down at their table, the first to arrive, and immediately regretted her restaurant choice. Sugar packets were stuck under one table leg to keep it from wobbling. The cheap frames on the walls looked tacky. Trace took a sip of water. Her palms were damp, and as she pressed them into her thighs, she wasn’t sure if it was from the condensation on the glass or sweat. She reminded herself not to talk about Halloween too much. The previous year, some girl she’d hooked up with a few times had teased Trace relentlessly about her obsession with the holiday. Apparently not everyone spent their entire childhood looking forward to the one day each year they could dress up as someone else.

And then Trace blinked and Silvia was sitting in front of her, eyes rimmed in liner, hair encircling her head like a halo, in a dress cut just low enough that Trace had to remind herself to keep her eyes up. Silvia rested her elbows on the table, leaning forward, already at ease. Trace felt her heart speed up so much she worried it might stop, worn out from use.

“Hey.” Silvia smiled. Trace was undone.

Trace had worried about the conversation, as one does before a first date, but she needn’t have. Silvia kept her talking for the first hour, asking Trace questions over the rim of her Coke glass, straw chewed flat.

Once, Trace’s cousin had come up to her while she was gnawing on an ice cube and told her that incessant chewing was a sign of sexual frustration. Did Silvia know that? Did the straw?

Silvia asked Trace about her family, and Trace said, “They’re fine, but I’m not really their kind of people.”

“What are their kind of people?”

“The kind of people you’d expect to find in Kansas,” Trace said.

“And where could people expect to find you?” Silvia asked.

“Soho,” Trace said.

“London or New York?”

“Either.” Trace leaned forward, chest pressed against the table, as she told Silvia about her future. She painted a picture of her life in ten years—vice president somewhere, apartment high above the city, yearly trips abroad, a doodle she walked in Central Park—and hoped that Silvia saw herself next to Trace in each of the images. There was space for Silvia in every frame of her life. Silvia seemed to delight in Trace’s New York monologue. She leaned back in her chair with her arms crossed, the spark of a smile playing across her face. Her lips were perfect. The phrase bee stung came to Trace’s mind. She wanted to know what they would feel like against her own. Silvia seemed charmed. As she should be. Trace was charming.

“Tell me about your family,” Trace said.

“They’re not that interesting. Single mother. No siblings. I grew up in a million states.”

“That sounds incredibly interesting,” Trace said.

“Trust me,” Silvia said. “It’s not.” Silvia leaned away from the table as the waiter set their plates down. “I want to hear more about you.” And since most girls didn’t ask, Trace complied, telling Silvia about her unbelievable number of cousins, her sister, Olivia, who couldn’t have been more different from Trace, her summers spent working mission trips during high school. Silvia asked her if she’d ever considered the Peace Corps, and Trace laughed and said, “Absolutely not, I’m made for indoor plumbing.” Silvia said she’d always wondered what it might be like. Trace pictured Silvia in the jungle beneath a canopy of trees, beads of sweat dotting her brow, and immediately wanted to be trapped in the humidity with her.

“You know,” Trace said, body finally relaxed as she pierced a piece of pasta with her fork, “I was surprised my mom was more upset about the gay thing than the tattoos.”

“My mom expected tattoos,” Silvia said with a laugh.

“Oh?” Trace said, realizing Silvia had yet to talk about herself, had artfully dodged questions about her upbringing. “Why?”

Silvia looked down at her plate. It was the first time she seemed uncomfortable. “No particular reason.”

“Do you have any?” Trace asked, pivoting. “Tattoos?”

Silvia nodded and Trace thought about peeling Silvia’s clothes off in stages to reveal the ink beneath.

“I want more,” Trace said. “Do you know about the Fibonacci sequence?” Silvia shook her head. “It’s this math equation that forms a perfect spiral. It’s found in nature all the time—in shells and ferns. They also call it the golden ratio.”

Trace grabbed a pen off the check on the empty table to her left and began drawing on her napkin. “You add the last two numbers to get the next number. It gets bigger and bigger the higher up you go.” She was marking lines through her spiral, writing numbers in a small, neat font. Trace stopped. “I’m sorry, this is so boring.”

Silvia was leaning towards her over the table, looking at the napkin in front of Trace. She reached out to cover Trace’s hand with hers. “No, it’s not.”

Trace held her hand still, feeling the weight of Silvia’s palm. “Anyways, I want that spiral. It feels like a reminder that you are created the way you’re meant to be. Mathematically perfect.”

The waiter refilled their water glasses and asked if they were interested in dessert. While they waited for their crème brûlée, they discussed their signs.

Trace was a Capricorn. “Ambitious,” Silvia said. “Hot.”

Silvia was a Leo. “I’m sorry, I know nothing about astrology,” Trace said.

“Don’t worry, I’ll teach you,” Silvia responded.

When dessert came, Trace let Silvia crack the sugared crust. Silvia scooped up a strawberry and said, “I’ve always wanted a strawberry tattoo.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Strawberry vines, crawling up my thigh, or around my ribs, or a juicy little berry on my arm.” Silvia licked a bit of the custard off her spoon. “I’ve always thought strawberries were the sexiest fruit. Not because people dip them in chocolate or whipped cream, but because strawberries are without a doubt the hottest food to watch someone eat. There’s something about the resistance of the skin, the texture inside as the color fades, how your lips have to move around it.”

Silvia put her spoon in her mouth and stared at Trace as she swallowed. Trace had to look down at the table. She took a sip of water. Recrossed her legs in the other direction.

When the check came, Silvia slid her card across the table to split it, refusing to let Trace treat. Briefly, Trace wondered if that meant the date had gone badly; most girls were more than happy to leave the bill to her.

After leaving Mr. Giano’s they walked down Main Street. Trace glanced over at Silvia, whose hands were firmly in her pockets, and tried to devise a way to free one of Silvia’s limbs from her denim jacket so that Trace could thread their fingers together. They stopped in front of Trace’s dorm.

“Let me walk you home,” Trace said.

Silvia smiled and shook her head. “No, that’s okay. But thank you for being such a gentleman.”

Trace felt a rush of pleasure. Silvia hadn’t moved, and as Trace opened her mouth to speak, Silvia said, “You know, I’m not really tired yet.”

“Oh, well,” Trace started. Do not act like a slut, she told herself. “Do you want to come up?” Goddammit.

Silvia smirked and nodded twice before brushing past Trace into the building.

The wait for the elevator was torturous. Trace put one hand in her pocket, fearful that it might reach out, of its own accord, and touch the soft skin of Silvia’s cheek. Trace couldn’t make eye contact with Silvia. The way she was looking at Trace was too intense. Silvia once again seemed amused; Trace hoped this was a good thing.

Trace and Silvia got into the elevator, and as soon as the doors kissed shut, Silvia’s hands were on Trace’s face, her lips on Trace’s neck. Trace’s lower back pressed against the handrail. Silvia’s knee pushed Trace’s thighs apart. At first Trace was frozen, shocked at Silvia’s audacity, but then her hands moved to Silvia’s hips, digging her fingers into the thin fabric of her dress. Silvia was taller than her. She had to bend slightly to reach Trace. Trace tilted her head all the way back. She wrapped her arm around Silvia’s waist, feeling the warmth of her skin through the dress. When they reached the sixth floor, Silvia stepped away from Trace and exited the elevator as if nothing had happened. She wiped a thumb over the corner of her mouth and looked at Trace, “Which way, babe?”

Once in Trace’s room, Trace felt shy, so much of herself out on display. Silvia touched the edge of a picture of Trace from high school. “Cute.” Silvia put her purse on Trace’s desk. She sat on Trace’s bed and looked at Trace, as if to ask: Now what?

“Let me put some music on,” Trace said, reaching for her computer. She turned on her lamps and switched off the overhead light.

Trace sat next to Silvia and looked at her. Silvia laughed once, said “Enough of this,” and pushed Trace onto her back. She straddled Trace, dress pulled up to her waist, as she unbuttoned Trace’s top, hair pulled over one shoulder. Trace shrugged her shirt off and then fingered the hem of Silvia’s dress. “Now this,” Trace instructed.

Silvia pulled it over her head and she wasn’t wearing a bra and had on a lacy turquoise thong and Trace could not believe this was a body she was allowed to touch. And then Silvia’s body was pressed against hers and Silvia was asking her to take her pants off and Silvia’s hands were pressing against her underwear and then slipping beneath her waistband and Trace could feel how wet she was and might have been embarrassed except then Silvia’s fingers touched her, went inside her, and Trace realized this was what it was supposed to feel like, this was what it was like to not be an experiment, and Silvia pulled Trace’s briefs off and knelt between her legs and put her mouth on Trace and it happened so fast, Trace was amazed how quickly the nerves in her body came together and exploded, Trace’s nails leaving marks in Silvia’s back that she then apologized for and Silvia just said, “Never ever apologize for that,” and then Trace got to touch Silvia, she got to put her lips against Silvia’s skin, taste the metal of Silvia’s sweat, she got to slide her fingers inside Silvia and watch as Silvia’s face changed, as the sounds she made lowered, as Silvia requested, “Harder, baby, please.” Silvia gripped Trace’s arm tightly and it only made her wet again, and when it was all over, after another round or two or three, Trace had lost count, they lay in Trace’s bed, her head on Silvia’s chest, as Silvia ran her fingers through Trace’s hair, and that’s when Trace looked up at her and asked her the question that had been sitting in the back of her brain for weeks.

“So, are you, like, a lesbian?” Trace winced at the way it had come out. It shouldn’t matter. But somehow it did. Or maybe she just needed to know, to be prepared for what she might be up against.

“I guess bi is probably more accurate,” Silvia said. “I like a man every now and then. They’re easy in a pinch.” She laughed. “But never for keeps. I don’t see myself ending up with a man. So, culturally, lesbian, yes. Dyke by choice, I suppose.”

Trace felt soothed. She was someone Silvia could end up with. She wanted to be the person Silvia ended up with.

“Will you tell me something about your mom?” Trace asked. She ran a finger over Silvia’s hip, where a small purple-and-black butterfly bloomed on Silvia’s skin.

There was a long pause. “How about I show you something instead?” Silvia said. She sat up, pushing Trace off her chest, and reached for her purse. She pulled out a box.

“My mom gave me these when I was thirteen.” Silvia opened the box and withdrew a deck of cards. “It’s probably the only good thing I’ve ever gotten from her. Do you know anything about tarot?” Trace shook her head.

Silvia swung her hair away from her face and started telling Trace about the cards and their various meanings. “It’s just meant to give guidance,” Silvia said. “It feels kind of like a religion, in some ways.”

“It’s spiritual,” Trace said.

“Yes!”

They each pulled a card from the deck, but as Silvia explained what hers meant, Trace was too distracted to take in the words. Silvia was naked, sitting cross-legged in her bed. It seemed unimaginable that this was happening in real life. Silvia put the cards away when they were done, and lay back down in bed.

“Trace,” she said. “Is that your real name?”

Trace wrinkled her nose as she admitted it was actually Tracy, a name her family still called her, which came from a great-aunt on her dad’s side.

“I was named after my mom’s nanny,” Silvia said, and Trace nearly held her breath as Silvia let a bit more of herself spill out. “She was probably more family than my grandparents were.”

Silvia left just as Trace was falling asleep. “I have to sleep alone,” she said, and kissed Trace once softly before slipping her dress over her head and opening the door.



When she woke up the next morning, Trace checked her phone. Silvia had texted when she got back to her house. Trace wouldn’t ask Silvia out again just yet, she needed to give it time. There was nothing worse than being too thirsty. Trace opened her text thread with Jordan.

I had my first date with Silvia last night. I’ve never met anyone like her before Jor.

Jordan responded five minutes later. You’re only twenty, give it some time.

Nope, I know it. She’s the one.

Trace laid her phone on her chest. She closed her eyes. Trace wouldn’t let Jordan’s cynicism ruin the moment for her. Silvia-induced bliss surged through her entire body, all the way into her fingers and toes. Trace was prepared for the best summer of her life.

9

Silvia

December

Saturn Is Returning

On Thursday evening Silvia and Jordan met Grace, a girl Jordan had recently started seeing, at a dive bar in the East Village. The three of them sat on stools clustered around one corner of the bar. Classic rock played over the speakers, and the air was tinged with the scent of stale beer.

“What did you get up to today?” Grace asked Silvia, lifting an IPA to her lips.

“I went to a museum.”

“Which one?”

“The Met,” Silvia said.

“Good choice,” Grace said, dropping a hand on Jordan’s thigh. “Did you like it?”

“I’m honestly not much of a museum person.”

“You aren’t?” Jordan asked, surprised.

Grace laughed. “So why go to a museum?”

“I keep thinking it’s going to click at some point, so I keep trying, but every time, I’m bored out of my mind.”

Silvia wanted to be the type of person who took a quick spin through an exhibit after work. It felt like something that should be part of her persona. But she hated the swirl of haughtiness in the air at museums. She hated how one’s voice was expected to notch down a few octaves, speak barely above a whisper. She hated the reverence expressed inside a museum’s walls. She didn’t trust it. Silvia loved art—it was one of the few possessions of her mother’s she’d held on to—but wished there were other ways to experience it. Trace loved to go to museums. She always read the plaque with the history of the piece first, nodded once when finished, and made the appropriate sound when her eyes finally moved over to the painting—somewhere between a low moan and a soft yelp of surprise. Silvia could almost see the checklist in Trace’s mind as they stepped back onto the street: a fresh little tick next to Experience culture. She wondered if the people who gave millions to the Met ever visited the museum or if they only did it for the clout. At a certain economic level, one’s home would be just as enticing as a museum. If Silvia owned such pieces, she would have large parties with house music shaking the walls. She would serve acid tabs on trays and invite people to take themselves on a journey—nothing would be off limits. If the painting begged for touch, her guests should comply.

“Honestly, I feel the same way,” Grace said.

“You just haven’t been to the right one,” Jordan said.

“That sounds like what my grandmother said to me when I came out to her,” Grace said, and Silvia laughed, pressing the back of her hand to her mouth to prevent herself from spraying gin and tonic all over her lap. She liked Grace. It made her both relieved and sad.

“I’ll take you to Fotografiska,” Jordan said, looking at Grace. “It’s a great photography museum.”

“Whatever you want, babe.”

Silvia felt a shiver of jealousy for the ease of early love, when baggage and resentments hadn’t yet weighed the relationship down, an anchor slowly drowning them.

Silvia redirected the conversation, peppering Grace with questions as if they were on a first date. When Grace revealed she was from Ohio, Silvia said, “Ah, so you must be familiar with McCallen.” Grace admitted yes, she was very aware, McCallen had been her first rejection letter. Her birthday was February eighteenth. “We love a water sign,” Silvia said. “Well done, Jor.” Grace was a couple years older than Jordan, a Midwesterner who had moved to the city to work in publishing. She looked grungy, hair a mess, baggy pants flecked with splatters of paint, an aesthetic that Silvia admired. When she leaned in to hug Silvia she smelled clean, like fresh laundry and baby oil. Jordan had told Silvia and Trace about Grace the month before. It occurred to Silvia, unsettlingly, that perhaps Grace was the reason Trace had finally made her confession. Jordan had been single for so long—the entire time they’d known her. At certain points it seemed like she might stay that way forever. But Silvia could tell, from the sparing details Jordan had shared about Grace, that Grace was important. Trace was perceptive.

“So, Grace, tell me about your life goals. Are you sold on New York?” Silvia asked.

“For now I like it. I’m not sure if I’ll be here forever, but it’s the right place at the moment.”

“Why come here and live in one of the most expensive cities in the world if you’re not sure?” Silvia asked. “It seems like most people who come here always dreamed of it.”

“Most people, excluding Jordan,” Grace pointed out.

Silvia glanced over briefly at Jordan, who had opened a work email on her phone. “Yes, but Jordan is an artist. New York is a career step.”

“That’s why I came too. The publishers are here. At least the ones you’ve heard of. You basically have to move here to get started in publishing. And I wanted to work at the best.”

Trace would respect that response, admire it even. Silvia wondered if Trace would be jealous of Grace’s experience, the journey that led her to New York.

Jordan grabbed her glass off the bar from between them as she opened Slack. Her lime was bent in half, stirred to the bottom of the glass, with pieces of pulp floating throughout the clear liquid in slow motion. Silvia watched out of the corner of her eye as an Instagram notification popped down from the top of Jordan’s screen. Jordan swiped it away before Silvia could see who it was from.

Silvia didn’t have Instagram. She’d lingered on Facebook for only a few years before deleting her profile permanently. Social media felt too public; there was nowhere to hide. Someone could always be found on the internet. Even when she’d lived abroad, Silvia refused to let the government put her image on the Peace Corps website. They always took two sets of group pictures—one with Silvia and one without.

“How do you feel about being so far from your family?” Silvia asked Grace. “Do you have any guilt? What if someone gets sick and you’re not there to help?”

“Silvia!” Jordan said, suddenly alert, phone locked in her hand. “You can’t ask that.”

“I was just trying to get you off your phone. Work can wait.” Silvia tapped Jordan’s screen with one finger. She turned to Grace. “I really hope you can help her with her work-life balance.”

“I’m doing my best, but honestly, I need her help with that too. I’m going to run to the bathroom.” Grace slipped off her stool and headed to the back of the bar.

Silvia turned to Jordan as Grace disappeared into the crowd. “I love her. Marry her immediately.” Silvia meant it, but she didn’t know if she meant it for Jordan’s well-being or for her own. She wanted Jordan to admit to falling in love with Grace, to being off the market, her feelings definitively spoken for.

“Okay, calm down, it’s only been a couple months.”

“Right, I know, why aren’t you two living together already? My god.”

Jordan smiled. “It’s going well so far. We’ll see what happens.”

“I’m happy for you, Jor. You deserve this.” Silvia sat up in her chair and looked around the bar as she finished the last of her drink. Jordan was on her phone again.

“Have you heard from her?” Silvia asked. She watched Jordan’s body tighten, her thumb freeze, hovering over her phone.

“No, I haven’t. Not since you got here.”

It wasn’t true. Trace had texted Jordan that morning. Silvia had checked her phone when Jordan took a shower after work. The message was unopened, so Silvia couldn’t read it in its entirety, but it had started with I know you asked for space and I am trying really really hard to respect that but can, then cut off. Trace had called Silvia multiple times, sent her texts that Silvia also left unopened. “Okay,” Silvia said. She sucked melted water out of the bottom of her drink. She didn’t want to ask. She hated herself for wondering. She had to know. “Has she been online?”

Jordan nodded. “She posted a video of Tegan today.”

“Can I see it?”

Jordan opened Instagram and handed her phone to Silvia. It was a seven-second clip of their large striped cat weaving his way between plants on the floor of their living room. Light flowed in from the right through the sliding glass door to their porch. There was a large fiddle-leaf fig, a snake plant on a wooden stand, and a light green fern they referred to as their “love fern,” though it had been gifted to Trace by a boss many years before. Grace returned to the bar, her arm around the back of Jordan’s chair as she finished her drink.

“Shall we go?” Silvia handed Jordan’s phone back to her and threw three twenties on the bar. She grabbed her coat and moved to the door without looking back to confirm she was being followed.



The next bar’s ceiling was clustered with decorations that made everything feel claustrophobic. Bodies pressed in around them as voices rose for drink orders. They stood against the bar. Silvia saw Jordan run a hand through her hair, a nervous tic she resorted to when uncomfortable in public spaces. At times, it brought her hair back down to surround her face in a soft wave, but usually, like now, it flattened her hair against her widow’s peak in an awkward kink.

“I’m going to go to the bathroom,” Jordan said, turning from the bar, still wearing her coat.

“Let me hold this for you,” Grace said, tugging on the collar. Jordan slipped out of the coat, leaving it to hang on Grace’s arm.

“Do you guys come here often?” Silvia asked as the bartender made them whiskey sours.

“Me and Jordan?” Grace asked. “No, I’ve actually never been here with her before. But with some of my softball friends, yeah, occasionally.”

“Does she go out much here? Does she”—Silvia paused, trying to find the words—“have people here?”

Grace’s smile was tender. “Some people. But perhaps not quite like you and Trace.” Trace’s name in the mouth of this gorgeous, sweet girl was almost too much. Silvia didn’t know what Grace had been told about her reasons for coming to the city without notice. She turned to the bar, grabbed one of the glasses that had been placed in front of them, and downed half of it in one go. When she turned back to Grace, Jordan was coming back from the bathroom. Silvia watched Grace motion towards a chair she’d saved for Jordan. When Grace handed Jordan her drink, a small square napkin was wrapped around the base to capture the condensation.

Silvia let herself fall into conversation with any dyke that stood near her. She wanted to know how long they’d been in New York, where they were from, how they felt about the subway, what their favorite restaurant was. For twenty minutes she spoke to a person wearing white Doc Martens and overalls, a chain dropping between their front and back pockets, about the legacy of the term lesbian and if the new queer community had been able to reclaim it like they had the word dyke. The person had a baby face and could either have been twenty-seven or forty-two. Silvia imagined closing her hands around their cheeks, pressing her lips against theirs. A part of her ached to taste someone who wasn’t Trace.

An hour later, after talking to a blond girl with a low pony and a backwards snapback who asked Silvia what her major was, Silvia was ready to go.

“Okay, take me to the adult lesbian bars please,” Silvia said. She took out her phone, typed into Google. “It looks like there’s one ten minutes away.”

“One more stop,” Jordan said.

“Okay, Grandma.” Silvia began walking towards the door and felt Jordan’s hand on the small of her back as they made their way through the crowd. Silvia grasped it, pulling Jordan behind her, relief at the feeling of Jordan’s skin pressed against hers.

The vibe at the next bar was no better, though Silvia had to admit the dykes looked slightly less prepubescent. Jordan and Grace camped out in a corner near the bar, but Silvia wandered into the middle of the dance floor, returning only to pluck a full drink from Jordan’s outstretched hand when hers was empty. The queers pressed around her. At first Silvia shook her head at requests to dance, but as her drinks disappeared, she began allowing arms to wrap around her waist. A girl with a high bun and a big shirt—probably still too young for her—pressed the jut of her hip bone into Silvia’s pelvis. Silvia let her arm slink around the girl’s neck. She blew a kiss at Jordan, who had glanced in her direction. Five minutes later the girl’s lips were inches from Silvia’s. Jordan was kissing Grace. Silvia felt a pang of something—envy? mourning?—and she tilted her head, allowed the girl’s mouth to brush against hers. As they touched, Silvia felt hungry, ravaged. She opened her mouth. Their bodies stopped moving and Silvia kissed as if it were her first love, her last love, as if she were dying. She kissed as if she lived in a version of the world with no consequences, no repercussions, no broken hearts.

10

Silvia

September

Nine Years to Saturn Return

The first time Silvia went to one of the fraternity parties, it was early fall of her junior year. She took the bus two towns over to a neighborhood in the shadow of a state school. Back at McCallen, students were getting drunk in off-campus apartments or dorm rooms, small clusters of those over twenty-one gathering at the one bar in town. Silvia walked down a street of perfectly manicured lawns. The houses rose up, leering, on either side of her. She turned right, left, right again, following the pulse of the music. When she saw the right letter combination, she walked up the path. Silvia had been invited to a Facebook event. She thought, Exactly what I need. The boy at the door didn’t stop her, but he did trail his eyes up and down her body before she pushed the door open. Silvia wanted him to look, she relished it.

Inside, Silvia filled a plastic cup with beer and descended the steps into the basement. The air was thick, cloudy, filled with boys wearing shirts three sizes too big and girls with bras two sizes too small. Perhaps they thought they were being ironic. Silvia sunk into the effortlessness of it all. She waited for someone to approach her, to ask if she needed a refill. It didn’t take long, seventeen minutes or so. She’d worn a pleated skirt, full of irony herself, a shirt cut low, her hair pulled back. Her wrists were free of the jewelry that usually declared her arrival. She was a clean slate for them to imprint upon.

The guy that night was younger, perhaps only a pledge. Eager to please. He had on a worn flannel, a hole near the bottom hem, and for a moment while she watched him approach, Silvia thought of her first girlfriend. She still had the flannel her ex used to wear, buried deep within her closet somewhere. The theme of the frat party was cowboys and robbers. The man tipped his cheap cowboy hat at her. He smiled, ducked his head close to her ear when he asked if she needed another drink. She could hardly hear him, but Silvia nodded her head, held out her cup.

Two watery beers later Silvia followed him to the bathroom. He locked the door and kissed her neck. She focused on the wall behind his shoulder, tipped her head back when he attempted to kiss her mouth. She sank to her knees, allowing the tiles to brand her skin. When he finished, he reached towards her skirt, but she pushed his hands away.

“Not tonight,” she said, and twisted the lock on the handle, leaving the bathroom without even checking her lipstick.

She knew she’d be back. She would not tell anyone about these visits. She would never reveal this skinning of herself.

It had been many years since Silvia had last slept with a man. She wasn’t a gold star. She was hardly even a lesbian, though once she had lied, told a dyke on a first date that she’d never even seen a dick and watched as admiration lit up the girl’s eyes: how rare to find a femme who hadn’t been taken in by compulsory heterosexuality. After that, she always said she was a gold star, and she felt the girls’ desire to have her increase. They wanted to obtain Silvia, a special gem, a rare mineral. The whisper, perhaps even shout, of misogyny was everywhere.



One month before she’d gone to the party, Silvia had received a text from her mom—Can you call me. She put it off for a week, wondering what her mom wanted to berate her for this time, forcing her mom to text again—Do you have time this weekend to talk? The tone was off. Somehow warmer—the full sentence, the addition of punctuation. It was out of character. Silvia called immediately, wanting to get it out of the way, standing outside Bob & Betty’s with ten minutes before her shift started. She would make it quick.

It was not quick. Her mom was sick. Her mom was sick, and there were few, if any, options. Her mom said “stage four” and Silvia hoped that maybe there were higher numbers she wasn’t aware of yet, that they weren’t telling her it was as bad as it was going to get. But she’d watched enough Grey’s Anatomy to understand.

Standing outside the diner, Silvia told her mom she had to go. She had to get to work. Tam was behind the counter when Silvia finally went inside.

“You good?” she asked, having seen Silvia on the phone.

Silvia plastered a smile across her face. “Totally.”

Silvia had told her mom she’d call back later, but it took her eight days to get around to it.



For a time, Silvia felt like she lived in a plastic bubble. There was a film between her and everyone else. She existed only with the echoes of her own thoughts, the helplessness like a vacuum. The second time she went to one of the parties, let a man wrap his fingers around her throat, she felt the bubble pop. She felt herself enter the world again.

Her mom told her that she wasn’t going to pursue further treatment. She told Silvia there was no further treatment. Silvia had learned from her mom not to take no as an answer. So she did her own research. She began calling cancer centers, doctors in hospitals across the country. She learned the names of the oncological staff in the top medical centers—Memorial Sloan Kettering, the Mayo Clinic, the Anderson Cancer Center at the University of Texas. Silvia hovered in the space between the dial tone and a human voice. She clamped her phone between her ear and shoulder, hold music floating through the air. She pressed one, she pressed five, she pressed two, she pressed zero, zero, zero. The longest wait was two hours and forty-seven minutes. She spent hours on the phone, but only managed to text her mom once or twice per week. Silvia didn’t ask how her mom was doing; she only gave updates on her research. She knew money was not an issue. If her mom needed to charter a private jet to New York, it could be done.

Silvia began taking over night shifts at Bob & Betty’s because it was slower, easier for her to multitask in the smallest hours of the morning.

The first time Silvia missed turning in an essay, it was a genuine mistake. She found out about a drug trial somewhere in Arizona, began compiling her mom’s medical paperwork to apply, and had worked right through the one a.m. deadline her professor had given. The next time, it was because she felt paralyzed. Silvia sat in front of her computer until three in the morning, when she fell asleep, forehead on her keyboard. She woke up to a blank document, fifteen pages long. She sat holding the delete key for four minutes to remove all the spaces she’d left in her sleep.



Silvia’s mom was supposed to be invincible. Immortal. She’d never imagined her mom dying. She thought her mom would always be there, hanging on in the periphery, one judgmental phone call away. Her mom had already survived so many things that could have killed her: abusive boyfriends, a drug addiction in her teens (her own rich-girl rebellion), Silvia’s birth, which she brought up every time Silvia was an asshole to her: “If one thing had gone wrong, you’d be in this world all alone.” She still smoked cigarettes, and if anything was going to get her it should have been that—emphysema, lung cancer. But it wasn’t that, it was her breasts. The same tits she’d bestowed upon Silvia. Silvia began to touch hers tentatively, wondering if they would also betray her. It was a rare form of cancer, not manifesting as lumps the way they’d all been taught. That was why they’d found it so late. But all Silvia could think was Rare means unique, rare means you’re supposed to be special.



Silvia didn’t go home for Christmas that December. She told her mom and her mom’s boyfriend, Rick, that she had to work, the shifts needed to be filled, which they all knew was bullshit. Silvia had finally found a trial her mom was eligible for. But her mom had refused to try. The day Silvia’s mom had called to inform her she was not partaking in the trial, Silvia went to the party early. She didn’t leave until after midnight, long past the point the alcohol stopped her brain from accepting new memories.

Refusing to return home for the holidays was a punishment. But also, she was scared. Silvia imagined an emaciated version of her mother. The woman had never cooked dinner while Silvia was growing up but on occasion made the best waffles Silvia had ever had. It was always after her mom got laid. She’d come home late, turn on all the lights in the house while humming an Elton John song, shouting for Silvia to come join her when the food was ready. It was a breakfast feast at midnight: bacon, a fruit bowl, orange juice, little pools of syrup and butter in the waffle squares. The waffles were both crispy and soft. It was the extra butter, her mom always said with a wink—sixteen tablespoons per batch and not a drop less.

11

Jordan

January

Eight Years to Saturn Return

Jordan and Trace sat in a living room in a house off campus. There was a circle of them on the floor. A jar filled with lemons and limes and ice and sugar and vodka was being passed around. Each person shook the jar before opening it and taking a mouthful. You weren’t supposed to stop until the jar was empty. It was one of Jordan’s favorite McCallen traditions. She hated beer.

Before you drank, each person was supposed to say the name of a city that started with the same letter as the previous city had ended with. If you didn’t name one within five seconds, you drank twice.

“Madrid.”

“Detroit.”

“Tampa.”

“Albuquerque.”

The jar paused on Trace. She was normally good at this.

“Trace,” Jordan said.

“Sorry, I don’t know,” Trace said after several seconds. She drank twice and passed the jar to Jordan.

“El Paso,” Jordan said.

Trace was distracted. She had a thesis she was procrastinating on and had just gotten her period. She’d texted Jordan that afternoon that she wanted to rip her uterus out of her body. She was self-medicating that night with liquor and Bud Light. That afternoon, Jordan had been in the midst of convincing Trace to stay in when Blake told Trace that Silvia might be stopping by the party. Blake was good, Jordan had to admit. It was the one thing that got Trace to a party, without fail.

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Trace and Silvia had dated over the summer. Trace was immediately head over heels. Silvia seemed entertained by Trace, but had spoken very little to Jordan about it. While Jordan was gone, they had mostly texted about their coworkers, diner drama that kept Jordan tethered to Fulton Springs throughout the summer. By the time Jordan returned in late August, things already seemed to be fizzling between the two of them. In September it ended completely. She had missed their entire relationship.

Jordan hadn’t foreseen how deeply the breakup would shatter Trace and how long the pining would endure. She stopped going to class for a week. Jordan brought her food from the dining hall but she wouldn’t eat. On the sixth day of Trace’s wallowing, Jordan had stood in her room and said, “Get up. We’re taking a shower.” She stood outside the stall while Trace washed her hair, and wouldn’t leave Trace’s room until she’d agreed to go to the dining hall and eat a bowl of cereal. It had been jarring for Jordan, their role swap, and she was grateful when Trace woke up the next day and appeared to have snapped out of it.

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Blake was sitting across from them. There was only a splash left in the jar. Jordan finished off the concoction when it reached her again, and a cheer went up from the group. They were now released from the circle. Blake crawled across the floor to them.

“Should we go play games downstairs?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Trace said.

“She’s in a mood,” Jordan said.

“I am not,” Trace said.

“Then come play a game, Jailbird,” Blake said, standing up and reaching a hand down to pull Trace up with her.

The basement was littered with red Solo cups. It smelled like spilled beer and teenage sweat. A game of beer pong was happening in one corner. In another, a small group of students shuffled back and forth on a makeshift dance floor to an Arctic Monkeys song. Blake led them over to an empty table.

“We’re playing flip cup,” she said. Blake recruited five other people hovering around the beer pong table. They each poured two fingers of beer into their cups.

“Okay, match up!” Blake yelled, her voice clear despite the noise from the speakers and shouts from the other table. Blake was on the speech and debate team. She knew how to project. Jordan held her cup up to the girl who stood across from her. She was wearing a black miniskirt stretched tight over ripped tights and had two purple streaks running through her dark brown hair. It looked like her face was trapped between purple parentheses. Blake started them off, tossing her drink back and then resting her cup on the edge of the table to flick the bottom with two fingers.

Jordan lifted her cup from the table the second Trace’s landed in a pool of beer upside down. It took her three tries to flip the cup over, and when she did Trace slapped her on the back like a proud dad. Trace was almost smiling now. Blake grabbed Jordan’s face and kissed her on the cheek when their team won the first round. Sometimes games could be fun. She watched Trace’s eyes slide to the stairs whenever someone started to descend. Every few minutes the basement erupted in shouts, drunk college students ecstatic with their skills. Jordan allowed herself a thought: Perhaps this is what they mean by community.

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Sometimes it felt like all Jordan did was follow Trace around the McCallen campus, riding in her wake. When college had been new and Trace had texted her a random address, Jordan would feel a buzz of excitement knowing she wasn’t supposed to be hanging out with an RA, let alone drinking with one off campus. She’d show up at the house and Blake would poke her in the side and say, “If anyone asks, you’re my cousin,” and Jordan would nod yes. Blake could call her whatever she wanted. As Trace pulled Jordan further into her friend group, the three of them would stand off to the side at parties; inside jokes took shape as they invented stories about their drunk classmates. Sometimes it was just the two of them—Jordan and Trace—and Jordan felt pressure, like a gravitational pull, to be funny, to create the wittiest possible narrative for the sloppy couple intertwined on the couch. Jordan felt nervous around Trace for months, always aching to impress her, drawn towards Trace’s assurance, even at a school where she didn’t quite fit in.

But as time wore on, the shimmer around Trace had faded into a duller glow. Confronting Trace’s fallacies had been like learning Santa Claus wasn’t real—a shock, and, also, somewhat of a relief. Trace appeared calm when stressed, but the pressure would show up in other ways, early texts to Jordan when she couldn’t sleep, overdrinking right before exams. When Trace liked a girl, she became fixated on her, to the detriment of everything and everyone around her, aside from her schoolwork, which she took as seriously as Jordan assumed adults took their actual careers—showing up to office hours, never skipping a lecture, submitting assignments days early. Watching Trace make her way through the queer and questioning women at McCallen felt like a deterrent to Jordan. If this was love, or an attempt to find love, who needed it?

Jordan preferred the nights they stayed in, hanging out in Blake’s or Trace’s room, or sitting in the common room in one of their dorms, watching Survivor and shouting at the TV. But sometimes there were moments at these larger parties where Jordan felt the spark of their early friendship return. When Trace won a game of beer pong and immediately looked for her in the crowd, or when Blake grabbed Jordan by the waist and pulled her across the room to dance. Trace liked to take breaks outside during parties, where she stood on the porch and pretended to smoke cigarettes. If there wasn’t a girl, she always made sure to find Jordan, so they could spend five minutes gossiping, just the two of them. Jordan figured that going to parties was better than sitting in her dorm alone. It was better than going to the dining hall the next morning only to overhear what went on the night before, no stories of her own to share.

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Jordan was pouring more beer into her cup from an open can on the table when Trace elbowed her.

“Hey, look who it is.”

Jordan looked up, expecting red lips and a cloud of curls, but instead saw Elliot, a junior who’d been in one of Jordan’s photography classes the year before, standing at the bottom of the stairs near the beer pong table. She would have preferred Silvia.

“You should go talk to him,” Trace said, staring intently at Jordan. Jordan did not want to talk to Elliot. Trace was always asking Jordan about boys. Which boys did she find cute? What was her type? Who did she have a crush on? Trace was desperate to wingwoman Jordan, eager to stroll up to a man and drop some lines about sports, look across a crowd to pluck out girls. There was an energy that shifted in Trace when she talked to men she didn’t know. Her voice turned gruff, her movements a bit stiffer, chin held high, like she wanted to fist-bump her masculinity with theirs. Jordan didn’t know what her type was. She wasn’t even sure she had crushes. It felt easier to let her friends assume whatever they wanted about her sexuality than it was to tell them the truth: She didn’t know at all and it scared her.

Generally, she had no idea how to communicate with a boy. She hated the way boys spoke—so loud—and hated the way they took up space unnecessarily. But when Jordan did talk about boys, she had Trace’s and Silvia’s and Blake’s full focus. She felt like a wizard. She didn’t necessarily want to be the center of attention, but she wanted their eyes on her, she wanted Blake’s hand, squeezing her arm as she compared one boy’s hair to Leonardo DiCaprio’s in Titanic—always in his eyes, constantly needing a flick of his head to remove it. Elliot was cute enough. So she’d told them all she had a crush on him.

Blake heard Trace’s comment and came up behind Jordan, wrapping an arm around her waist. “Yes, definitely go talk to him. Do you want help? We can come.”

Yes.

“No, it’s fine, I should go alone.”

Jordan left the flip cup table, Blake and Trace beaming like proud parents sending their child to kindergarten for the first time. Elliot was intently observing the beer pong game at play.

“Hey,” she said, stopping next to him.

“Hey! What’s up, Jordan?” He did have a good smile.

“Nothing much. You just get here?”

“Yeah, I came with Todd. Do you know Todd?”

At the end of last year Todd had gotten drunk at a party, taken all his clothes off, and tried to jump off the roof. It took his girlfriend thirty minutes to convince him to come down, and then three people to tackle him when he began running through the house afterwards. Jordan hated boys like Todd.

“I am familiar with Todd,” she said.

“Cool. You want to play?” Elliot nodded at the table in front of them. “I’m up next and I need a partner.”

“Sure,” she said, forcing her lips into a smile. “I think I need more beer, though.”

“I got you. I’ll be right back.” Jordan realized it was possible Elliot might actually like her. This could be problematic. He returned and handed her a sweating tall boy as the Ping-Pong ball was sunk into the last cup on the table. He smiled at her. “We’re up.”

As they began lining the cups into a pyramid, Jordan turned to Elliot. “I feel like I have to warn you that I’m really terrible at this game. If you want to pick someone else to play, I totally understand.”

Elliot put his hand on the small of her back and said, “That’s okay, I’m excellent at it.” Jordan had to resist the urge to step out of his reach. She drank more of her beer.

Jordan had to admit that Elliot was as excellent at beer pong as he’d claimed. And she was just as terrible as promised. She made one cup, early on, when the pyramid was still mostly intact, and let Elliot throw his arms around her and lift her off the ground. This was what boys and girls did. She’d seen it in TV shows: Dawson’s Creek, One Tree Hill. Jordan drank more and more beer, gleefully downing Solo cups when the small ball landed soundlessly in the pools of amber liquid.

Across the room Trace was still playing flip cup, but Jordan saw how every few minutes her gaze flickered over to the stairs, scanning the bodies emerging from the kitchen. In many ways, Jordan understood why Silvia had ended things. Trace wore her heart pinned to her sleeve. She desperately wanted to love and be loved. Jordan had seen Trace get emotional about a girl after texting with her for two days. Jordan imagined being on the opposite side of such attention could be overwhelming, just as liable to push some away as it was to pull others in. Blake caught Jordan’s eye from across the room, gave her two thumbs up, and Jordan moved her gaze back down to her own table, becoming exceedingly aware of the skin on her face as she felt her cheeks warm.

As the beer made its way through her body, Jordan found herself touching Elliot more—letting her hand rest on his arm, initiating hugs when he scored. At one point she reached up to move his hair out of his eyes, and he looked down and smiled at her, leaned forward, and kissed her on the cheek. Elliot won the game for them, but instead of playing again, he pushed her up against the damp wall. Yeah, okay, let’s make out a little, Jordan thought. Her hands were on his face, and she was pulling him down towards her, but in her head she was already crafting a narrative for Trace and Blake, stacking up a list of details to share with them over breakfast the next morning. Jordan had kissed boys before, but not much. Her mind never stopped working, always wondering if she was enjoying it enough, if there was something she was doing wrong. It never felt as exciting as everyone else seemed to think it was.

Elliot was a fine kisser. She was drunk, so it was unlikely she was doing anything incredible with her own lips and tongue. Elliot moved down to her throat and Jordan felt something pulse between her legs. She thought, maybe I do actually like him, maybe this is what it feels like.

It had always been so hard for her to tell. At sleepovers in middle school all of Jordan’s friends spent hours talking about boys, yearbooks spread out on the floor between them. Jordan just wanted to watch Lord of the Rings. She was fourteen the first time she wondered if something was wrong with her. A girl on her soccer team played a video on her mom’s laptop, two naked bodies heaving against each other under bright white lighting. The sound was one of equal parts distress and pleasure. Jordan didn’t turn her face away from the screen, but she did pinch her eyes shut and hoped everyone else was too enraptured to notice. Jordan never felt a pull towards anyone, of any gender. She couldn’t relate to the flurry of wings you were supposed to feel in your stomach when you caught a glimpse of someone you were attracted to. It was all over literature—in the books she read for school, in the YA novels she sometimes picked up about girls summering in small beach towns. She was fascinated by it, but romance was never something that seemed relevant to her.

Jordan looked over Elliot’s shoulder and saw Trace throw up into a trash can. Blake, who was rubbing Trace’s back, looked at Jordan and grimaced. Jordan put her hands on Elliot’s chest and pushed him off her.

“This was fun, but um, my friend is sick, so I kind of gotta go.” She ducked around him before he had a chance to respond.

Trace’s dorm was a fifteen-minute walk from the party. Or at least, it should have been. She had three inches and twenty pounds on Jordan. Her arm was looped around Jordan’s neck as Jordan led her down the street, cutting between snowdrifts. Blake hadn’t wanted to leave the party. She’d said something about a girl, and Jordan had felt a pang in her chest that confused her. She’d told Blake it would be fine, but as her shoulder began to burn, it felt less and less fine. Trace tripped over a crack in the sidewalk and Jordan tightened her arm around Trace’s waist.

“I’m sorry, Jor,” Trace kept repeating.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Jordan said. “It’s fine.” They crossed Pineapple Lane. Halfway there. What kind of ridiculous place had streets named after fruit that didn’t even grow anywhere near that part of the country?

“I’m sorry,” Trace said. She slowed down even more. “I just thought . . .”

“What’s up?” Jordan was eager to get Trace to bed.

Trace stopped walking. “I need to sit down.” She removed her arm from Jordan’s neck and nearly fell onto the edge of the curb.

“Okay, fine,” Jordan said, sitting next to her. “We’ll take a break.” Snow seeped through her jeans.

Trace leaned her head against Jordan’s shoulder. “I thought she was going to come,” she said.

“I know,” Jordan said.

“I really wanted her to come.”

“I know.” Jordan grabbed Trace’s hand, squeezing it, their fingers cold. I know, I know, I know, she thought. Jordan wished there was a way to lessen Trace’s hurt, to absorb it into her own body, shield her from the pain.

12

Silvia

February

Eight Years to Saturn Return

The final call came on a Wednesday night. It was after nine, dark outside for hours already, as deep into February as one could get. Silvia was in the library, rewriting the opening paragraph to an essay criticizing the use of postmodernism in Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. She had been there two hours and still couldn’t get the language right, she hadn’t even pushed past one hundred words. Her phone lit up and she saw the word rick, all lowercase, no last name. She’d decided he didn’t deserve the respect of a capital letter. Silvia had only entered his contact information into her phone to properly screen his calls.

Rick hadn’t called her in a few months. He’d taken the hint. He sent her texts, periodically, as her mom’s health began to decline at a rapid rate. Texts she hadn’t asked for. Texts she rarely responded to. Dr appt tomorrow. Will tell u how it goes. She is feeling bad today. No food but a pot brownie helped. I will make more this weekend for her. Did u get the forms i sent? Need those back for the insurance. She’s been too tired to tell me about family history for the new doctor. Silvia had no idea about her family history. Her grandparents were both dead by the time she was five, one right after the other, or so she was told. Silvia’s mom avoided speaking about her own childhood. She made pointed comments throughout Silvia’s teenage years, indicating how lucky Silvia was to not be raised by her grandparents, to be given so much freedom. Freedom, Silvia wondered, or neglect? Her mom believed in building one’s life from the ground up—though perhaps that was because her shot at inherited wealth had been gambled away on potential love. Silvia didn’t have a trust fund, which was fine with her. She’d never wanted one. She just wanted to get out.

At a certain point, a week or so after Thanksgiving, Silvia had realized she did feel some begrudging appreciation for Rick. He was there to clean up her mother’s vomit, take her to the bathroom until they hired a nurse to change her sheets and bedpans. He wrapped scarves around her thinning hair, or so she assumed from the unsolicited pictures he sent Silvia. He had a tenderness to him that Silvia had not expected. It was a tenderness she was incapable of giving her mother herself.

Silvia stared at the screen of her phone as it rang, without taking her fingers off the keys of her laptop. Her body felt too warm. She wanted to shed the turtleneck she was wearing, the material tight around her neck, choking her. Silvia answered the phone with a quiet “Hello?”, glancing at the tables around her, scattered with fellow students, stacks of books, college-ruled notebooks.

The conversation was quick, a minute, maybe two. Once it was over Silvia almost wondered if it had happened at all, but then she received a text from Rick. rick. Rick was buying her a flight home to clean up her mother’s things. Home was not the right word. That place had never been Silvia’s home. Her mom had moved to the house in Roseville three years before. A long stay for her. The closest city was Sacramento, which depressed Silvia enough that she only returned when she had to. The house was too big for her mom, even once Rick moved in the year before. It was typical of her; she liked a cavernous space she could knock around in like a pinball. A room for every activity—reading, working, exercising, watching TV, yelling at her unruly daughter. Silvia didn’t care about her mother’s possessions. It wouldn’t take long to go through them.

Silvia placed her phone face down on the table. She stayed at the library for three more hours but didn’t type another word. The next day she called in sick to Bob & Betty’s, saying she had the flu, and got on a plane to California.

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Rick cried when he picked her up from the airport. Silvia felt mortified for him. She looked out the window to give him privacy as they merged onto the highway. She felt even more mortified to learn, sitting next to him in the lawyer’s office, that her mother had left him nothing. He had just been a distraction, entertainment for her mother’s final years. As it turned out, there wasn’t much to leave. Her mom had been deeply in debt, overspending extravagantly, living far beyond her means or needs, something that should have shocked Silvia more than it did. There was just enough to finish paying off Silvia’s tuition at McCallen.

Five days was all Silvia needed to wrap up her mother’s life. She spent one hour sitting on the floor of her mother’s closet, staring up at racks of clothes that were two sizes too small for her, before calling a company to pack it all up. Silvia told them to donate everything.

She and Rick mostly avoided each other during the days she was there. He crept out of rooms when she entered. Silvia told him to take whatever he wanted from the house.

She filled a small box with remnants of her childhood—a stack of pictures, a finger painting yellowed from the sun, children’s books, the first notebooks she’d started writing in. Before she closed the box, Silvia added a mirrored plate her mother used to scatter her rings across. Occasionally Silvia had found it dusted in white powder after her mom returned from an especially long business trip. She set aside three paintings in a storage unit for whenever she had a more permanent place to live. If she ever had a permanent place to live.

Silvia left California as soon as she could. No one at McCallen even knew she’d left. She missed three classes, giving the professors the same excuse as the diner—I’m not feeling well, I think it’s probably the flu. It felt partially true.

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Silvia went to the party again three days after she returned from California. She read The Bell Jar on the bus, found a stool in the basement, and let her feet dangle until she was chosen. The boys were simple. The boys never asked about her family. The boys made Silvia feel in control.

Her mom used to say, “All men do is take—take, take, take. You get to decide what you’ll give them.” Silvia was deciding. She was giving them nothing. Her pussy didn’t matter. Her mouth was beside the point. They thought they were using her when really it was the other way around. They were toys to Silvia. There was something about no one knowing her name. Something about sliding into a second skin, imagining a different life. A life that perhaps could still be; she was on the precipice of twenty-one, so much potential in the air. Perhaps if Silvia had stopped playing, she might have considered the fact that she still hadn’t cried, might have wondered what that meant.

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A week later Silvia returned to her apartment from the party and slid between her sheets, exhausted, feeling like she could sleep for a lifetime, a century, a millennium, and it still would not be enough. She let boys fuck her in the bathroom and her mom was still dead. She fucked boys in rooms full of occupied twin beds and her mom was still dead. Boys pressed their fingers between her legs, wiggled them inside her as she sipped vodka on the rocks, sunk deep into a warm, soggy couch, and her mom was still dead. She was still all alone.

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Sunday night was the only time Bob & Betty’s wasn’t open twenty-four hours. They closed at ten p.m. and reopened at five a.m. It was “for god or something,” Silvia had been informed by Tam when she’d first started. The Sunday evening closing shift was Silvia’s favorite to work, even though the tips were abysmal. The lack of urgency was soothing. Neither Bob nor Betty ever came by on Sunday nights, and the lifers made sure they were never on the schedule. Money was their number one priority. Normally it was just Silvia and some other McCallen student. Two weeks after her mom died, it was Jordan.

Silvia didn’t work with Jordan much anymore. Their schedules used to mirror each other’s, to the point where one could anticipate the other’s movements. Silvia would press her hips into the counter before Jordan could say “Behind”; Jordan would hand Silvia the jug of chocolate milk as soon as Silvia had unstacked a small plastic cup onto her tray. The fall had ruptured that routine. Silvia had a night class, then began requesting the overnight shifts. Now she only saw Jordan at work once or twice a month.

Silvia hadn’t seen anyone outside of work or class since before Christmas. At one point she might have called Jordan her closest friend at McCallen. But they had drifted. At the end of the summer, Silvia had stopped responding to Trace’s text messages with no explanation. Silvia had avoided Jordan too, assuming she’d ask questions Silvia didn’t want to answer.

Silvia liked Jordan, at times she felt almost intimidated by how unimpressed Jordan was with life. In the face of uncertainty with someone, Silvia dialed up her personality, she stretched it to fill the room. If everyone was looking at her, then they wouldn’t compare her to anyone else.

The night was slow, midterms were around the corner and the library was a hot spot. Jordan spent most of the night ducked over a book herself, wrapping a strand of hair around her pointer finger again and again. By 10:17 p.m., when Jordan flipped the Closed sign over and turned the deadbolt on the door, Silvia was settled into table fifteen, directly to the left of the counter, stacking forks and knives into rolls of silverware. Jordan sat down across from her, ripping open a packet of napkins and grabbing a pile of sticky paper slips to secure the silverware.

“I thought that table was never going to leave,” she said. “Who goes on a date on a Sunday night? To a diner?”

Silvia looked up at her. “People who love diners?”

“Who are those people?”

“Pretty sure we’re those people.” Silvia threw a roll onto the growing mound in the center of the table.

“Naw, dude, I lost my love for diners about three children throwing pancakes at me ago.”

Jordan was rarely disgruntled; Silvia found her irritation amusing.

“What’s got your panties in a twist?” Silvia asked.

“Oh, nothing.” Jordan’s head was down, frantically rolling paper napkins around forks and knives. “Just midterms and shit. I was hoping to get out of here early.”

“You going to the library after this?”

“Probably. You?”

Silvia shook her head. “Not tonight, but I’m sure I’ll be living there later this week.”

“How are you feeling?”

Silvia’s hands stilled, she glanced up at Jordan, whose head was bent, intently focused on finishing the last of their side work. “What do you mean?”

“You were sick, right? Tam told me you missed a few shifts.”

“Oh,” Silvia sighed. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just the flu or something.”

“That’s good. It’s definitely going around.”

Jordan kept talking as she continued with the silverware, telling Silvia about a party she’d gone to the weekend before, walking into a bedroom she thought was a bathroom and seeing a girl from her 3D design class kneeling in front of a boy Jordan had drunkenly made out with the year before. The perils, Jordan pointed out, of a small school. Jordan wondered why they hadn’t locked the door, or just left the party, and as her observations continued, Silvia was warmed by her continued naivete, that Jordan could still not understand the point of a mid-party blow job.

Slowly, Silvia realized: It was the first time Jordan had spoken to her about sex. The words seemed awkward in her mouth. Silvia wondered if by sharing about someone else’s transgressions, it allowed for Jordan to more seamlessly share her own. Or her own desires for transgressions. Had she become someone Jordan wanted to confide in?

Silvia remembered, then, that she had informed no one outside of her mom’s legal team about the death. Did her mom have friends she should notify? Colleagues? Silvia didn’t know anyone important in her mom’s life outside of Rick. Did her mom have anyone else? Did Silvia? Silvia wasn’t sure Jordan even knew that she was an only child.

“Sil, are you okay?” Jordan was looking at her with concern.

“I’m fine, why?”

“You’re crying.” Jordan’s hand was outstretched with a napkin for Silvia. Silvia ran a palm across her cheek. It came away wet. Something loosened inside her, a shifting of the planes in her chest, and the feeling dropped down into her diaphragm, piercing deep within her body. Silvia put a hand on her forehead and squeezed her eyes shut as she began to sob, whimpers emitting from her throat. She heard the squeal of the chair legs as Jordan stood up. She sat on the chair next to Silvia, quiet. Jordan held Silvia’s other hand as she continued to cry, periodically handing her more napkins.

It might have been minutes or an hour later, but eventually, Silvia sat back in her chair. Jordan was looking at her, saying nothing, but expectant. She avoided Jordan’s gaze.

“My mom died.”

Silvia felt a shift in Jordan’s body, hardly perceptible. But Jordan stayed quiet.

“Two weeks ago,” Silvia went on. “My mom died, so I went home to take care of things. I wasn’t sick.” Silvia wiped a napkin across her nose. It was already raw.

“Silvia, I’m so sorry,” Jordan said. “What happened?”

“She was sick. Stage fifteen breast cancer or some shit.”

“How long had she been sick?”

“A few months. I found out last fall.”

Jordan nodded.

“I didn’t cry at all when I found out. Isn’t that fucked up? What kind of psychopath doesn’t cry when someone tells them their mother is dead?”

“Well,” Jordan said, “admittedly you’ve somewhat made up for it now.” She gestured to the table, now littered with damp, crumpled napkins.

Silvia smiled. “Fair.”

“I didn’t cry when my sister died,” Jordan said.

“When did your sister die?” Silvia asked, fearful for a moment that she’d been so self-involved she’d missed this event in Jordan’s life.

“A while ago, when I was fourteen. She was a junior in high school.”

“What happened?”

“Car crash. She was coming back from a game she’d been cheering at. Someone wasn’t paying attention, too many people in the car.”

“Wow. Scary.”

“I think it took a year,” Jordan said. “For me to finally cry.” She started ripping one of the napkins on the table into strips. “I think I felt like I needed to be strong for my parents. My mom especially. She was so broken.” Jordan paused. “I didn’t want to be a burden, but I was also so angry. Sometimes I wanted to just be allowed to be fifteen. To scream and slam my door.”

“I feel relieved in so many ways,” Silvia admitted. Her throat was thick again. “She was so hard to be around. So hard to figure out how to care about.”

Silvia remembered her mother’s fingers slipping through Silvia’s waistband and snapping the fabric, asking if she’d gotten a big enough size, commenting how the fit looked “too tight.” By tight she meant hoochie, low class, embarrassing.

“I held so much space for being angry at her in my mind. In my body.” Silvia rolled a piece of napkin into a tiny ball and pinched it between her fingers. “She was my only family. And now she’s gone.”

“Family is overrated,” Jordan said.

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The next weekend, Silvia downloaded Tinder for the first time. She swiped until she matched with a girl, twenty-four, former basketball player, long brown hair worn in a bun right above the slash of an undercut. Her bio was written in emojis—basketball, beers, knotted rope, two women with a heart hovering between them, a tongue, the smirking devil face. They got drinks the next night. The girl, Kerry, kept ordering pints, while Silvia smiled at her over the rim of a martini she’d ordered with a fake ID. Silvia ate the olives slowly, sucking the juice off and chewing them into a pulp between her molars before swallowing. Before they left the bar, Silvia leaned over and said into Kerry’s ear, “I’m going to take you home and let you do whatever you want to me.”

In Silvia’s bedroom Kerry slipped the scarf off Silvia’s head and bound her wrists to the headboard. She left an imprint of her hand across Silvia’s ass, and grabbed the back of Silvia’s legs so hard Silvia knew she’d have a trail of bruises the next day. Sex wasn’t worth it, Silvia thought, unless you could see the aftermath of the desire across your skin.

Silvia came four times. Kerry wouldn’t let Silvia touch her, which left Silvia feeling incomplete. Silvia lay on Kerry’s chest as Kerry fell asleep. She felt cold, Kerry’s hands clammy on her shoulder. Silvia hated sleeping with a stranger. She closed her eyes, hoping to drift off, and saw Trace’s face behind her eyelids.

The summer before, Trace would bring Silvia flowers from the field just outside town before their dates. In bed, she touched Silvia’s body gently, but followed instructions well when Silvia requested more force. She wanted to hold Silvia’s hand while they walked down the street. She always texted Silvia when she woke up: Good morning, sunshine. The sweetness of Trace was candy seeping into her gums. It scared Silvia. It felt something like hope, which could disappear at any moment. If she never let herself have it, it could never be taken away.

13

Jordan

December

Saturn Is Returning

On Saturday evening, Jordan watched as Silvia transformed their living room. She lit the tea lights that had been gathering dust on the coffee table for months, shrouded their lamps in light-colored scarves so that the room glowed with warmth. She wafted a burning sage stick through the air, which she carried with her on trips “just in case,” and beckoned Nicole, Jordan’s roommate, out of her room. Mel, Jordan’s other roommate, had already left New York for the holidays. Silvia directed them to sit on the floor on one side of the coffee table while she dropped down across from them. She pressed her hands together above a deck of cards, her rings colliding with a light click.

“Tonight, ladies”—she paused dramatically—“I am going to do a reading for you.”

Jordan glanced over at Nicole. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know why she’s like this.”

“Shhhh,” Silvia said, lips pursed. A few flecks of saliva landed on Jordan’s cheek.

“No, no. This is so cool,” Nicole said, leaning forward. “I’ve always wanted to do tarot.”

Nicole was a dancer. Though Jordan had lived with her for over a year, they were often ships passing in the apartment. Nicole’s call time was the same as when Jordan began packing up her bag at work to head home. Normally she’d be performing over the holidays, but her mom was having surgery the week after Christmas and Nicole planned to leave in a few days to help with recovery.

“Will this be your first time?” Silvia asked.

“Yes.”

“Oh, excellent. I love to pop a tarot cherry.” Silvia began thumbing through the deck. “We’ll walk through it slowly.” She lined the deck up in a neat stack on the table and looked at Nicole. Silvia placed her palm gently on the stack of cards. “Nicole, we’re going to start with you. I want you to shuffle this deck and then put it back on the table. You can do it any way you’d like—traditional shuffling, mixing the cards around on the table, splitting the deck. Make sure as you shuffle, you consider the question, or topic, you want the cards to address for you today.”

Nicole picked up the cards and tried to shuffle them, but since they were larger and stiffer than traditional playing cards, the deck thicker, she could barely wrap her hands around them. The cards began spilling onto the table and she gave up, moving them around with the palms of her hands, creating a pool of glossy red. She stacked the deck again and gave it back to Silvia.

“Alright,” Silvia said. “Now I want you to pull three cards. Lay them face down on the table. You can pull from the top or split the deck and take one from the middle.”

Nicole split the deck and slowly pulled three cards from the center, laying them out in a neat row.

“Today we’re going to talk about the past, present, and future,” Silvia said. “You can turn them over when you’re ready.”

Nicole paused. Jordan could sense she didn’t know how long was appropriate to wait. Nicole was a rule follower. She never used any of Jordan’s eggs and always did her assigned chores on time. She liked to do things right. But now the guidelines were unclear. Nicole looked up at Silvia for permission, which was granted with a single, slow nod. Nicole flipped the cards over carefully, putting them down in exactly the same places they had been in before.

The first card held a woman dressed in green encircled by a braided strip of red. Three of the four corners held a creature—a hawk, a lion, a horned cat. In the top left was a redheaded woman wearing a crown. On the second card a man hung upside down on a cross, tied to the T by one ankle, the other leg creating a backwards 4. The final card showed a helmeted figure with the face of a skeleton holding a flag imprinted with a black rose. It was marching towards a setting sun. Red pooled from beneath the helmet down the figure’s back—the suggestion of a mane of hair, or something worse.

“Okay,” Silvia started. “We’ll begin at your past. This one is the World. This card normally represents some sort of accomplishment, something you’ve been working on for a long time.”

“Oh yes,” Nicole said excitedly. “The show I was in recently. I’ve always dreamed of working with that choreographer.”

“That’s great,” Silvia said, face transforming like a flower opening its petals. “Congratulations.”

Nicole beamed. It amazed Jordan how easily Silvia could make someone feel special. It had earned her 30, 40, 50 percent tips at the diner, and gotten them many a free dish at restaurants. The one time they’d gone out dancing for Pride, Silvia had floated to the front of the line, and the velvet ropes had disintegrated at her laugh. There was something about her that drew people in. Once upon a time, it had worked on Jordan too.

Silvia pointed at the middle card, the one with the man on the cross. “This card is for the present. The Hanged Man represents a pause, a suspension in time. It can be good to reconvene with yourself, meditate on what you want, even who you are.”

Nicole nodded thoughtfully. “The holidays force us all to do that, right? To slow down a bit, make resolutions for the new year.”

“Very true,” Silvia said. “Though sometimes the Hanged Man indicates there is something you are not satisfied with—like a situation you feel stuck in.”

“Huh, okay.” Nicole’s eyes were already moving to the final card. “That one looks scary. What is it? What does it mean?”

“That’s the Death card.”

“Oh no,” Nicole whispered. Jordan couldn’t remember if she’d told Silvia about Nicole’s mom or not.

“This card does represent a pretty definitive end of something,” Silvia said.

“Of life?” Nicole asked.

“It could be. Or it could be the death of an emotion, a chapter in your life, a thing that you once held in high esteem but no longer do. It’s a time of transformation.”

“But, like, my mom is sick. Do you think that something will happen during her surgery next week?” Nicole looked over at Jordan, searching for assurance. She bit the inside of her cheek and pressed her lips together. She felt bad for how seriously Nicole was taking the reading.

“Were you thinking about the surgery when you shuffled?” Silvia asked, her eyebrows reaching towards her hairline.

“I’m always thinking about it.” Nicole’s voice was almost a whisper.

“Only time will tell,” Silvia said.

“Silvia,” Jordan said. “Tell Nicole that her mom will be okay.”

Silvia leveled her eyes at Jordan, her gaze so intense Jordan nearly looked away. “I don’t read the future, Jordan, I cannot promise anyone anything.”

Jordan looked over at Nicole. “It’s more of a theoretical death than a literal death. I promise. I’ve pulled this card before and no one died.”

“Poppy,” Silvia said.

“What?”

“Didn’t your mom’s cat Poppy die the week after you pulled the Death card?”

Jordan wanted to reach under the table and pinch her. “That had nothing to do with the card.”

“Whatever you say,” Silvia said, shuffling the deck. “Okay, Jor, your turn.”

Nicole scooted over for Jordan to sit directly across the table from Silvia. Jordan shuffled the deck three times, pressing the cards away from her hands, restacking them with a bridge.

“Alright, show off,” Silvia said.

“I played a lot of rummy with my family as a kid,” Jordan said, shrugging. She was not convinced a deck of pretty cards could tell her anything about herself, just as she hardly believed that her being an Aries meant that she was an assertive leader or had a fiery temper. But she always played along for Silvia. Silvia had been reading tarot for Jordan since college.

Silvia waved her hand over the deck. “Okay, pick your three cards, put them face down, and when you’re ready, you can turn them over.”

Jordan did as instructed, immediately flipping the cards over once they were laid out in a row.

“Hmmm,” Silvia said.

“What?” Jordan asked, concerned despite herself.

“This card, the Six of Swords, references going through a transition. Because it’s your first card, this is something you might have overcome in your past, or a tool you now have for your future. You might still find yourself lingering here a bit until you figure out how to let go of whatever is holding you back,” Silvia said, her finger touching the top edge of the card.

“Well, sure, I transitioned to New York. Obviously settling in is still a work in progress.” It was so hokey. You could read anything you wanted out of any card pulled.

Silvia nodded. She moved her finger to the next card.

“This is the Seven of Swords. This card can be a bit nasty.” Silvia caught her bottom lip between her teeth for a moment. “Words like deception and betrayal come to mind. It’s reversed, which can mean you are deceiving yourself in some way or keeping an uncomfortable secret.”

Jordan felt her heart pummel the walls of her chest. She kept her eyes on the card, not meeting Silvia’s gaze. Five seconds passed.

“Sometimes people like to use the phrase imposter syndrome,” Silvia said. “If that holds more meaning to you.”

Jordan nodded in agreement. “Yes, that sounds right.”

That morning Jordan had texted Trace back. She’d told Trace they needed more space, that she would reach out when they were ready to talk. It made the onslaught of texts even worse. Jordan had muted their text thread.

“This last card, your future, is the most important for your reading today. This card is the Tower. It’s a Major Arcana card, which means it is incredibly significant,” Silvia said, looking at Nicole as she said this, to ensure Nicole was absorbing the information. “It communicates an upheaval, perhaps even chaos. This can often be quite a violent card; change can be painful. But here the card is also reversed. That can imply more of a personal transformation, change instigated within yourself instead of from external pressures. What does that mean to you?”

The card depicted a cylindrical building rising up from an abyss. Water splashed at its base. Birds fled through smoke formed from licking flames and strikes of lightning.

“Well, it’s in my future. I can’t really know, right?”

“Yes, that’s true,” Silvia said, though her eyes lingered on Jordan’s slightly too long before she looked back down at the table. “I don’t see someone pulling two reversed cards very often. Lots going on internally, it seems. Very interesting reading for you, Jor.”

Nicole had been hovering on Jordan’s left, leaning so far over to see the cards that Jordan could smell the peanut butter on her breath. “What is arcana? Does it mean something?”

Silvia smiled. “Arcana means secret.” Silvia loved a secret, a juicy bit of gossip. She used to tell Jordan stories about their coworkers during their shifts, leaving Jordan at a cliffhanger right as her food was ready to run—which McCallen student was sleeping with one of the cooks, the new man Tam had met during an overnight shift, the breakup she’d witnessed at table seven the week before. Silvia had brought her deck to Bob & Betty’s, doing readings while it was slow to draw these morsels out of people. It further endeared her to them, and kept Silvia endlessly entertained. Jordan had long understood that tarot was not just spiritual for Silvia, but informational.

“Are there good or bad cards to pull?” Nicole asked.

“Not really. It depends on the person.” Silvia gathered the cards together, moving her hands around the deck to align the edges. “Each card can have such a different interpretation, depending on what’s going on in your life. Though, I will admit to hoping on occasion to pull the Sun in a reading. Not that life ever really goes how we want it to.”

“What does the Sun represent?”

“Well, the Sun is a fairly positive card. It asks you to be fully present in the world and sends the message that things are going to get better, probably significantly better. I pulled the Sun on the day I got my email about my transfer to McCallen,” Silvia said, looking at Jordan.

“Are there no bad cards to get?”

“No.” Silvia hesitated. “Though I can’t say anyone really covets the Death card.”

Nicole made a small noise, a cross between a choke and a gasp.

“But remember,” Silvia said brightly, “the future is always in flux. It can be altered. Sometimes tarot can serve as a sort of warning.”

Nicole wrapped her arms around her slim body. “Okay,” she said, sounding anything but.

Nicole left the next morning, several days early. She packed a large bag and went to catch a train upstate, telling Jordan she wasn’t sure when she’d be back.

Silvia and Jordan made dinner that night—a white bean and tomato stew with stiff sourdough.

“And then there were two,” Silvia said, winking at Jordan over the edge of her wine glass.

14

Trace

April

Eight Years to Saturn Return

There was a row of shots lined up on the edge of Trace’s desk, poured from a bottle of Jose Cuervo she kept in her room for special occasions. Like Friday nights. It was 11:37 p.m. At midnight, Jordan turned twenty-one.

“Jordan Caleb,” Trace called out. “It’s time.”

Jordan sat on Trace’s bed with Blake. She was wearing a sash that read Birthday Girl, and a gold crown, both of which had been bought by Trace at the Dollar Tree in town. Jordan told Trace she refused to wear them outside the dorm, but Trace was hoping to get her drunk enough to forget before they headed to the bar.

“Do I have to?” Jordan asked.

“Yes, of course. Shots on twenty-one. It’s nonnegotiable.”

“What is it?”

“Probably better if you don’t know in advance,” Trace said. “But take this.” She handed Jordan a slice of lime that she’d swiped from the dining hall.

“I feel like you want me to die tonight,” Jordan said.

“That is kind of the point,” Trace said.

“Drink your coconut water,” Blake said, tapping the bottle tucked next to Jordan on the bed. “Works like a charm. You’ll feel fine in the morning.”

Jordan hated shots, always preferring a mixed drink or a beer with an ABV below 5 percent. Trace was surprised at how little convincing it had taken for Jordan to give in tonight. The allure of twenty-one.

Trace handed Jordan and Blake precariously full shot glasses. She held her own up in the air.

“To my very best friend, Jordan. Welcome to adulthood. I’m so glad we can stop sneaking you into bars now.”

“You have literally never snuck me into a bar,” Jordan said.

“Be quiet,” Trace said, “Here’s to a birthday spent entirely in bed because we are going to rage tonight. I love you.”

They touched their glasses together and threw their heads back. Trace sunk her teeth into her lime. She heard Jordan coughing.

Trace would need more shots to make it through the night. Jordan had told her earlier, with obvious trepidation, that Silvia was going to be meeting them at the bar. Trace didn’t know how to act around Silvia. She didn’t know how to keep her eyes off Silvia. She didn’t know how to hold a conversation without leaning too close. Trace felt every atom in her body when she was around Silvia. She needed to be numb tonight. She couldn’t ruin Jordan’s birthday. But there was a murmur of excitement tucked in the middle of her chest, right above her stomach. She couldn’t help feeling a thrill of anticipation at the prospect of seeing Silvia step through the crowd.

Trace checked her watch. It was 11:45. “Okay, we’ve got to leave in five. Who’s having another shot?” She was already lining up the glasses again, tipping the tequila bottle against the rims.

“Me, me!” Blake yelled.

“I’m more than excellent,” Jordan said, holding up a cup half full of orange juice, cranberry juice, and tequila—a dorm room spin on a tequila sunrise that Trace had made her earlier.

“I’ll let it slide as long as you finish all of that before we go,” Trace said.

“What a pusher,” Jordan mumbled, looking down into her cup.

Trace held her glass up to Blake, pinching it between her thumb and forefinger.

“Happy Jordan’s birthday!” Blake said.

Trace closed her eyes as she swallowed. Her tongue recoiled from the acidity of the lime. The liquor was helping.

Blake reached for her coat on the back of Trace’s chair. Jordan was taking large gulps of her drink. Trace felt Jordan’s eyes on her as she poured half a shot more. Sometimes it felt like Jordan saw everything. Trace took the last shot. She put her palm on the desk to steady herself.

Blake was already at the door, hands buried in the pockets of her coat. Blake’s voice got exponentially louder as she drank. Somewhere in the back of her mind Trace knew they needed to get out of the dorm before pissing off the RA on duty.

“Hey,” Jordan said, her body close to Trace’s. “You good?”

Trace stood up straight. “Yes, totally fine.” She grabbed her coat out of the closet. “You good to go?”

“Yes,” Jordan said. She’d already set the crown on the desk and reached down to pull the sash off.

“Wait,” Trace said. “Leave that. Come on, it’s fun.”

Jordan glared at her.

“Do it for me! Please,” Trace begged.

“Fine.”

Trace laughed in glee and swung her arm around Jordan’s shoulder to pull her into the hall.



Trace had been saturated with Silvia for the past year. Not literally—she wished. Trace kept expecting to get over their summer fling. She had been waiting for a new crush to form, or for Silvia’s name to stop floating to the top of her mind the moment her eyes opened each day. But it hadn’t. When she thought about Silvia smiling, Trace felt something move upwards inside her, heat from between her legs into her gut. Trace spent hours imagining the moment she would finally run into Silvia; she wrote scripts for the words they might exchange.

Perhaps it would happen on the quad. Trace would be wearing her big puffy jacket and sunglasses, holding a cappuccino in a to-go cup, tossing banter with a cute sophomore. Silvia would pass and make eye contact, stop, say, “Trace, is that you?” Trace would look at her for a moment, as if trying to place her, and then say in recognition, “Silvia! Good to see you.” She would introduce the other girl, not that said girl mattered at all. It would be short and sweet. Trace would walk away, shouting “See you soon” over her shoulder, leaving Silvia standing there, wondering, wanting more.

Maybe Trace would run into Silvia at a party. Trace would be standing in the kitchen, mixing drinks, pouring beer into red plastic cups angled just so to avoid too much head. She was an upperclassman, she knew how to properly pour a fucking beer and none of the teens at those parties ever did, they spent the rest of the night licking foam off their top lips. Trace would nod at Silvia silently, pour gin and tonic water into a cup, squeeze a lime and drop it into the clear liquid before handing it over. “How did you know?” Silvia would ask. “I have a great memory,” Trace would say, tossing her a wink. Later, Silvia would find her on the dance floor, after watching Trace win game after game of beer pong. Silvia would sway to the music nearby, slowly getting closer and closer, until she was pressed up right against Trace, Trace’s arms sliding around her body, her hands resting on the curve of Silvia’s ass. Eventually, she would whisper in Trace’s ear, “Want to get out of here?” and then, after hours intertwined in bed, Silvia would reveal her true feelings, tell Trace she loved her, beg Trace to be with her forever.

Admittedly, Trace had also been watching a lot of rom-coms.

But it never happened. Trace rarely saw Silvia. It was as if she’d completely disappeared. Once, over the winter, Silvia had left the campus bookstore as Trace walked in. Her eyes were down, looking at the phone in her hand. She didn’t see Trace. Another time, Trace saw Silvia in her leather jacket, walking quickly off campus as Trace switched buildings between classes. Jordan hardly ever spoke about Silvia, though Trace knew they saw each other at work, and occasionally outside of work, sipping wine on the floor of Silvia’s living room. Or so Trace imagined.

Trace had experienced three sweet, sultry months with Silvia. Well, if she was honest with herself, it had been more like eight weeks until things started to feel off. Initially, she saw Silvia a few times per week. Silvia almost always refused to sleep over, but sometimes, when they were both off work, they would spend an entire day in Silvia’s bed, the curtains shut, their clothes on the floor, watching episodes of The O.C., kissing each other when Seth finally won over Summer, their bodies pressed against each other under the comforter as the AC blasted. Trace would bring Silvia coffee at work, fancy espresso drinks with pumps of syrup from Java Junction down the street, because Silvia hated the coffee at Bob & Betty’s. Trace bought Silvia little gifts from the school bookstore—a key chain, a bookmark, stickers with the McCallen seal—nothing extraordinary, but surprises her limited budget would allow. Trace loved the look of delight that passed across Silvia’s face at something unexpected. They biked out of town and ate strawberries sitting in a meadow. Trace excelled at being a girlfriend, like she excelled at everything else. They weren’t officially using labels yet. But Trace assumed it would come soon. It was the logical next step.

And then, just as the Ohio summer was finally warming up the lake near Fulton Springs, Silvia’s demeanor changed. It was early August and Trace had been trying to plan for Silvia’s birthday. Silvia started taking one day, then two to respond to Trace’s texts. When Trace did see her, it was like she wasn’t completely there. Silvia told Trace she wanted to spend her birthday alone. Before Trace knew it, a week had passed since she’d last seen Silvia. Then two weeks since they’d last spoken. Trace texted Jordan frantically, and Jordan’s advice was to give Silvia space, which left Trace a blubbering mess in her room. The relationship disappeared into thin air. Trace was unsure if anything had even existed between them at all.

Trace tried to date other people. She hooked up with every girl she could find, made a mess of one friend group when she had sex with two best friends unknowingly. But her mind, and her body, wouldn’t let her forget Silvia. Trace began to convince herself it was love. It was the only explanation for her obsession. Why else would she still be thinking about Silvia all this time later?



Trace’s limbs felt warm on the walk to the bar. She drifted off the sidewalk and onto the strip of grass lining the road. Jordan grabbed her arm and pulled her back onto the concrete. She looked up and they were at the bar—Frederick’s—right next door to Bob & Betty’s. Trace felt so happy to see it, so excited to be inside. She looked at her watch: 12:02 a.m.

“Happy birthday!” Trace grabbed Jordan, jumping up and down.

Inside was much more crowded than Trace had been expecting. They pushed their way through bodies and Silvia was there, already sitting at the bar, looking like sunlight. Was there a spotlight above her? Why was she so much brighter than everyone else? Her hair seemed to be shimmering. This was not the way Trace had pictured it happening. Things never happen the way you think they will. Silvia hugged Jordan and Blake, and then turned to Trace, smiling.

“How are you?” she asked, wrapping her arms around Trace’s neck.

“Good, good. I’m good.” Say “good” one more time, she dared herself. Trace patted Silvia on the back twice. Wow. Smooth, Trace.

Trace leaned up against the bar, looking for the bartender. The wood was sleek against her skin, edges rounded from decades of collegiate bodies rubbing against it, desperate for a fix. But Silvia was already handing her a shot glass. They all had one, and Jordan looked moderately ill.

Silvia raised hers up and started to sing “Happy Birthday,” her voice loud enough to pierce through the music, enticing groups nearby to turn and join in, excited to see another McCallen kid turned legal. Jordan was hating every moment, cheeks turning red, gaze cast down, and Trace was just so grateful for Silvia, appreciative that Silvia also knew Jordan deserved this celebration. Jordan would thank them for it later.

Trace slammed her glass so hard into Jordan’s at the end of the song that half her shot spilled over the side. Fuck. Embarrassing. Like an overeager high schooler who was drinking for the first time. But Silvia laughed, she laughed, and put her hand on Trace’s shoulder.

“Should we get you another one?” she asked. She was close, closer than she needed to be for Trace to hear her.

Two more of Jordan’s friends arrived. They pulled her away to dance, and Trace was left at the bar with Silvia. They were alone, the two of them. There were two drinks on the bar in front of them. Where did those come from? Were there really two? Trace squinted to confirm. Yes, okay, two. One for each of them. Silvia was still close, her arm across the back of Trace’s stool, one hand on Trace’s knee. Was she talking into Trace’s ear again? No, Trace was talking into hers. She didn’t even know what she was saying to Silvia, but it seemed good. Silvia was still smiling, sometimes laughing—was Trace making her laugh? Trace felt like a comedian, the funniest person in the world, she should go on stage, talk for hours. Her hand was now on Silvia’s thigh, and Silvia let it stay there. Then, then, THEN Silvia’s lips were on hers. They were kissing, kissing at the bar on Jordan’s twenty-first birthday. Who initiated this? Trace didn’t know, but it felt so good, she didn’t ever want it to stop. She put her hand on the back of Silvia’s head, closed her eyes, felt the bar press deep into her side as she moved towards Silvia. Silvia’s hand was somewhere under Trace’s shirt, fingers grasping the side of her body. Wow. It was better than she could ever have imagined. Her head felt woozy, and she opened her eyes, mostly just to check to make sure it was real, that it was actually Silvia sitting next to her, threading her legs between Trace’s thighs. It was. And Trace smiled, she smiled while Silvia was still kissing her, and she felt Silvia smile back, heard Silvia whisper “What,” and then Trace saw Jordan out of the corner of her eye, standing in the crowd, staring directly at them.

15

Jordan

April

Seven Years to Saturn Return

On the first warm day of spring during Silvia and Trace’s senior year, Silvia took them to her favorite meadow outside town, tucked inside a small arboretum called the Grove. She spread a blanket over the grass and pulled a large thermos out of her tote bag. She poured warm liquid into mugs for each of them. Mushroom caps floated on top. They drank it slowly, letting the tea move through their bodies. Jordan felt her head lighten. A bubble pushed upwards from her chest. She lay back on the grass and giggled. Shortly, Trace joined her, then Silvia. She saw them, across from her, their hands intertwined, and Jordan felt a rush of love for them so intense she almost cried.

It was Easter Sunday. The bark on the trees seemed to wiggle with enthusiasm for the sun. They each took turns shouting “He has risen!” and “God is good!”, lifting their hands to the sky. Silvia brought clementines for them to peel and eat and Jordan thought it was impossible to be happier than this.

That afternoon, Silvia spread her deck across their blanket. She asked them to select a card. They flipped each one over, the cardstock shiny against the sun. Trace leaned her head on Jordan’s shoulder as Silvia translated the images for them, how Trace needed to cede some control in her life, and how Jordan was just at the beginning of a difficult journey; she should let herself be guided by her sense of reason.

Silvia made them pull tarot once a week. “Just one card, Jordan, please,” she’d beg, and Trace, who didn’t know anything about it, who always just commented on the picture (“Pretty!” “Scary!” “Whoa, what’s this?”) would chime in as well, “Please, Jordan, please.” Jordan always acquiesced. Yes, sure, she thought it was stupid. But she also loved their entreatments, their perpetual insistence that she be included.

That day in the Grove, Jordan was hardly listening as Silvia spoke. She was staring at her friends, wondering how she’d gotten so lucky, sending thanks to whatever spiritual being existed in the universe for helping them find her.



Trace and Silvia’s senior year was Jordan’s favorite time at McCallen. Jordan wondered if she’d be chasing the high of that year for the rest of her life. It was the three of them against the world. Silvia and Jordan aligned their schedules at Bob & Betty’s again. Trace would stop by on Friday nights, closing out their shifts with them as the overnighters came in. Afterwards they sometimes stopped by Frederick’s for a drink, or stayed at the diner, eating cold fries and mozzarella sticks, long past the point Silvia and Jordan had finished going through their receipts. When Jordan and Silvia worked the morning shift, usually Mondays, Trace came in with Silvia at six, and would sit at one of her tables as they quietly turned the restaurant, replacing the mayo bottles with syrup and jelly.

On Saturday evenings, they normally found themselves at Silvia’s apartment, eating pizza and watching movies that Trace claimed were part of the “lesbian canon.” Trace stopped wanting to go to parties after she and Silvia were official. If Jordan had known that was the key, she would have worked harder to wingwoman Trace. Blake would often be at Silvia’s apartment too, either with her girlfriend, Jamie, or curled up on Silvia’s armchair, texting Jamie updates every fifteen minutes.

Later in April, over break, the three of them took a two-day trip to Wayne National Forest. They swam in a cool, calm lake, hiked on dirt paths through the trees. They stayed in a cabin for the night, Silvia and Trace in the bedroom, Jordan on the pullout couch. It was only as she was falling asleep that night, hearing the shush of Silvia and Trace’s whispers in the next room, that Jordan felt a twinge. She wondered if something might be wrong with all the togetherness. Jordan felt like a part of their relationship. She found it soothing. She’d watched others in college split friend groups apart when they fell in love, but once Trace and Silvia got back together, she’d only become closer to them. The first time Trace had gotten annoyed at Silvia, it was Jordan she complained to. Jordan was happy to help, explaining that Silvia hadn’t meant she preferred to go to the reading series at Java Junction without Trace, but that if Trace couldn’t make it, she would be fine alone. Trace’s frustration was gone in a moment when Silvia texted her, I wish you were coming, on a nudge from Jordan. Jordan wasn’t sure if she was some kind of glue keeping the two of them together, but sometimes she allowed herself to think so, even though she knew she shouldn’t be.

That semester there was a girl in Jordan’s drawing class. They always sat next to each other in the studio. And then, one day, they were walking in the same direction after class, and the girl looked at her and said, “Do you drink coffee?” So they had a coffee. Jordan learned what the girl—Rebecca—liked, and one week surprised her with a cappuccino for class. Then they started planning days to draw together. Study sessions, they called it, which involved sitting on the ground somewhere on campus, or inside a building, using soft pencils to outline trees or interior architecture inside large sketchbooks. They didn’t talk, they both usually wore headphones, but Jordan felt something inside her, a stirring. That thing she’d always heard people talk about. Nothing happened physically, which seemed to be the only thing that mattered to others. In Jordan’s head, though, something important had taken place. She kept it inside her, something that warmed her stomach, a glint of the future, what could be. She would tell Silvia and Trace when she was ready. When she knew what it was.



Silvia and Trace graduated on a rainy day in late May. They wore black gowns and caps with maroon tassels and Jordan stood in the crowd and cheered as they each walked across the stage. Silvia had given one of her graduation tickets to Jordan, the other to Trace so her sister could come with their parents. Jordan sat with Trace’s family during the ceremony.

She had heard Trace speak about her parents on and off throughout the years, but Jordan felt unprepared for the soft-spoken couple she found in front of her. Trace’s dad was on the shorter side. Her mom wore a long, loose dress and held her purse close to her body. They both seemed uneasy, out of their comfort zone, constantly looking around. Jordan wasn’t sure what they were searching for.

Jordan sat next to Trace’s sister, Olivia. Olivia’s face was shockingly similar to Trace’s. Their eyes were the same color. Her hair was long and blown out. Her nails were square, painted with a shiny polish. She wore a small leather bag over her shoulder. She was an answer to the question, What if Trace hadn’t been who she was? Olivia was chatty, just like Trace. She told Jordan she was going to college in Kansas, living at home to save money. She went to church on Sundays and sang in the choir. It was less about religion for her than the music. She felt it deep inside her, she said. It was a spiritual experience. Olivia was kind, and curious about Jordan and Trace’s life at this strange little school. She asked about Silvia in a way that told Jordan she understood.

After the ceremony they all gathered on the Lawn. “Do you and your friend want to get a picture together?” Trace’s mom asked, motioning to Silvia. Jordan saw the barely perceptible flinch on Trace’s face as she and Silvia pressed together for a picture.

“What about your other friend?” Trace’s mom pointed to Jordan.

“Yes,” Jordan said loudly. “Why don’t you get a picture with your other girlfriend too?” Silvia and Trace’s smiles widened, and their arms opened for her to stand between them.



Jordan wondered how her friends had read her own expression when they met her parents. Jordan’s dad and stepmom, Deborah (“Call me Debbie!”), had come for a weekend in March. Her dad and Debbie had gotten married the prior year. Things were amicable enough with Cynthia. They’d even extended an invite for Cynthia to come to the wedding, which she had politely declined.

Harry and Debbie had taken Trace and Jordan out to dinner at the nicest restaurant in Fulton Springs. Silvia couldn’t come—she was in the weeds of her thesis, months behind, she claimed. She’d finally settled on a focus the fall before, submitting her proposal an hour before the deadline. It was a collage and painting project exploring the different definitions of home.

When Harry asked, Trace went on and on about her plans for after graduation: move to a big city, get a job at an agency or financial institution, or maybe she’d try a startup. Jordan’s dad was enraptured, entranced by her ambition. He mentioned Summer three times.

“I love your family,” Trace said as they walked back to campus that night.

Only then did Jordan realize how similar Trace was to Summer. She’d found herself a sister in a form that actually fit.

The next morning Jordan had taken Harry and Debbie to Bob & Betty’s, a shift Silvia was working. She charmed them, making Debbie throw back her head in laughter after only thirty seconds of conversation. Relief and envy swirled in Jordan’s stomach. “Parents are easy,” Silvia said when Jordan saw her later that night. “You just have to make fun of the younger generation enough to make them feel wise, not old and out of touch.” But Silvia had also talked up Jordan, referencing a recent showing of her pictures in the admissions building. Jordan felt grateful to have friends who would impress her parents, to have friends who made sure her parents knew she was impressive too.



The night of graduation, the three of them lay on Silvia’s bed, drinking champagne out of the bottle.

“What now?” Jordan asked them.

“The world is our oyster,” Trace said.

“Okay, but what kind of oysters do you like?” Silvia asked.

“I have no idea.” Trace rolled over. “It’s now my job to find out. I’m sure Seattle has millions of them.”

And that was how Jordan found out they were moving to Seattle. She had known they would leave Ohio. But until it happened, until she heard otherwise, Jordan had been able to suspend her disbelief, pretend they would remain dangling in this portal right before adulthood indefinitely. Seattle felt like a nod to Jordan. It was her region of the world. Maybe they longed to stay close to her, even as they fled.

“You’ll come visit us, right, Jor?” Trace asked.

“Of course. I love Seattle.” And she meant it. When she was growing up, Seattle was the bigger, cooler city nearby. Seattle had a gritty feeling to it that Portland lacked. She went on a school trip once, saw the art museum, took a boat to an island where Native Americans showed them traditional basket weaving and they ate chocolate shaped like salmon.

“Seattle is so pretty,” Jordan said. “You’re going to love it too.”

“Perfect,” Silvia said, reaching for the bottle in Trace’s hand. “That’s exactly what I’m looking for.”

“What will you do there?” Jordan asked, and Silvia started talking about her plans, her future dreams. She had thought about working at an art store. Probably serving a bit, at least until she figured things out. But maybe she could be outside all the time, like at a summer camp, or try to work for the parks department. Silvia laughed, giddy at all the options. Their future was expansive, the door wide open.

Jordan lay on the bed, each of her best friends within arm’s length, and basked in their enthusiasm. She had given each of them pictures of themselves for graduation. She’d spent hours in the darkroom, making test strips with different filters to get the contrast just right. Jordan wanted both of them to leave with a piece of her at her best, to remember why she was worth it, why she deserved to have a line in their story. She wasn’t sure what the next year would bring for her. She would be left at McCallen, alone. Jordan hoped, in a year, when she would be similarly free, they would still be in Seattle. She hoped Trace and Silvia would still be together. And she hoped they would still want her.

16

Silvia

December

Seven Years to Saturn Return

The first real fight Silvia and Trace had was six months after they moved to Seattle. Silvia had gone out to drinks with coworkers after her shift. It was a step towards building community. She’d left her phone in her bag all night, forgetting to tell Trace until she was on the bus home. She had multiple texts from Trace about dinner, a missed call. I’m sorry, she wrote, I’m on my way home now.

When Silvia opened the door to the apartment, their cat Tegan immediately began twisting around her ankles. She bent down to pet him. Trace stood in the kitchen, five feet away from her. A sound came from Tegan’s throat, somewhere between a cry and a strangled scream, and Silvia asked, “Did you feed him yet?” She realized those were the wrong words to start with. She could see Trace’s body fold in on itself, her shoulders tilting towards the counter, brows deepened.

“Nope,” Trace said, not looking at her. Silvia had begun to see hints of this side of Trace, as the season turned and Trace’s work ramped up and damp settled into their skin.



Seattle had been a compromise—Silvia wanted to be near nature, to be surrounded by green, and Trace needed corporate work. The Pacific Northwest was the answer. In Seattle they knew no one. Quickly, Trace found a job and friends, fellow account managers to commiserate with. Less quickly, Silvia found herself working at a bookstore downtown. Writing, perhaps a new thing she would try. They lived in a studio apartment on Capitol Hill, a neighborhood with enough grunge to feel cool and only slightly unsafe, and home to the only dyke bar in Seattle.

That summer was their honeymoon phase with Seattle. They explored the city as the sun shone for months and months. Silvia didn’t understand why everyone complained about the rain but no one talked about the sun, how the air was never humid in the summer, how you could keep your windows open for a fresh breeze into September. They had picnics at a park that held the skeleton of an old gasification plant, wandered the sculpture gardens, ate doughnuts at Pike Place Market, went wine tasting north of the city. Silvia’s work felt repetitive and routine. She’d thought a bookstore would be a more intellectual pursuit than serving. But she didn’t have the same passion as her coworkers and missed the challenge of cracking a tough customer, the gratification of an extra-large tip. It didn’t matter, though. They’d made the right choices. Life was bright.

Top sheets had been something they argued about when they first moved in together, if you could even call it an argument. They’d had sex in the middle of the conversation, on top of a mattress covered with only a pale pink fitted sheet. The rest of their bedding lay crumpled on the couch as they debated the merits of having a layer of cloth between their bodies and the duvet cover. They laughed, even as they bickered. They both came twice. Trace won that round, and Silvia wouldn’t let her forget it whenever they changed the sheets, sighing dramatically as she tossed the extra piece of cloth in the air over their mattress.



Silvia lifted herself from the floor and moved into the kitchen to fill Tegan’s bowl. As she passed Trace, Silvia felt her shrink away, press her body closer to the counter.

“I got some drinks with Clara and Vanessa after work,” Silvia said as she scooped wet food out of the can.

“I figured,” Trace said.

Silvia put Tegan’s bowl on the floor. “I’m sorry for not telling you. I lost track of time.”

“Okay,” Trace said. She still wouldn’t make eye contact with Silvia. It reminded Silvia so much of fighting with her mom. The punishment of withheld attention.

“What do you want for dinner?” she asked.

Trace shrugged.

“How about Chinese?”

“Sounds good.” Trace’s eyes were boring a hole into the ground in front of her.

“Babe,” Silvia said, putting a hand on Trace’s arm. She felt Trace recoil from her touch, and Silvia closed her hand in a fist. “What’s wrong?”

Trace didn’t say anything. This facet of Trace was ugly. It felt hard for Silvia to unsee.

“Trace, please talk to me,” Silvia said.

“Just give me a minute!” Trace’s voice was loud. It startled Silvia. Trace walked across the room to their bed, sat on the corner. Fighting with your partner in a studio apartment was torturous. You could never leave the room. It was impossible to give each other space.

Silvia had never lived with a partner before. She’d never experienced so much responsibility for someone else’s well-being. She had begun to see, in recent months, how her actions, the tone of her voice when she said “Good morning,” could shape Trace’s entire day. She felt herself shaped by Trace too. Trace’s bad day made her day bad. Sometimes living with a partner felt like too much, utterly overwhelming, suffocating, as she shared her kitchen, her bathroom, her sleeping space. Was this how a relationship was supposed to be? Was compromise supposed to feel so claustrophobic? She’d never entwined her life with someone else’s so thoroughly. She was scared she might get to a point where she wouldn’t know who she was outside of Trace.

Silvia pulled up Grubhub on her phone and selected Trace’s favorite appetizers.

“I thought we were giving each other a heads-up when we were going out after work,” Trace said.

“I know,” Silvia said, putting her phone down. “I forgot.”

“I just got nervous. I hate that feeling.”

“I’m sorry,” Silvia said again. “I don’t want to fight.” Silvia felt, deep within her bones, that something might be wrong with this life she had created. She didn’t know whether it was her job or Trace or the city. Something needed to change.

“Me neither,” Trace said. “I was just scared something had happened to you. Or that you were mad.”

“I promise I’ll text next time,” Silvia said.



Tegan had been a birthday present for Silvia. Four months earlier, Silvia woke up on a Saturday morning to find Trace staring at her.

“What?” Silvia asked. “Was I snoring?”

Trace smiled and shook her head.

“Why are you being so weird?” Silvia pushed herself up.

“I have a surprise for you.”

Trace made Silvia wear a bandana over her eyes the entire trip. She felt unarmed. Losing a sense made her feel vulnerable. She found it difficult to trust Trace completely. There was still a part of her that believed she could only ever rely on herself. When Trace finally untied the bandana, they were standing in front of the Seattle Animal Shelter. Silvia looked at Trace.

“Babe! We’re getting a kitten!”

There was a burning at the base of Silvia’s throat. She liked cats. She had told Trace, early on, that she’d always wanted one. Rhonda was allergic to cats. Or so she claimed when Silvia had begged for one as a child. Trace listened. She gave. Silvia tried to remember what she had done for Trace’s birthday that year and couldn’t recall. Perhaps girlfriend was another role she wasn’t suited for.

The cat Silvia fell in love with wasn’t a kitten. He was five, missing a chunk out of one ear. Silvia looked at him and knew he had seen some shit. She felt an immediate kinship with him. They brought Tegan home that afternoon. Every day, Silvia fell in love with him more.



Silvia waited a week after the fight to bring up the Peace Corps. She wanted to let the energy settle. They were sitting on the couch, watching an early season of Gilmore Girls and eating pizza, when Silvia said: “You know Clara from work? She just got back from the Peace Corps.”

“Cool,” Trace said, her mouth full.

“You remember I always talked about doing that,” Silvia said.

“I know.”

“Clara’s experience sounds like it was really great.”

“That’s awesome.”

“I started looking at the application last week.”

That’s when Trace put her pizza down.

“You want to apply to the Peace Corps?”

“What did you think me always wanting to do the Peace Corps meant?”

“I don’t know. I thought it was like when people said it would be cool to see the Great Wall of China. Like, who actually goes and does that? I figured it was a hypothetical kind of thing.”

Perhaps it once had been hypothetical to Silvia. But the more she thought about it, the more it felt right. She needed to be completely shaken out of her routine. She needed to go somewhere new in every way. Silvia had gotten coffee with Clara recently, asking Clara questions about Mongolia. The stories were unreal, some troubling, but built to be woven into a narrative. Silvia recognized envy pulsing through her body as Clara spoke. She wanted more experiences, things that could be written about, documented. Maybe the Peace Corps could help her figure out who she was supposed to be, how she was supposed to spend her life.

“Not hypothetical,” Silvia confirmed. The Peace Corps was the last thing her mother would ever have expected her to do. Rhonda Wilder would have hated it. She wouldn’t have thought Silvia would last. It felt like a challenge.

“When would you go?”

“Depends on when I apply. Sometime next year?”

“How long is it for?” Trace looked dejected now.

“Service is twenty-seven months.”

“Jesus Christ, Silvia.”



That Christmas they went to Portland to spend the holidays with Jordan and her family. Silvia and Trace had met both of Jordan’s parents before, during a summer trip to Portland and when they’d visited Jordan at McCallen. Trace loved Jordan’s dad, Harry. She relished his attention and his appreciation for her ambitions. Silvia melted under the warmth of Cynthia, a woman who was good with children and baked a pie every week, such a contrast to Silvia’s mother, all sharp edges and steel. She knew Jordan felt uncomfortable around her parents. Summer was a shadow on every sentence. Everything looked better when it wasn’t yours.

The three of them spent the night before Christmas Eve in the hot tub in Cynthia’s backyard. Trace asked Jordan how her senior year was going, and when Jordan paused and looked over to the left, Trace responded with a quick, “What? What happened?”

As Jordan spoke, Silvia willed Trace to be quiet, to let Jordan have her voice for once. Jordan said she’d been ruminating on things. She saw a movie about a girl with blue hair, and went down some internet rabbit holes, and then, well, there was this girl she worked with at a Chuck E. Cheese, a job she’d gotten in the bigger town next to Fulton Springs once her dad had passed down his old Honda Civic to her. Trace’s hand was on Silvia’s thigh under the water. The deeper Jordan got into her story, the harder Trace’s nails pressed into Silvia’s leg, until eventually, when the words “Well, we hooked up” came out of Jordan’s mouth, Silvia had to flick Trace’s hand to get her to let go.

“That’s all,” Jordan said.

Trace’s smile ate up her entire face. “We are thrilled. Though, obviously, not shocked.”

“Obviously.” Jordan rolled her eyes.

“Which doesn’t mean it’s not a big deal,” Silvia added.

“I want more details,” Trace said.

“Are you asking exactly where my fingers went inside her body?”

“Yes,” Trace said at the same time Silvia said, “Of course not.”

“Whatever you feel comfortable sharing,” Silvia said.

“I don’t know that you need more than that,” Jordan said, leaning her head back in the water to wet her hair.

“Beg to diff—” Silvia put a hand over Trace’s mouth, silencing her.

“Thank you for telling us,” Silvia said.

Trace had pulled Silvia’s palm away from her face. “We need to celebrate! Does your mom have champagne, Jor? I’m going to go ask.” Trace stepped out of the hot tub and ran across the grass back to the house, board shorts clinging awkwardly to her thighs.

“How are you feeling?” Silvia asked.

“Less confused, I guess.”

“It can be a relief, watching your life click into place a bit.”

“There was this older girl at summer camp one year,” Jordan said. “I couldn’t wait to see her at the beach. I would do anything she said. I remember being so excited to get my disposable camera from camp developed. I wanted a physical image to remember her by.” Jordan pushed a piece of hair out of her face. “Funnily enough, she had blue hair.”

“Stop it,” Silvia said. “That’s incredible. Are you worried about telling your mom?”

Jordan pulled her arms out of the water. “Not, like, for my well-being. She might not fully understand, but she won’t disown me. I’m sure she’ll find some way to bring up Summer in the conversation.”

“Probably.” Silvia laughed. “Also, Jordan?” Jordan met Silvia’s eyes across the water. “Not everything is going to make sense now. Don’t drive yourself crazy trying to make everything fit this new narrative.”

The back door opened and Trace emerged, carrying three plastic cups and a dark green bottle. The two of them watched her run back across the lawn. She released a whoop into the air.



Harry and Debbie hosted the three of them for dinner on Christmas Day. He opened the front door as they were getting out of the car. Silvia pictured him waiting at the window for a glimpse of them driving up. A father fit for a Hallmark movie.

Harry and Debbie had made ham and glazed tofu, for some reason under the impression that one of them was a vegetarian. There was a flutter of eye contact between the three of them before Trace said, “I’ve been phasing out of it a bit, but I wasn’t eating meat for many years, so I really appreciate this.” They all took a slice of tofu. Silvia’s phone buzzed in her pocket. A text from Trace in their group chat: Debbie is an ally .

All throughout dinner, Silvia’s body was uneasy. She kept getting up to open a new bottle of wine, refill water glasses, bring extra, unneeded utensils to the table. When Harry finally asked Silvia how things were going at work, the wine had loosened her enough that she didn’t think twice before saying, “I’ve been thinking about applying to the Peace Corps.” Harry thought it was an incredible idea. Debbie said she had a friend in college who went to Honduras in 1975. These reactions soothed Silvia. It felt like a confirmation. Her stand-in parents agreed it was the right choice.

“And Trace,” Harry said, “you’ll stay in Seattle?”

“That’s the plan,” Trace said, her voice tight.

“Well, I’m sure Jordan could move up there and keep you company once she graduates,” Harry said.

“Thanks for planning my future for me, Dad,” Jordan said, stabbing a carrot with her fork.

“She totally could!” It clearly had not occurred to Trace before that moment. “We could be roommates.”

“We live in a studio,” Silvia said.

“We can move. We can afford something bigger, anyways.” Trace seemed excited now, and the reaction was off-putting to Silvia. Shouldn’t she still be upset about Silvia leaving? Was Silvia that replaceable?



Silvia submitted her application at the end of January. Her interview was in March. Her acceptance came in May. Trace had spent the spring sending apartment listings to Jordan. When Silvia complained about the kitchen in one apartment, Trace responded, “We’ll move again when you get back, babe, don’t worry.” It felt like they were going off script. When Silvia had told Trace about the Peace Corps initially, Trace had asked, “What about us?” Silvia told her, “Nothing will change. The time will fly by. I’ll be back before you know it.” Silvia wasn’t sure she entirely believed that, but she knew it was important to think it, even if that meant willing it into existence. But things were already changing. Adulthood felt like a merry-go-round of searing reminders that expectations rarely lined up with reality. It made Silvia want to run even more.

They both flew back to Ohio to watch Jordan graduate that June, cheering loudly when her name was called to walk across the stage. A month later, Silvia and Trace moved into a two-bedroom apartment across town with Jordan. By August, when Seattle was at its peak, Silvia was on a plane to Lesotho. The wheels lifted from the tarmac at Sea–Tac and Silvia felt weightless. Her stomach dipped as the plane rose. She pressed her forehead into the window and watched as Washington state got smaller and smaller beneath her. She was leaving all her problems behind. She was ready to wake up in a new life.

17

Trace

September

Six Years to Saturn Return

The first few months Silvia was gone, Trace was swept up in her reunion with Jordan, her best friend back in her life after a year apart. She got Jordan a job at Clark and Bell. At first it was only a contract position, thirty hours per week with the production team, but after three months they hired Jordan full time. They saw each other at work. At home. On the weekends they went to the Rose. Trace wondered if one day she might get sick of Jordan, if at some point it would be too much time together, if they might snap, have their first big fight. But it never happened. They split the household chores evenly, went grocery shopping together on Sunday mornings. Jordan introduced a different side of Seattle to Trace. Jordan got her out of the house, into the world, meeting new people, trying new things. Jordan took them to a gallery downtown. Jordan joined a photo walk in Golden Gardens, Trace posing for groups of amateur photographers practicing portraiture. Jordan found a bar that had a queer singles night. The two of them went and sat in a booth in the back, only befriending a couple who were there to scout for each other. Silvia had said she wanted to do things like this too, but it had never come to be. With Jordan, the Seattle Silvia had imagined came true for Trace.

Silvia had told Trace that their communication would be limited. Her first few months of service she would be in training and have a rigorous schedule. The first time Trace and Jordan were able to Skype with her was two months after she left. Her face was pixilated on the screen, her movements jerky and distorted. Every fifth word was lost. Trace felt an ache. She wanted to reach through the computer, wind a lock of Silvia’s hair around her finger.

Trace kept a worn pair of Silvia’s underwear in a plastic bag. Once or twice a month, when her body felt like it could spring apart with just the briefest brush of skin contact, Trace laid the underwear across her face as she touched herself, imagining the heft of Silvia’s body, wishing she could feel Silvia’s tongue on hers.

During the holidays Trace and Jordan drove down to Oregon. Trace’s mom had invited her home, but at this point it felt more like a formality. She hadn’t been back to Kansas in years. Trace’s mom never asked about Silvia. Her dad still called Silvia her roommate. They exchanged boxes of presents at Christmas. Trace let hers sit unopened in the living room for months. It was a pantomime of love, a facade of care and consideration. Trace felt at home with Jordan’s family, hugging Jordan’s parents easily each time she saw them. It was a familiarity she had never experienced before.

Trace and Jordan spent New Year’s Eve at a strip club in Portland with some of Jordan’s high school friends. They took a selfie to send to Silvia. Wish you were here, Trace wrote. Silvia had been gone almost five months. Silvia would thrive at a strip club. She would want to know each dancer’s sign. She would ask about their families and would be the first one pressed against the stage to slip five-dollar bills into their G-strings.



When Trace and Silvia got back together in college, it was different than Trace had expected. Not better or worse, but more like finding yourself in the cheese section at the grocery store when you thought you’d come for bags of chocolate and candy. Silvia wasn’t as swayed by Trace’s typical forms of courting. As they began to hook up again after Jordan’s birthday, Trace felt like she was constantly holding herself in, like if she breathed wrong Silvia might scare and run again. Trace waited for Silvia’s cues—texting when Silvia initiated first, never requesting to see her last minute on a night they hadn’t planned for, dutifully splitting the bill each time they went out.

The first time Trace brought Silvia flowers, she chose just one. A single lily. A trial run. Silvia put it in a glass on the table next to her bed. The next day she sent a picture of it to Trace, and it felt like permission had been granted. Two weeks later, Trace bought Silvia an entire bouquet.

Silvia finally began talking about her family. Trace was surprised how quickly it happened, within a month of being back in each other’s lives. It was late at night, so late that the sun was starting to wake, turning the Midwestern sky a deep gray. Their bodies were sticky, from exertion and lube and cum. Maybe there was something about that state of being, completely undone, bodies still touching despite the grime coating their skin, that led Silvia to say, “My mom had a coke problem.” Trace was lying on Silvia’s chest, and she stayed there, frozen, scared that any movement she made might break the spell, while Silvia continued, lazily running her fingers through Trace’s hair.

There was something about Silvia’s profound lack of need that had attracted Trace from the beginning. It seemed impossible that someone could be so self-assured, so independent. Many girls seemed this way at first, but when you began to peel back their layers, you could prod their weak spots, see their insecurities begin to take shape. Trace was good at feeling out a person, understanding what compliments made them preen, and pushing on that button when needed. But with Silvia, the more Trace got to know her, the more distant she seemed. It was as if compliments amused her; Trace heaped them upon her, searching in vain for one that would land in the right spot and bloom something earnest.

Once Trace found out about Silvia’s mom, the leak in the dam turned into a stream. She heard about Silvia’s first girlfriend in Montana, how the girlfriend’s mom had found them in bed together and Silvia’s mom had moved them to a new state the next week. She told Trace about feeling scared in the big houses her mom bought, sitting alone in her room while her mom’s friends mingled floors below. Trace finally began to understand her, to see that Silvia was broken in similar ways as she was. It made sense that they had found each other. It seemed like there might be a place for Trace in Silvia’s future.

Eventually, they settled into a rhythm. Senior year with Jordan had been so easy, it was almost forgettable. Trace relaxed into the relationship. When Silvia asked Trace, “What are we doing after graduation, babe?” Trace sensed a knot loosen in the back of her neck. In the days after they’d finished at McCallen, Blake said to her that she thought Trace and Silvia might actually be together forever. This affirmed something Trace had been feeling inside, like maybe she had been right about Silvia all along.

They moved to Seattle in the summer when the sun was shining. Trace and Silvia kept the windows of their studio apartment wide open, even when they weren’t home. Trace was obsessed with the way Seattle smelled—like the sea and soil and the drip of an icicle all in one. She was charmed by the practicality of the people, umbrella-less even throughout the rainy winter, donning weatherproof jackets and backpacks. She was learning the beats of a new culture.

Trace loved playing house with Silvia. She loved how Silvia filled their space with thrifted knickknacks. A light blue vase sat on their kitchen table, filled with the flowers Trace still bought for Silvia each week. They had mismatched martini glasses and drank wine out of small glass tumblers. Silvia would make dinner wearing only an apron, and the pasta gummed together on the stove while they fucked on the counter, on the bed, across the table, Silvia’s arms spread out wide as she said Trace’s name, again and again and again.

Silvia was obsessed with planets. Mercury was always upside down, causing their dinner to burn or the bus to be twenty minutes late. She talked about Venus and Saturn as if they were men following her home from the bar, constantly wary of their movements. Trace was transfixed by it. Everything Silvia did at that time, everything she said, every motion she made was awash in golden light.



Something had started to shift after a few months in Seattle, though. Their lives had begun to settle. It spread beyond just the two of them. They had new friends from work, hobbies, favorite bars they went to for happy hours with other people. Seattle was so much bigger than Fulton Springs. Silvia was home less often, out with her friends from work. She no longer laughed at Trace’s jokes she’d once found funny. She was slipping out of Trace’s grasp.

Trace felt a buzz in her throat, a humming that had begun once they first got back together, start to get louder and louder. When Silvia took too long to respond to a text, Trace became convinced Silvia was planning to break up with her that night. She’d send a selfie, or type out the words Hey, you ok? or Just checking in, hating herself as she did so, needing a touchpoint to stop her body from spiraling out of control.

Their sex, though less frequent, felt more urgent. Trace was eager to please. Silvia couldn’t leave someone who prioritized her pleasure so much, Trace rationalized—three, four, five orgasms at a time. Trace thought the cat would help. Perhaps it did, if only to give them something external to focus on, to avoid the gaping hole that had begun to form between them. As Trace clung on tighter, Silvia became more and more distant. In the months before she left for Africa, it was as if she was hardly there at all, her mind already eight thousand miles away.



Sometime in January, nearly six months after Silvia left, Jordan went on a second date with a girl she’d met one night when she and Trace were at the Rose. To Trace, it felt monumental. Silvia was the first person she wanted to tell. It was then that Trace realized she couldn’t remember the last time she and Silvia had spoken. Their last video call had been sometime in the fall, before she and Jordan had hosted Friendsgiving.

Trace began sending Silvia emails unprompted. She included short anecdotes about their lives back in Seattle. She wanted to ensure Silvia stayed connected to life back home but didn’t want her to feel left out of the adventures she was having with Jordan. She updated Silvia about Tegan: He spent most of Monday this week under the bed on your side (I think he misses you). Trace thought about what Blake had said two years before, and wondered how she and Silvia had gotten here, barely in contact but somehow still together, even though they were on two different sides of the world.

Trace’s emails to Silvia stacked up. Weeks went by with no response. She knew how busy Silvia was, so she didn’t let the silence deter her. But one day, while cooking in the kitchen with Jordan, she saw an email from Silvia pop up on Jordan’s phone. Jordan was back in her bedroom, changing out of work clothes while the pasta water boiled. Re: new home?!? it read. Trace hovered her finger over the screen. She knew Jordan’s passcode. She wondered who had initiated the conversation. She felt the blood rush out of her face, her stomach twist. Trace put her hand in her pocket, turned back to the stove, where the water was steaming.

While they were eating that night, on either side of the circular table that sat in one corner of the kitchen, Trace asked, as if it had just occurred to her, “Have you heard from Silvia at all?”

Jordan was moving food to her mouth in quick jerks, as if she hadn’t eaten since breakfast. She might not have. She was a production assistant at Clark and Bell now. She worked constantly, lugging lights around sets, running last-minute errands for shoots. Trace made a mental note to remind Jordan to carry power bars moving forward.

“Um, yeah,” Jordan said, mouth still half full of food, “We’ve chatted a bit, just over email.”

Trace looked down at her bowl. She hadn’t eaten, just pushed the noodles over to one side, creating a wet mountain.

“I’m sure you’ve heard from her more,” Jordan said.

“I haven’t heard from her at all.”

Jordan swallowed, looked confused. Then she asked a question that embarrassed both of them once it hung in the air. “Do you have the right email for her?”

“Yes, Jordan.” Trace stood up, scraped her dinner into a Tupperware container, and spent the rest of the night in her room.

The following weekend an email from Silvia sat in bold on Trace’s phone. Trace’s brain did the calculating: Jordan must have spoken to Silvia, who then decided to prioritize Trace the next time she had computer access, a choice she couldn’t, for some reason, make on her own.

In the email, however, Silvia asked to Skype with Trace, and the prospect of seeing Silvia’s face on a screen washed Trace’s frustrations away. They arranged a time in two weeks—early on Saturday morning, which would be afternoon for Silvia.

On the Friday before their call, Trace’s boss met with her after lunch and told her she’d been promoted to senior account manager. Her team got drinks that night to celebrate. There were rows of shot glasses and martinis the size of Trace’s face. She woke up the next day close to ten, with an email from Silvia asking where she was.

Trace wrote back: I’m sorry, I accidentally overslept. I got a promotion yesterday (yay!). Please please forgive me??

A week passed. Trace refreshed her email twenty, thirty times every day, even though she knew Silvia only had internet access on the weekends. Silvia responded the following Sunday. No big deal T, we’ll try again next time.

It was around March that Trace began to have trouble eating. She’d think about Silvia, and her stomach would twist, threatening to push bile into her throat. She googled her symptoms, read about how her brain could do this to her body, turn her insides into pure mush, and she booked a therapy appointment. Her first session with Wendy, Trace cried, and she thought, I will be a better person by the time Silvia comes home.

Trace and Silvia scheduled another time to talk a month later, shortly after Jordan’s birthday. This time Jordan was up early with Trace, leaning against Trace’s headboard, knees pulled up to her chest. In the mornings, Jordan moved as if traversing through syrup, every motion a few beats slower than normal. In bed, waiting for Silvia to call, Jordan told Trace about the girl she had ended things with the night before. They’d only been on three dates. Jordan had been on a trend of dating and dumping quickly. This time the girl was a throat clearer.

“I think your expectations are a little too high,” Trace said.

“You don’t know how frequent it was.”

“Maybe this is something you could get over once you get to know her more.”

“I couldn’t focus on what she was saying to me because the noise was so distracting.”

“You might have just missed your soulmate!”

“She did it while we were making out, T.” Jordan closed her mouth, made a noise like a yelp was stuck right above her lungs. “Do you think that’s sexy? Could you have sex with that?”

“Okay, I give up.” Trace leaned her head back. They’d been up for over two hours waiting for Silvia to call.

The next time Trace opened her eyes, the room was light, the sky a bright beige. Her face was pressed against the side of Jordan’s torso, and Trace started at the warmth on her cheek, the powdery scent of Jordan’s sleep shirt. Jordan was still propped up on Trace’s pillows, her eyes closed. Trace frantically woke her computer. Had she fucked up again? There were no missed calls. But it was too late now. She sent Silvia a quick email, Hey Sil, did we get our wires crossed on timing? Jordan and I woke up to chat with you this morning. Just want to make sure you’re ok.

Another week passed and Silvia responded. There had been some issue with her transportation, so she had gone directly to her friend Alisha’s apartment to stay the night. She went on about Alisha—how much they had in common, how wonderful it had been to make a real friend, how she finally felt less lonely. Trace felt a tension at the top of her thighs as she read this, as if the chair beneath her might disappear at any moment. When she went to sleep that night, Alisha’s name was glowing bright white in the darkness of her mind.



Over Memorial Day weekend, Trace and Jordan drove across the state for a music festival at an amphitheater on the Columbia River. On the drive down, Jordan handed Trace her phone to play music. As they were passing Cle Elum, Trace saw the email come in. The notification slid down from the top of Jordan’s screen while Trace was queuing up Lady Gaga. A response from Silvia: re: what’s new?? The words repeated in her head in a jagged loop—re: what’s new, re: what’s new, re: what’s new. What was new? Was she happy? Was she sad? Did she miss them? Did she mention Trace? Twenty minutes passed. She and Jordan were silent. Trace imagined sixty-seven different scenarios for the contents of the email. Sixty-five of them involved how much Silvia hated Trace. Trace checked her own phone—nothing.

When Jordan pulled into a gas station to pee, she asked if Trace wanted to come and Trace shook her head no, even though her bladder throbbed. Her fingers wrapped tightly around Jordan’s phone, but Jordan left the car without reaching for it. Trace navigated to Jordan’s mail app. She read quickly, skimming. Silvia was telling Jordan about Sesotho—the language she was being taught—and the foods in Lesotho she was learning to love and cook for herself in her small home. She mentioned Alisha. Alisha who Silvia spent weekends with. Alisha who Silvia went on cultural excursions with. Alisha who Silvia drank cheap beer with. Silvia didn’t mention Trace once. For some reason it was worse than Trace had feared.

By the time Jordan got back to the car, the email was marked unread again, her phone sitting in the cupholder. Jordan picked it up.

“I’m putting on Bowie. No complaints, we’re almost there.”

Trace turned her head to the window and said nothing.



The summer and fall without Silvia left Trace empty, the months scraping by like the tail end of a migraine. Pride seemed to lose its luster that year. Trace only went swimming in Lake Washington twice. There were no ferry rides, only work. She let Jordan make her hot toddies in October, requesting a heavy pour of whiskey, but couldn’t muster enthusiasm for the changing of the leaves, the excess crunching beneath her feet as she walked to work. Days had turned into clumps of hours to fill between emails from Silvia, which came at an even less frequent cadence as the months passed.

Trace was only able to Skype with Silvia once between Labor Day and Halloween, a call that Silvia spent peppering Jordan with questions about her relatively inactive dating life. Silvia filled every pause with words, and every time she said Alisha’s name, Trace felt like it was a hammer hit to her skull. Silvia barely spoke to her. Trace got up to go to the bathroom at one point in the call without saying anything. She hovered outside the door to her room, waiting for an inquiry from Silvia about where Trace had gone that never came.

Trace felt new energy as the holidays approached and emailed Silvia asking for a time they could talk, just the two of them. She wrote bullet points in a notebook about what she’d like to discuss with Silvia. These had been vetted by her therapist. Ask for what you need.

As the video connected, Trace felt blood rush through her arms. She felt it thrum through the knuckle on her left thumb. She put her hand down on the notebook. It shook.

The internet connection had never gotten any better. She still only saw Silvia in fits and starts, her face shifting from one expression to the next with no transition for Trace’s emotional well-being.

“How are you?” Trace asked, and it astonished her, looking back, how quickly that had diverted them off course, a road that turned into a highway entrance, no exits in sight. Silvia began talking and didn’t seem to take a breath before moving to a new topic. All Trace could hear was Alisha’s name, every few sentences, the pronouns in between a brand on her heart.

Trace looked down at her list, reading through the lines, not even listening to Silvia, trying to find a way to wedge herself into the one-sided conversation. But there was no opportunity, and as the minutes stretched into the double digits, her fingers curled into fists, nails leaving half moons in the skin of her palms. She could feel her pulse under her fingernails. The acid in her stomach rose to her throat. She took her hoodie off. Her body had begun to sweat. She needed it to stop.

“Are you in love with her?” Trace’s voice was loud. Too loud.

“What?”

“I mean, god, Silvia, you seem so obsessed with her and you can’t even ask about me. I don’t care about Alisha’s family. I don’t care what problems Alisha is having at work. I don’t care how often you see Alisha.”

“It kind of seems like you do.” Silvia’s image wasn’t moving now.

“You don’t fucking get it.” She saw Silvia flinch and was amazed that at this specific moment the internet decided to finally allow her a crisp view, so she could clearly watch as she shattered the one thing she’d always wanted. “I need you, Silvia. You’re not listening to me.”

“We talked about this, Trace. You know I’m not able to be constantly available right now.”

“Well, maybe we need to fucking talk about it again.”

“I’m not going to talk to you while you speak to me like this.”

“Silvia.”

She was gone.

Trace frantically opened her email, slammed out a draft.

Please don’t let our conversation end like that. I’m sorry.

She waited five minutes, and then sent another.

Silvia please.

She sent two more emails before Silvia responded: I think I need some space right now.

Trace felt every organ inside her liquefy, like they’d pooled out onto the bed beneath her. Her face was damp. She wiped her nose on the arm of her shirt. Trace tore her list out of the notebook, shredding it into pieces, letting them drop onto the floor. She pulled her knees in tight to her chest, then typed out a reply asking Silvia how long she needed space.

I don’t know how long. I just need some time to think. Please stop emailing me.

Trace’s blood pushed through a vein that ran around her ribs under her right breast. It leapt into her skin, as if it were trying to escape. Her throat narrowed, her breaths short and quick.

It would be months before her lungs functioned normally again. And even then, Trace’s heart would skip a beat every few minutes, as if anticipating the worst, preparing her to flee.

18

Silvia

December

Saturn Is Returning

Jordan and Silvia had been on the train for what felt like forever. As soon as they’d crossed the river to Brooklyn, they had switched to a new one. Silvia couldn’t believe it was all the same city. In Seattle they’d be halfway to Portland by now. Jordan sat next to her, eyes closed, head leaning back against the side of the train car. Silvia had wanted to do something festive, and Jordan mentioned that she’d heard there was a neighborhood so deep into Brooklyn that people actually lived in houses, which they decorated each holiday season with hundreds of strings of lights and blow-up Santas and reindeers and little elves.

Jordan hadn’t gotten home from work that night until seven, and Silvia could see the exhaustion in the slope of her shoulders, but Jordan insisted she was still excited to go, said she’d always wanted to experience Christmas in New York like a local. Silvia could feel how tentative Jordan was in her presence, now that it was just the two of them. She was always a beat away from flinching. This ability to subdue others was a power Silvia had wielded for as long as she could remember. It was a quality her mother possessed as well—serene control, a warning just beneath the surface. It protected Silvia, until it didn’t. Because she could never figure out how to lower the wall, Silvia often turned away from what she needed. Jordan’s capitulation towards her felt odd. She was one of the few people who was able to stand up to Silvia. Jordan rarely seemed afraid of her, capable of expressing disappointment in Silvia’s actions when others couldn’t.

Silvia watched as Jordan scrunched one side of her nose, and she knew, even before Jordan removed her right hand from her coat pocket, that she was about to run a knuckle beneath it, one quick swipe. Being back in Jordan’s presence was jarring. There was no person alive, except Trace, who Silvia had known as long as Jordan. She felt both an ease and a deep-rooted apprehension about coexisting with someone whose movements you could predict. She knew how Jordan’s fingers would settle on her glass of water, the way her feet sounded on the wood floors. Silvia could close her eyes and imagine Jordan opening a bottle of wine—elbow up to the ceiling as she stood on her toes to twist the metal screw into the cork. This knowing had never worked out well for Silvia. First with her mom. And now, perhaps, she’d lose Trace too.

Silvia wondered how Jordan saw her, what tells she gave off every day. She could see Jordan at nineteen and now at twenty-nine and at every age in between all at once. Jordan was each of those people and she was none of those people and Silvia could swear she herself hadn’t changed either. She was still twenty working at a diner and hating her mother for raising her so erratically, taught to value all the wrong things, but also she was a decade older and tipping into her Saturn return and life was more complicated than she ever could have imagined as a baby-faced server.

Sometimes Silvia looked at Jordan and Jordan seemed so old. And then she tucked her hair behind her ear with one finger and she was once again the teenager she’d been on the first day they met—steady and meticulous, even in her youth. Silvia wondered if this was what having siblings was like. When they’d gone out with Grace, Jordan had started telling a story about the time someone fell off a roof during a party in college. Silvia knew the story already. She was in it, having attended the party with Jordan. But she’d also heard Jordan tell the story before, to Trace, to Blake, to a coworker in Seattle. She knew when Jordan would pause, which sentences she would shorten for dramatic effect, the moment she would give backstory, context to help the listener. As Silvia heard Jordan tell the story once again to Grace, she felt a warmth blossom in her chest and spread throughout her limbs.

The night before, Jordan had made them a casserole. It was a recipe Jordan’s mom used to make for their family growing up. As they dug into their plates, Jordan’s face fell. “Oh god,” she said. “This is terrible.” She swore it had been better when she’d eaten it as a kid. She had repeated her comments as they ate the leftovers earlier that night, quickly shoveling food into their mouths before getting on the train. Silvia knew this part of families—how you listen to the same anecdotes, the same phrases, again and again, each time reacting as if it were the first. Jordan complained about the food, and Silvia realized that you can’t trust your version of the past as much as you might like. Silvia hadn’t minded the meal. It was simple, soft, warm. It felt like a hug.

Jordan adjusted her body in her seat. They had three more stops to go. Silvia checked her phone. She now had seven unread texts from Trace and a new voicemail. Each additional touchpoint overwhelmed her more. Where to even begin? She locked her phone. If Silvia was being honest with herself, she’d known that something was wrong with Trace. For months, Trace had been getting steadily quieter. She seemed stressed, and when Silvia asked, Trace always blamed it on work. It was an easy excuse. Silvia hadn’t pried further. They were both avoiding something.

The shape of Trace sat between Silvia and Jordan, made up of both Trace’s desire to be there and their avoidance of speaking about her. Trace would have ridden the train all night long. She would have traversed the five flights of stairs to Jordan’s apartment with glee. She loved New York, and yet they had still never managed to go there together. Silvia wondered if Trace was more upset that she was with Jordan right now or that she had come to Trace’s city without her.

The walk from the train was long, and Silvia could almost pretend they were somewhere else, a suburb of a midsized city maybe, as they passed a strip mall and a gas station, a darkened park. They followed a stream of people up a slight hill as the houses expanded, rising higher above them. The promise of decorations was met with abundance. The whole neighborhood glowed. On every other block sat a food truck selling hot chocolate and caramel popcorn. There were light-up toys for sale that children waved in circles and threw into the air.

They bought a hot chocolate to share, taking turns holding it to warm their hands until its temperature dropped to lukewarm. Every so often Jordan would stop in the middle of the sidewalk to Zillow an address. She’d stare intently at her phone before saying aloud in wonder, “Seven bathrooms!”

“One for every tiny dog,” Silvia said.

“Why would someone need more bathrooms than they have bedrooms?” Jordan asked as she keyed in a new address.

“Rich people like to shit in different bathrooms than they bathe in,” Silvia said. “Plus, you need a toilet for the help.”

They were standing in front of a house covered in chartreuse lights, biting into candy canes, when Jordan told Silvia that she wanted to leave New York.

“I hate it here. I hate my job.”

“Okay.” Silvia took a sip of the now-cold hot chocolate. “Why?”

“It’s expensive and dirty, and everyone is on top of each other, and no one gives a shit about you unless you have a job that can get them something. It’s not how I imagined it.”

“What did you imagine?” The question came out harsher than Silvia intended, and Jordan shifted her body, looking back towards the house, away from Silvia. “Too much,” Silvia’s mom always used to tell her. She was too much.

“I thought I could do real art here. Work on side projects, meet other photographers. Instead, I barely have time to think.”

“What about Grace?”

Jordan shrugged, stuck her candy cane in her mouth for a moment before responding. “I don’t know, it’s so early.”

“So what? If you feel something, tell her. Life is too short.” Silvia realized this was advice someone might have recently given Trace.

“I think she might be open to leaving too. We’ve talked about upstate. I just feel so trapped here. I want some place I can be outdoors and stretch without touching someone.”

As she said this, a family with a stroller and five children moved past them. One of the kids hit Silvia’s leg with a glowing wand. The father apologized and grabbed the child’s hand before he could hit Jordan too. Silvia pulled Jordan’s arm and dragged her to the curb, out of the way of the flow of people.

“I support you,” Silvia said, “whatever you want to do.” The implication of the person who might not rested heavy above them, as Silvia intended. Trace would not want Jordan to leave New York. Trace would convince Jordan to stay. Just as she had pushed Jordan to go.

Silvia felt a pulse inside her, an urgency to share something as well. She wanted to pretend like there wasn’t this glass wall cutting them off from one another. She wanted to pretend for an evening that they were just roommates again, or coworkers sharing gossip as they leaned their elbows on the counter, heads together, waiting for their table’s food to be announced by a shout and the sound of a bell. She wanted to reel Jordan towards her. Sharing secrets felt like a blood oath, a bond.

“I cheated on Trace,” Silvia said. “In the Peace Corps.”

“Alisha.”

Silvia nodded. “Only once.”

“I always kind of assumed,” Jordan said.

“Clearly Trace did too,” Silvia said. “Do you think I’m a bad person? For never admitting to it?”

“I think,” Jordan said, “that no one person can be good all the time. But that doesn’t mean they’re bad.”

Silvia wondered how many times someone could hurt other people before they tipped from good into bad. Was she close? Halfway there? Was there any way to redeem yourself?



The moon was high in the sky as they walked back to the train. It was full, about to move into a waning gibbous. It felt like a sign. The right time for a profound shift. On the train ride back, Jordan folded her body towards Silvia’s, her head leaning on Silvia’s shoulder. Her thigh pressed against Silvia’s and it sent an ache through Silvia’s entire body, as if she were one large bruise.

19

Silvia

November

Five Years to Saturn Return

They called Lesotho the Kingdom in the Sky. The whole country sat over three thousand feet above sea level. In all seasons, it was more vibrant than Silvia expected. Rolling hills and dirt paths and large smooth rocks dotted the landscape. In the summer, the grass was a vivid green that would turn a golden yellow as it cooled. Summer was Silvia’s favorite season on the southern tip of Africa. In the winter, people mostly stayed indoors to keep warm. Farmers would light the fields on fire to rejuvenate the topsoil, so the air was filled with swirls of smoke. But in the summer, the heat invigorated her. It was the wet season; she loved the dampness that collected from the humidity, beneath her arms and where her joints met. She loved the hours and hours of daylight, the amber of the mountains late at night as the sun finally set. The air smelled like rain and grass and damp hay from the thatched roofs. It smelled like newness, possibility. Silvia felt her skin darken under the pulse of the sun’s beams. Lesotho had over three hundred days of sun per year. They said there was a hole in the ozone layer somewhere over South Africa. Silvia wondered if it bled into her part of Lesotho. Summer in Lesotho, pushed deep into the sky, was where Silvia learned to breathe for the first time.



Silvia did not get a smartphone for her time in Lesotho. She told Trace and Jordan that it wasn’t possible, which was accepted with little argument, proving once again how limited Americans’ views on developing nations are. In Lesotho everyone had a cell phone. They banked by cell phone, flirted by cell phone, took pictures by cell phone, did business by cell phone. The strangest looks Silvia got from locals were not from butchering Sesotho words but when she told people she didn’t have a number they could contact her at. Silvia wanted to be disconnected. Now that she’d gotten further than she’d ever been before from everything she knew and everyone that knew her, she wanted to sink into it, let the unfamiliar wash over her, cleanse her.

But Silvia quickly tired of the shocked expressions. It proved impossible to coordinate with her other cohort members when she went into town. So she sucked it up and got a phone. It only had local service. It flipped closed and fit easily in the palm of her hand. It didn’t take pictures—she had a small red digital camera for that, a relic from her high school years. She texted using the numbered keypad and was surprised at how easily the shorthand came back to her, her fingers remembering the rhythmic counting to get to one’s chosen letter. Her sentences were short and simple. She fancied herself a modern-day Hemingway.



Deep into Silvia’s first year abroad, a weariness settled within her. Silvia figured out fairly quickly that her role was not to do any actual on-the-ground work to impact those in need in Lesotho, but to be a goodwill ambassador for the United States. In hindsight, Silvia wondered why this hadn’t occurred to her before. She was proud of her cynicism, one thing she thanked her mother for and something she and Jordan had bonded over while bitching about customers at Bob & Betty’s. Silvia was, technically, “teaching English.” What this meant in practice was that she mostly floated around the school—which consisted of three individual concrete buildings with corrugated tin roofs—sitting in the back of the classrooms while the licensed teachers ran through lessons.

The Peace Corps promise was a leg up on government jobs once they returned (which Silvia didn’t want) and an impressive résumé addition for nonprofits and international development organizations (which was slightly more appealing). Silvia was already brainstorming ways to spin her time abroad into something suitable for the American job market: Created training materials and activities for students aged five through fifteen to improve English language skills from level 1 to level 3 across two years (Silvia had been allowed to lead exactly three games since she’d started her service), Utilized superior communication skills with coworkers across cultures and language barriers (all the teachers spoke perfect English), Quick learner who excelled in language skills to become fluent in Sesotho within eighteen months (Silvia spent afternoons gossiping with the women and teenagers in her village and had recently begun to understand most of what they were saying).

Twelve months abroad and Silvia was only beginning to scratch the surface of assimilation. She would never fully get there as a white woman. Most days she lay down in the evenings, her head throbbing from the tension of translation, grasping for words and meanings. As soon as she got a handle on one Sesotho idiom, there would be another one to learn. It wasn’t only spoken language but also body language that still at times confused her. She didn’t know how to make much food aside from chunky mealie pap, which she was sick of by week five. It was strange, this shift to eating for pure hunger, no longer for any sort of pleasure. She could feel the weight slipping off her body at an alarming rate. Silvia wrote emails home, gushing about the corn she got in the city—both roasted, and boiled and seasoned. It was delicious. It was also rarely available where she lived.

The people that understood this exhaustion were those in her cohort. It was surprising to Silvia how quickly they felt like family, the ropes of their shared culture binding them tightly together from the beginning. There were two other gay people in her cohort: a tall, lanky bi man with black hair that hung past his shoulders (Max chose to never cut his hair for the entirety of service and would wash it monthly, at most), and Alisha, a long-distance runner from Tennessee whose gayness Silvia clocked the first time she walked across a room, Alisha’s shoulders leaning deep into each step. When Silvia got her phone, it was Max and Alisha she texted.

Max, Silvia, and Alisha all lived within walking distance of each other while they were training. They were the people Silvia stumbled through her first complete Sesotho sentences with. Alisha made gentle corrections. Her voice lilted in every language, and sometimes Silvia would close her eyes as Alisha spoke, let herself become washed in nostalgia for home, despite having spent little time in the South.

When their cohort all split up to move into their work assignments, Max was hours away, but Alisha was closest to Silvia—forty-five minutes by Kombi bus, in the bigger town where there were more options for food to buy and internet cafés with computers she could rent by the hour. Silvia saw Alisha nearly every weekend.



It was hard to explain to anyone back home what she was experiencing. In many ways it felt like poverty porn to write it out, even just to describe her own living arrangements. She didn’t want pity and knew her neighbors and other locals wouldn’t either. It was sobering to sink into another facet of living. Silvia spent every day trying not to remember the smell of burned flesh from the woman four doors down who got caught in a car battery fire one evening while she was cooking dinner. Car batteries were the only way to power a TV in your home. So why would she put it in an email, or spend precious moments on Skype reliving that time? But with Alisha, she didn’t have to explain. She would say the woman’s name and Alisha understood. She could tell Alisha she got sick, and Alisha would understand that meant Silvia was walking quickly to the latrine, fifteen yards behind her house, every hour, at times not quite making it.

Trace and Jordan requested details about what she was doing, but aside from adjusting to the culture, Silvia’s days were fairly empty. There was a profound amount of downtime. One of Silvia’s only forms of entertainment was a hand-cranked radio that streamed South African stations. She spent the weekends she didn’t go into town listening to music, watching the sheep and cows that passed her house during the day, staring at the exquisite sunsets over the mountains.



Alisha was so different from Trace. Looser, and somehow more forceful. It drew Silvia in. As time went on, Silvia felt more than a physical separation from Trace. Trace’s emails got shorter and less frequent. Silvia didn’t know if it was because hers in turn were short, or if it was because Trace was slowly forgetting about her as her life with Jordan expanded. They Skyped infrequently. And when they did, Trace always had a new story about Jordan. Or Jordan was there, and she watched the two of them talk to her together, alternating sentences. Her life seemed bare in comparison.

Alisha empathized. She was also in a relationship back in the States. Her girlfriend—fiancée—was in Austin. They had been on the cusp of buying a house before Alisha left. The markers of settled adulthood Alisha possessed made Silvia feel that Alisha was far older than her twenty-seven years. Whenever Silvia expressed frustrations about her relationship with Trace, Alisha would tell her about the fights she had with Michelle. It was soothing to realize how many cracks existed within other partnerships. Alisha’s hand sometimes went to Silvia’s wrist, her thumb resting on Silvia’s pulse point a moment too long. Silvia never met Alisha’s eyes in those moments, but she also didn’t pull her arm away. Her whole body became warm under Alisha’s touch. It took Silvia months too long to acknowledge the crush to herself, but once she did, she kept it tucked away inside her like the Ring of Solomon, something she could slip on when she needed a pick-me-up, to be transported to a different place, an alternate version of her life.



A year into service, their cohort regrouped in the capital for a week of retraining. Silvia had been told, early on, that the Peace Corps was full of sex, but it wasn’t until retraining that this became vividly clear. I heard that it’s a fuckfest, Max texted. Alisha sent a winky face. Silvia wished she were less excited.

The retraining consisted of all existing cohorts in Lesotho, including those newly arrived in-country and not yet jaded. The first night of training, Silvia watched a divorced fifty-year-old woman leave with her hand on the ass of a twenty-four-year-old, and she thought, Oh no. Silvia had always been very susceptible to peer pressure. She believed in experiencing things. She never wanted to be left wondering what something was like.

Two nights into training it was the three of them in Max’s room. Alisha couldn’t shut up about relationship types; she and her girlfriend were open while Alisha was gone, as was Max and his boyfriend back home.

“Do you really think it works?” she asked. “Kitchen-table polyamory, everyone just one big happy group of love and lust and communication? Seems unrealistic.”

“I’ve seen it work,” Max said. He passed Silvia a bottle of rum and a cup of juice they were using to chase with. Silvia hadn’t drunk like this since college.

“But don’t you think there’s always at least one person in that situation feeling a little off, not entirely loving the dynamic they’re in? I think someone is always lying in those groups,” Silvia said.

“I think every form of partnership is unrealistic in some way,” Alisha said.

“Okay, say more, Esther Perel,” Max said.

“I think it’s impossible to promise anyone anything.”

“How cynical of you,” Max said.

“No, I think she’s right,” Silvia said.

Silvia had never explicitly told Alisha and Max what her and Trace’s arrangement was. On three too many occasions during training, Silvia had let Alisha assume they were open as well. Now it was too late to correct her. And it made more sense than her actual promise: Nothing will change.

The bottle continued around their circle. Before Silvia knew it, she was drunk, the floor hard to push away from as she got up to go to the bathroom. Max raised his voice slightly, told them this was the last thing he’d say on nonmonogamy. Something about how monogamy should be something one chose, not assumed, and it was hard to make that choice without trying out both types, and part of Silvia thought, That’s not right, that can’t be right, I think some people know what relationship style works best for them without trying it. As she walked down the hall to the bathroom, she thought of Trace, who was supposed to be the love of her life, who sometimes loved too hard for her own good, who could only handle one person at a time.

She walked back to Max’s room with one hand on the wall and had a rush of emotion; she wished Trace were there to take her back to her room, tuck her in, feed her white pills that would stave off her hangover. Too often, Silvia got what she wanted, hating herself every step of the way, knowing somewhere deep within her that she was selfish, that her desires tended to hurt the ones she cared about the most.

She opened the door to Max’s room and saw Alisha and Max in bed. Silvia didn’t think she’d been gone that long, but Alisha’s shirt was already off, on the floor, a bright yellow pile like a dropped yolk. They pulled away from each other when Silvia walked in, but looked at her, a question. Silvia moved to the side of the bed, perched on the corner, let Alisha cover Silvia’s mouth with her own. Silvia had always wanted something like this.

It was somewhere between Max kissing Silvia’s inner thigh and Silvia’s lips surrounding Alisha’s nipple that Silvia had a realization: This was an experience she could have done without. But sex so often felt like a boulder rolling off a cliff—once set in motion, there was no way to stop it until it had run its course. It never occurred to Silvia that she had agency over these moments. She was capable of being loud, of taking up space, but with sex, she withered, becoming as people-pleasing as the next woman. For a while, she had seen this as a badge of honor—she’d try anything once—but it meant she was so focused on the other person having a good time that she had little language for her own sexual preferences.

The idea of ending sex—this sex in particular, disappointing not only one but two people she cared about—was impossible. So they forged ahead, limbs akimbo, hands questioning, faces buried into body crevices to avoid eye contact, each maybe pretending it was someone else, a stranger perhaps, or the person they were supposed to love.

When it was over, they all dispersed quickly. And though drunk, Silvia lay in bed for hours, staring at her ceiling, running over the memories from that night again and again, hoping that each time she played the tape in her mind, a little of it might disappear, so that eventually there would be nothing left.



The next day Silvia made her way to the internet café for a call Trace had requested, knowing she’d be in the city all week. Trace asked how she was and Silvia said every thought that came into her head, every memory she had, except for the one pressed tightly against the inside of her forehead, the one she saw when she closed her eyes. Alisha’s name was everywhere and it couldn’t be helped because Alisha was everywhere and Silvia saw it coming before it even happened, Trace’s face pinching tighter and tighter. Trace snapped, and Silvia snapped back. She sat at the computer, watching the emails pile up in her inbox, before she finally asked for it to stop. It felt, in this moment, easier to set a boundary, to request a stop of the communication, than to be continuously disappointed in the messages she received.



One week after she and Trace stopped talking, Silvia shaved her head.

20

Jordan

December

Saturn Is Returning

Something seemed to switch on within Silvia after they went to see the Dyker Heights Christmas lights. It was like she had been dialed up another level. Jordan woke the next morning to find her standing in the kitchen, next to a coffeepot that was half full.

“We should get you a pour-over,” Silvia said, her fingers tapping the counter.

“I like bad coffee,” Jordan said, pouring herself a cup.

“How quirky of you,” Silvia said.

Jordan glanced at her, trying to gauge her tone, but Silvia was looking across the room. Jordan opened the fridge to get creamer for her coffee.

“I was thinking about a career change,” Silvia said.

“Oh?” Jordan said. Silvia had talked about this every year or so since she’d been at the café. The service industry was what she knew, where she was comfortable. She’d started as a barista once she got back from Lesotho, then she became a shift lead, then assistant manager, and now manager. In February, she’ll have been there four years. Jordan knew Silvia loved the café. She loved her regulars, she loved hosting events and surprising customers with seasonal baked goods. But it never seemed to be enough for her.

“Like, maybe I could go back to school and do architecture.”

“Okay,” Jordan said.

“Or there are these boot camp programs.” Silvia set her coffee down. “For graphic design you just have to learn this one piece of software and you can get a job basically anywhere.”

“Do you want an office job?”

“I don’t know. Consistency might be nice.” Silvia looked at Jordan’s film camera hanging on a hook by the door. She picked it up. “Or I could be a little photographer too,” she said. She held the camera up to her face. “Look cute!” she instructed, as she pressed the shutter, capturing Jordan walking towards her, hand outstretched, trying to tell her how to set the aperture and shutter speed correctly for indoors. The picture would likely turn out black.

“You know, you don’t have to be an artist,” Jordan said. It slipped out.

“Excuse me?” Silvia said.

“I mean—” Jordan started.

“You meant to be a bitch. Got it. Thanks, Jordan.” Silvia walked out of the room, tossing Jordan’s camera on the couch as she went, a move that made Jordan wince.



There was a tendon in Jordan’s neck that tensed, the tightening a reminder each day that something was needed from her at work. It was Christmas Eve, but the day before she’d gotten a text from her boss about the shoot. They wanted the work edited by the end of the week. She would have to put a few hours in that afternoon, perhaps even the next day, in order to hit the deadline. No never seemed to be an option. She’d worked more weekends since moving to New York than when she’d been at the diner. It was supposed to be a dream job, something she’d always wanted. The anxiety she felt was at odds with her expectations. More than a year in, it was becoming harder and harder to rationalize her move to New York. Was she happier? How did one even define happiness?

Jordan had never thought that deeply about work. She went to McCallen to try out something new. The goal was just to get through that, claim the diploma, perhaps learn something she enjoyed. They had a darkroom at McCallen that Jordan found herself alone in many a night, her phone on a desk outside, lighting up with Where are you? texts from Trace. Though Trace complained about Jordan’s disappearances, she loved the pictures that were produced as a result, and began identifying herself as Jordan’s muse. Once they’d gotten together, both Silvia and Trace were her muses.

Jordan had rolls and rolls of film with their silvery faces reflected, bodies intertwined. They took her to all the tourist spots in Seattle before Silvia went to Lesotho, and she captured it all—Trace sitting on the edge of the wall in Kerry Park, Silvia in her lap with an arm around Trace, looking into Trace’s eyes, not the camera, as the Space Needle rose up behind them; Silvia smelling a flower in Pike Place Market, her eyes closed, a blur of buds behind her head, Trace standing slightly out of frame, her hand on Silvia’s lower back. Jordan had been the personal photographer of their early adulthood. It felt like a gift she’d been given, to have friends so comfortable in front of a camera.

There was one picture from Mount St. Helens that was Jordan’s favorite. It was much later, after everything had fallen apart and seemingly been repaired again. Trace was preparing to propose when the three of them took a day trip out of the city. Trace and Silvia were standing on the blast line near the mountain. Lush vegetation spread out in front of them, the background a wash of baby trees, patches of green, life that had been trying to return for decades. The day was long. It took over three hours just to get there—the same as the distance between Seattle and Portland. They left an hour late and had to pull off the highway twice for someone to use the bathroom at a gas station. Trace had made them sandwiches with moldy bread, which Silvia dumped in a trash can next to the pumps. On the way back home, they stopped at the first restaurant they saw and ordered half the menu. The three of them didn’t get back to the apartment until after nine that night. In the picture, Silvia has her hand on her hip, and she’s squinting against the sun to look towards Jordan. She’s wearing bike shorts and a sports bra, her hair wrapped up in a beige, maroon, and navy-blue scarf. Trace is next to her, wearing a big T-shirt and basketball shorts. She’s turned slightly towards Silvia, half smiling, one dimple blinking at the camera. Her hand is partially raised, as if she’s about to brush something off Silvia’s face. Jordan remembered seeing them that day, how Silvia didn’t even get disgruntled about the sandwiches, even though Jordan could hear her stomach from the back of the car, how neither of them raised their voices even though they got lost three times, and she thought: They’re going to make it. The pictures represented love to Jordan. It was an ideal she coveted for herself, however quietly. The reality, now, that they actually might not make it, was jarring. A deep disappointment for her own heart. It warped Jordan’s worldview.

Jordan felt pulled out of the city more and more each day. When she thought about never returning to Hudson Yards, a weight lifted off her chest. The money didn’t really matter, she was finally close to paying off her loans now; as long as she had enough for food and rent, it would be okay. To never get an email from work again after five p.m. would make it all worth it. Maybe she’d be able to fall asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow. Maybe she’d wake up without her temples already throbbing.



Silvia stayed in Nicole’s room the rest of the morning. In the early afternoon, Jordan heard the squeak of the hinges. Jordan was sitting on her bed, computer in her lap, when she saw Silvia walk past her door into the kitchen. Silvia selected an apple from the bowl on the counter, and then sat on the couch facing Jordan’s door. It was an invitation.

Jordan closed her laptop and walked into the living room, sitting on the other couch. She moved her camera to the side.

“I’m sorry,” Jordan said.

Silvia didn’t say anything, but her eyes moved towards Jordan. She took a bite of her apple.

“What I meant was that you have all these other skills—you’re so great with customers, you’re incredible at organizing, at directing a group of people. Remember Blake’s play in college? She said you were the best stage manager she’d ever had. There are so many ways to be creative that are separate from actually making the art.”

Silvia swallowed her bite and took another.

“Sometimes,” Jordan said, “I worry that you devalue the skills that you have, that so many other people would covet. Including me.”

The hand that Silvia held the apple with dropped to her lap.

“Artists need people like you to support them, to give them more purpose and structure, to shepherd their work into the world. The things that you do are so important—think about the painter whose work you have at the café right now. Didn’t you say that was her first showing? You did that. You made her year.” Jordan looked down. “And honestly, being an artist isn’t all that great.”

Silvia reached her hand out then, giving Jordan the apple. Jordan took a bite.

When Silvia spoke, her voice was quiet but strong. “If I give up on this, does it mean I’m a failure?”

“Does it mean I’m a failure if I get fired?”

Silvia didn’t say anything.

“Failure is how you figure out who you are,” Jordan said. “Also, artists are fucking annoying.” She handed the apple back to Silvia.

“Okay,” Silvia said, staring intently at the fruit.

It had always been like this with Silvia. She burned bright but went out fast. They’d only ever had minor disagreements, small spats or frustrations. Except for the years after Silvia came back from Africa. Then, Jordan was furious at both Silvia and Trace.

Jordan feared how Silvia might react when she found out about Trace’s confession. Would she see it as a betrayal on Jordan’s part? Silvia prized loyalty. Would Silvia keep someone she couldn’t trust in her life? She looked at Silvia on the couch. The late-afternoon sun coming in from Jordan’s room lit up her splay of curls across the cushions. Jordan reached over and grabbed her camera. She leaned back, spun the dials on the lens, adjusted the focus, and popped the shutter.



When Jordan woke up Christmas morning, Silvia was already awake. There was a fire flickering on the TV, hot chocolate in a pot on the stove. They ate pancakes Silvia had dropped tiny frozen blueberries into and opened presents purchased at CVS the evening before. Nat King Cole played in the background as Jordan unwrapped a pair of bright blue fuzzy slippers and Silvia pulled a thick red scarf out of her gift bag.

“You didn’t come prepared for a New York winter,” Jordan explained.

Silvia put a hand to her forehead in mock salute. “Yes, Mom.”

The night before, Trace had left another voicemail for Jordan. Jordan was scared to open it. She wondered if Silvia had one too.

Then they FaceTimed with Jordan’s mom. Jordan hadn’t told her mom Silvia was in town, and she watched her mom’s face carefully as their bodies filled the screen. Cynthia’s torso angled back from her computer as she took them in, her processing stance. Jordan knew it well; it was etched into her memories from a young age. She could see through the smile her mother pulled across her face, the questions underneath.

“Silvia!” she said. “What a surprise! Is Trace there too?”

“No, she actually went home to Kansas this year,” Silvia answered, her voice so steady Jordan was taken aback. She hadn’t realized the ease with which Silvia could lie. “Her sister asked her to come, and it had been a while.”

This last part was not untrue. Olivia always asked Trace to come for the holidays, but Trace usually declined. “Not until they are willing to call Silvia my girlfriend and future wife,” Trace would tell Olivia. Perhaps that was the way to get away with lying, Jordan thought, to tell half truths the whole time.

As soon as Cynthia had been assured of Trace’s whereabouts, she launched into her plans for the holiday. She was spending it with friends. There would be a potluck. She had made a marionberry pie. Had Silvia ever tried one of her pies before? Oh, of course, she forgot, she made one every Christmas. (Cynthia Caleb was very proud of her pies.) She wanted to hear about every second of their Christmas morning. What had they done on Christmas Eve? How long had Silvia been there? Would she go back for New Year’s Eve? Or would Trace join them? It was an onslaught of questions and answers from Cynthia before Jordan and Silvia could even jump in. And still, despite all there was to say, all there was to ask, it only took thirteen minutes for Jordan’s mom to bring up her dead sister.

“Well,” Cynthia said, “if Summer were still here, she could have come with me to this party. She always loved marionberry pie the best. She was so optimistic, that girl. Even if it were just the two of us, she would have made it feel like a party Christmas morning.”

Jordan’s face already ached from holding her smile. She watched herself mirrored back on the little box, ensuring her features stayed pleasant. She was so fucking tired of it, listening to her mom talk about Summer, dead for fifteen years now, nearly longer than she’d even been alive. Jordan’s mom was still going on about her, telling Silvia how incredible Summer had been as cheer captain—a narrative Jordan was sure Silvia had already heard from countless holidays with her family. She was so motivating, Jordan’s mom said, such an accomplished leader, even as a junior.

Jordan stood up and left the room. She could hear her mother pause on the call, in the silence Jordan read the debate in her mother’s mind: whether to check in on the daughter who was still alive or continue her ode to the one she’d lost. Jordan shut her door and lay down on her bed, clenching her fists at her side as she stared at the ceiling. Her phone buzzed a few minutes later. Hey honey, hope everything’s alright. Silvia said you had to run to the bathroom? I know there is a bad bug going around here, it’s probably in New York too. Jordan picked up her phone, hands stiff, shaking, as if she’d just lifted too much weight, and stabbed her thumbs at the screen. I’m sorry I wasn’t the one who died mom. I’m sorry I’m the only one you have left. She pressed the blue arrow and sent the message across the country and then threw her phone into the corner. It landed with a thud. She hoped the screen had cracked.

A tentative knock sounded at the door a while later. Silvia opened it an inch “I come bearing gifts.”

“You may enter.”

Silvia pushed the door open, holding a bottle of wine in one hand and two glasses in the other, upside down. The barrels of the glasses lightly bounced against each other, emitting a soft ring. She sat on the edge of Jordan’s bed.

“I said something cunty to her,” Jordan said.

“What did you say?” Silvia handed Jordan a glass of wine, which she balanced on her stomach, holding on to it with one hand. It rose and fell with her breath as she told Silvia about the text.

“Yeah, that was pretty cunty.” Silvia shrugged. “But I think you kind of sign up for that when you become a parent. They fuck us up, so we get to be cunts to them sometimes. It’s a fair trade. My mom really got out of it easy, now that I think about it.”

Jordan didn’t respond.

“Drink your wine,” Silvia said, flicking the side of Jordan’s glass so a hollow peal filled the room.

Jordan sat up, cradling her glass in both hands.

“It’s going to be okay,” Silvia reassured her. “She will forgive you. All will be well.” Jordan nodded. “But it might be a good idea to talk to her about the Summer stuff.”

“You sound like a therapist.”

“Well, maybe I should go back to school and become one. It’s important to talk about tough things with people who matter.”

Jordan tilted her head back and drained her glass as Trace’s words rang in her head on a loop—I love you Jordan I love you Jordan I love you Jordan.

21

Silvia

May

Four Years to Saturn Return

Silvia had thought about shaving her head for months before doing it. She had spent a year struggling to wash her hair, waiting weeks until it was stringy with grease before she was finally willing to bend over the bucket of water, back aching and then rippling with pain, her torso shaking with the weight of her damp strands. It wasn’t unique to see one’s hair as an extension of oneself. As a person who was socialized female in America, Silvia was not naive to the fact that there was a capitalist bent to this. The more a woman’s hair mattered, the more products could be sold to women, to volumize and glisten and smooth and curl and straighten and pull back, pin up, knot, and twist. The longer your hair, the more options one had for arrangement, the more feminine the presentation. Silvia leaned into this happily; for nearly two decades her hair had swung to just above the curve of her ass. Silvia liked keeping people guessing; there was a dissonance in being so gay and presenting high femme that Silvia found satisfying.

Before Silvia left Seattle, she threw almost every product in her medicine cabinet away. She thought it would be liberating. Instead, it had turned her curls into a rat’s nest. She felt her hair matting within months. Horrified at the prospect of becoming a white Peace Corps girl who returned to the States with dreads, she spent hours with a comb pulling the knots apart.

One thing Silvia had immediately clocked upon arriving in Lesotho was how most women’s hair was shaved down to the smooth roundness of their skulls. She found herself admiring the swoosh of bone structure. When she moved out of her host family’s house and into the village she’d spend the next two years in, she understood that the women considered most beautiful were the ones who were unencumbered by hair. They stood taller, their shoulders squared, their eyes pointed towards the horizon line, not the ground. It was so easy to morph her version of pretty. Like switching coats for the transition of seasons, Silvia aligned herself with a different cultural standard of attractiveness.



It was five months after the night with Max and Alisha that it happened. Alisha had tried to sleep with Silvia again on her own, but Silvia had said no. She had worried that Alisha would pull away from her due to the rejection, but Alisha didn’t seem to care. Silvia still visited her in the city on weekends. They’d climb the mountain nearby and drink beer and look over the valley spread out below them.

It was a Friday night and Silvia was planning to travel to the city the next day. She was at the school late, alone. No one was outside; it was nearly winter and the day was especially cold.

The principal of the school walked into the classroom. He was someone she had been warned about early on by the women in the village. For over a year, she had avoided being alone with him. He walked towards her, asked her what she was doing, why she was there so late. Silvia was friendly, as you must be with scary men. She told him about the game she was preparing for the following week, showed him the letters she’d cut out in colorful paper. He came close, too close, and Silvia could smell the alcohol on him. He must have already been at the pub. Men in her village gathered there to drink home-brewed beer. Silvia never went to the pub. It wasn’t appropriate for women to be seen with drunk men.

Silvia tried to pack up her things and leave, but he stood in her way. He was slow, quiet, almost meticulous. It had none of the brutality she would have expected. She could have screamed; she probably should have. But then the fear: What if still no one came?

The first thought that ran through her mind was this: It was her own fault. By shaving her head she’d conformed to beauty standards in Lesotho. She’d made herself more appealing to local men. Even in a different country, pandering to the male gaze.

His hands were everywhere and her body was still. She didn’t understand how she wasn’t moving, pushing his arms away, running outside. He showed himself to her and she shut her eyes, willing the moment to end. When he left the room, it was as slowly as he came. He smiled at her, said good night, like they were friends.

She didn’t go see Alisha the next day. For days she hardly left the safety of her home, keeping her door locked aside from her trips to the bathroom. She told the teacher in charge of her classroom that she was sick, and a woman who lived next door to Silvia brought food by in a plastic container.



To some extent, Silvia had been waiting her whole life for this to happen. For some man to take something from her that she hadn’t consented to give. It was something one had to anticipate when existing in a female-presenting body: to be ground down under the heel of men, to receive the force of their rage.

At one point in Silvia’s life, she had offered herself to men, possibly in anticipation of this very moment. It disgusted her now to think of the times she got purposefully drunk, spread her legs on dirty mattresses for boys hardly into their adulthood. She had been pretending to be in control. Women were never in control. They bent, physically and metaphorically, to the will of men. It was only getting worse. As men lost power, they gripped harder to the authority they still had left. It was sexual. It was violent.



Some people from Silvia’s cohort had gone home early. She hadn’t realized until touching down in Lesotho how many people didn’t serve their full term. After it happened, Silvia started having trouble sleeping. She took long naps in the late afternoon while the sun still shone, but stayed awake long past midnight, her ears picking up every rustle of the wind, every creak in the hinges of the doors in the village. She had trouble eating. She felt desperate to admit defeat, but found that her pride prevented her from doing so. Another mess waited for her back home in America. She had cut Trace off. She could feel Jordan’s disappointment in the careful phrasing of their emails back and forth. Silvia could tell the head of her program what happened, but they’d probably just move her to another village and she’d have to start from scratch, building friendships and trust in the community all over again. During training, there had been a section on preventing sexual assault. The accountability was hers. She’d neglected her responsibilities. And so, Silvia stayed. She kept her head down when the principal came to class. She made sure she always put people between them.



Afterwards, Silvia finally got an iPhone. She needed something to occupy her as she sat in her home alone. The quiet was deafening. And there was a promise of safety in its ability to capture sound, video, its capacity to quickly make an emergency call.

On her birthday, she sent an email to Trace: I’m sorry. I miss you. When Trace responded to Silvia’s email after so many months of no contact, it felt to Silvia like she had been caught by a net after being pushed off a cliff. Trace was always there waiting for her. Silvia was so relieved, she didn’t fully register the prick of guilt deep within her gut.



She returned to the States in late fall, just in time for the holidays. It was difficult; everything was familiar but she felt so disoriented. The buildings downtown loomed above her. It took her months to feel comfortable walking below them. At night she didn’t sleep. She didn’t bother to readjust to the new time zone. It felt more comfortable to be awake, alone, in the apartment, than to be with Trace and Jordan, to be reminded of the gulf that now sat between them.

The panic attacks were terrifying. The first one was in a grocery store. She’d gone with Trace and Jordan on a Sunday morning. It was two weeks after she’d come home. Mariah Carey played over the speakers. Green and red and silver and gold were everywhere, and the aisles seemed to stretch out to infinity. She gaped at the quantity of food, at first simply overwhelmed, and then suddenly realized she couldn’t breathe. It felt like it would never end. She clawed at her throat, gasping for air.

The first time Trace undressed her, Silvia cried, tears collecting silently on the pillow beneath her as Trace’s hands moved across her skin. When Trace finally noticed, she stopped, wrapped Silvia in a blanket, held Silvia against her chest. This only made Silvia cry harder. Trace’s affection felt unwarranted after all Silvia had done. She couldn’t get rid of the memories of Alisha and Max; they spiraled in her head along with the feeling of the principal’s hands on her body. Silvia choked on Trace’s affection. It felt both like too much and not enough.

After the initial adjustment, being back in America felt somewhat akin to putting on a well-worn pair of sneakers; there was softness now where calluses had grown over. She remembered how to speak about aspects of her personal life with less wariness. She was taken aback at how easy seeing a doctor was. It was a relief to communicate in a language that asked for no additional mental effort.

In many ways, Silvia felt like she had failed at the Peace Corps. She thought of her former coworker, Clara, who’d eagerly sat down with Silvia three years before to share her experience. She was blunt, but enthusiastic. She wanted everyone to have the adventure she’d had. Silvia did not want that. If anyone had asked her about it seriously, she would not have advised them to apply. Many former Peace Corps workers went on to work for the State Department or USAID. But Silvia knew she probably wouldn’t live abroad again, not without more support, more infrastructure, more safety. She kept this information close to her chest. She knew how it might be perceived if she revealed how grateful she was for the ease of being American, or even just being able to call the country she lived in her own.



It was a Sunday in early March the first time Trace and Jordan took Silvia back to the Rose.

“This is how Jor and I beat the Sunday scaries,” Trace said to Silvia as they walked down Pike.

“The Sunday what?” she asked, and Jordan and Trace both laughed.

They now lived far from their old neighborhood. The Rose had been an initial draw to Capitol Hill—a local dyke bar, a place you could hang out and drink with the likes of Sue Bird and Megan Rapinoe. Silvia and Trace had intended to be regulars, but they only went a couple times their first summer in Seattle. Trace and Jordan had created their own routines without her. It hurt more than Silvia might have expected, even though she had been the one to leave.

They sat at a rickety table near the front windows, Trace and Silvia on one side, Jordan across from them. Trace went to the bar and ordered, returning to the table with the bartender, a short butch in her forties with a fat carabiner clipped to her shorts. Trace introduced her but Silvia was distracted, thinking about how she needed to find a job, how Trace was paying for her beer, for all her food, for their rent. She missed the bartender’s name.

“Nice to meet you, Silvia,” the bartender said. “You’ve got one dedicated girl here. Everyone wanted to know her name, but she only talked about you.”

Silvia didn’t say anything in response. She thought about Max’s mouth. Alisha’s hands. She thought the bartender was hot, felt an urge to follow her behind the bar, press her up against the half-empty bottles. Silvia ran a finger down the length of her beer, collecting condensation. They were drinking Coronas, lime wedges stuffed in the necks of the bottles. She met Jordan’s eyes across the table, saw concern there, so Silvia smiled, winked once, trying to assuage any worries.

Trace put an arm around Silvia’s shoulders as the bartender walked away. “I tried to send all those girls Jordan’s way,” she said, nodding in Jordan’s direction.

The moment felt awkward. Perhaps only to Silvia. Trace’s arm felt heavy on her body. She wanted to shake it off. Silvia looked back at Jordan, said, “How are the girls in Seattle, Jordan? Are you dating?”

“Barely,” Trace said.

“Trace,” Silvia said, hitting her shoulder.

Jordan shrugged. “I’ve been on a few dates.”

“But you’ve never made it past a third date,” Trace said.

“Would you let her talk?”

“I don’t know that that’s true,” Jordan said. “A relationship just isn’t my priority right now.”

“Come on, you don’t want what we have? I don’t believe it.” Trace looked over at Silvia for confirmation. Silvia remembered the feeling of Alisha’s lips. At first, she had been excited, she’d thought so many times about kissing Alisha. It made her sick now to think of it. Was the principal her karma for cheating? For trying to have her cake and eat it too? Silvia tried to smile back at Trace, but it felt forced.

“Let’s see who you’ve matched with. I’m sure you’ve figured out your type by now,” Trace said. Trace took Jordan’s phone out of her hands. They all had each other’s passcodes.

Silvia looked out the window, saw a man across the street in the nook of a building, body covered in blankets. This was by far the most dissonant part of her return. The inequality was overwhelming. It seemed impossible that people who drove $80,000 cars could walk by someone like this and not give him a second glance. They went out of their way to pretend he wasn’t there. They probably had five extra dollars. They probably had a hundred. They could afford to buy him a meal, some hand warmers, a night in a hotel.

Trace was scrolling through Jordan’s matches, opening messages from girls.

“This girl is cute. And she thinks you are too! Oh my god, this is from October. Jor, you really gotta stay on top of your apps, girl.” Trace turned the phone slightly towards Silvia for her to see a girl with straight brunette hair wearing loose shorts and Birkenstocks.

“She’s cute,” Silvia said.

“You have to respond,” Trace said.

“I will,” Jordan promised.

“Let’s do it now. Come on, I’ll help.” Trace had picked the phone back up and was moving her thumbs across the screen.

Across the bar, two girls were sitting on one side of a table together. Their heads were close. Silvia could tell it was early on, their movements not quite comfortable around each other, consent not yet fully clear. She missed it. She wanted the elation of a first kiss with a new crush. New memories would cover the old ones. New bodies could help her escape the past.

“Trace, please don’t,” Silvia heard Jordan say.

“It’ll take two seconds,” Trace said.

“Trace,” Jordan said.

Maybe they could change things. Maybe if Trace had someone else too, Silvia would be able to settle into the relationship again. Oftentimes, Alisha had said, being with other people helped you to realize what you already had. It could be a reset. A way to help them communicate better.

She hadn’t told Trace about the principal. Trace was an action girl. She would want Silvia to report it. Silvia had no intention of telling anyone what happened. Not even Alisha and Max.

“Trace, give it back.”

Silvia heard a screech. She looked over to see Jordan standing, chair pushed back, her phone now back in her own hands, fingers wrapped tightly around it.

“I said stop,” Jordan said.

Silvia realized she’d missed something.

“I’m going to the bathroom,” Jordan said.

Jordan walked to the back of the bar.

“She’s so private, that girl,” Trace said.

Silvia saw, then, that there was something not quite right between Trace and Jordan. For two years she had thought about them getting closer, she had worried about their bond strengthening without her. But maybe the three of them needed each other. Maybe Silvia’s role here was important. Maybe she was actually essential.

22

Trace

May

Three Years to Saturn Return

They were eating dinner on the couch one Wednesday night that spring when Silvia asked the question.

“Can we make time for a check-in this weekend?” she said between bites of butter chicken. Her tone was casual, light.

It had been over five weeks since their last one. They were due.

Trace smiled and stuck her fork through a piece of chicken. “Absolutely, babe.”

Check-ins were a new facet of their relationship, one they’d discussed before Silvia even returned. Regular touching base, clear communication, transparency, trust. They started “checking in” over Skype while Silvia was finishing her service—which gave Trace the consistency she’d been craving. It was the healthiest they’d ever been. Trace’s therapist told her they’d been making “positive strides” over the past few months, and Trace beamed as if she’d been given an A on a test. She’d always been a teacher’s pet.

While Silvia was still in Lesotho, Trace shared her desire for more regular communication outside of their face-to-face sessions. Silvia had gotten an iPhone by then, and after Trace’s request, she almost immediately began messaging Trace more often. She shared tidbits of gossip from her town, pictures of her home, or herself—though the selfies were shocking for Trace to see, her skin shrunken, the angles of her face sharp, her hair gone. For some reason, a picture—something she could hold and stare at and didn’t have to respond to—drove home what video had not: Silvia had changed, morphed into something almost unrecognizable. It terrified Trace. The only salve: more pictures, more messages, more proof that Trace was still wanted.

On one check-in that first winter Silvia was back, she told Trace that it would mean a lot to her if Trace could make her tea in the morning. A bag of herbs, in a cup filled with hot water—such a simple thing for Trace to provide in order to make Silvia feel taken care of. Trace eagerly complied and found that the look on Silvia’s face each morning gave Trace more joy than the tea probably did for Silvia, and that was when Trace vowed to keep saying yes to Silvia for the rest of her life.



Silvia had come back different. Her skin was darker and smoother, and her face was even more striking in person without the weight of her hair. The first time Trace took Silvia’s clothes off again, she was shocked to be able to see the small peak of Silvia’s hip bone jutting out of her skin. Silvia shook that night, and Trace, confused, held her. Maybe Silvia’s body also needed time, needed readjusting.

Trace began cooking pasta in rich, creamy sauces multiple times per week. On Friday nights Trace ordered a feast of pizza for the three of them to devour. Silvia was in front of her but there was something off, something Trace couldn’t fully see, like the dark side of the moon. No matter what direction she came at Silvia from, she couldn’t access it. Perhaps filling Silvia’s stomach, returning Silvia’s body to its natural state, might reveal whatever was missing. She was a bit quieter than Trace remembered, not as quick to smile. Her laugh, when it came, more of a soft ring than a shout.

One month slipped by, then two, then three. Slowly, the culture shock wore off. Her eyes became bright again. She spent a night with Jordan on their porch, talking loudly enough that the neighbors complained the next day. In late April, Trace walked past Silvia in the kitchen and she pinched Trace’s ass hard enough to leave a bruise, and Trace thought, She’s back. But it wasn’t until several weeks later, the night they had the conversation, that Trace realized they hadn’t actually had sex since Silvia had returned. Silvia’s hands on Trace, yes. But their relationship, once reciprocal, had become one sided.



Saturday night, when they had their check-in, Silvia used the same mug Trace had made her English breakfast in that morning, to make herself a second cup of tea, this time peppermint.

“Do you want tea?” Silvia asked Trace. The sun was beginning to set, throwing slashes of light across their living room wall, filling the apartment with a warm glow. Trace stood in the door to the kitchen, watching Silvia open the drawer to remove a tiny spoon for honey. Silvia was both more precise in her movements now and more relaxed, somehow each day more beautiful than the one before. Her hair was growing out fluffy on the top of her head, like the plumage of a baby bird.

“Nah,” Trace said. “I’m going to have a brew.” She headed towards the fridge and then saw the look that passed across Silvia’s face and pivoted to the counter. “Actually, tea sounds great.”

“Honey?”

“Yes, honey,” Trace said.

Silvia smiled and it eased the dread that had started to rise deep within Trace.

Silvia carried the mugs of tea into the living room and sat on the couch, one foot tucked underneath her. She grabbed Trace’s hand as soon as Trace sat down next to her. Silvia’s thumb smoothed small circles on the center of Trace’s palm.

“Do you want to go first?” Silvia asked.

It felt so formal, but Trace played along. She was saying yes to Silvia, she reminded herself. Yes, yes, yes. Trace was feeling great about the relationship, she said. She loved that they made dinner together. She loved their pizza nights with Jordan. She felt it was important they continue to date each other—could they plan a date for the next week? Perhaps the new Asian fusion place on Queen Anne? Silvia nodded the entire time Trace was speaking, her eyes fixed on their hands.

“Thank you for sharing all that, Trace,” Silvia said. The language was wrong. Her thumb hadn’t stopped moving, and it suddenly felt like she was trying to wear a hole through Trace’s skin. “Let’s go to that restaurant on Thursday night, okay?”

Trace nodded and adjusted their hands, threading her fingers through Silvia’s. “Your turn,” she said.

“I feel very happy with you,” Silvia started, and Trace could hear the but stalled in the back of her throat, even as she went on to talk about how pleased it made her that Trace had tea waiting for her in the morning and kissed her eyelids while she was sleeping and gave her space to have time with Jordan alone. Trace’s stomach turned as she waited for the list to end, for Silvia to get to the third question.

“There is one thing I’ve been thinking about that I wanted to talk through with you.” Silvia paused, but Trace said nothing, so she continued. “Have you heard of ENM?”

“The music genre?”

Silvia laughed, but the conversation already didn’t seem funny. “No. It stands for ethical nonmonogamy.”

Trace was suddenly very aware of her body. She could feel her own pulse behind her knee, Silvia’s pulse between her fingers. “Oh.” Trace had seen it before, on dating app profiles when she was swiping for Jordan. Bios would read: partnered, open, nonmonog, poly, solo-poly, or just those three brutal letters: ENM. They were always slipped in at the end, as if the person hoped they might be missed, or misinterpreted. Jordan seemed to feel the same misgivings that Trace did about anything other than monogamy, and Trace always swiped left on those profiles.

When Trace imagined someone else putting their hands on Silvia’s body, making Silvia cry out in pleasure, she felt faint.

“I am not interested in sharing you,” Trace said, her voice too loud. Silvia’s face registered surprise, and it felt like a betrayal to Trace that Silvia had assumed this conversation would go any other way.

“I don’t want to be in an open relationship,” Trace clarified. “I’m sorry if I gave you any impression that this is something I would want. But I really don’t. All I want is you.”

Trace had known this check-in would be different. She wasn’t sure what she expected, but there was a part of her, a very small part, that thought they might discuss the next steps for their relationship. An escalation forward. An assurance. Maybe Silvia had bought a ring abroad, forged out of African steel, with an African diamond she would ensure was ethical. Perhaps Silvia had been imagining it on Trace’s finger for over a year, thinking of Trace even while they weren’t talking. Silvia had needed the space only because she was scared.

Instead, a wider crack. A step backwards. A fall down a well.

“You did not at all give me that impression,” Silvia said. “But being away for so long, and even the ups and downs we went through over those couple of years, gave me a lot of time to reflect on our relationship and what wasn’t really working.”

“You think monogamy isn’t working for us?”

“I’m not sure monogamy is a realistic expectation anymore,” Silvia said, meeting Trace’s gaze for the first time in the conversation. They were no longer touching. Trace didn’t remember pulling her hands away from Silvia’s, but they now sat bunched together in her lap. Her body was warm, the sweatshirt she had on too much material, thick against the world. Trace thought about how Silvia wouldn’t let Trace touch her. She wondered if there was something wrong with her, if Silvia needed more now. Trace wasn’t enough.

“Is there something you need to tell me? Is this about Alisha? Did something happen while you were gone?”

“Do you want to talk about that right now, Trace? We can.”

Trace went to pick up her mug of tea from the coffee table but set it down again when she realized her hands were shaking. To lose just a piece of Silvia felt worse than losing Silvia entirely. What if all the pieces eventually slipped through Trace’s fingers?

When Trace thought about dying, she always wanted it to be instant—get hit by a train or a bus, car accident, a dramatic fall, or a plane plummeting from the sky. It would be better to not see it coming than to perish from something like cancer, long and drawn out, inevitable but never vocalized. Nonmonogamy would be a tumor in their relationship. Growing. Spreading. Malignant.

“If you want to break up with me, just do it,” Trace said.

Silvia’s response was clear: “I do not want to break up.” Trace saw frustration beneath her placid demeanor.

When they first met, Silvia had seemed so elusive to Trace. For the first year of their relationship, Trace had always questioned Silvia’s interest in her, while simultaneously being unendingly grateful for it. For so long it was impossible to forget Silvia’s initial rejection. Her disappearance. Even after Trace found out about Silvia’s mom. Even after they were living together. Even after Silvia told Trace the sex was the best she’d ever had. That reassurance seemed so juvenile now. As if sex were everything. Trace treated fucking like it was. She worshipped Silvia’s body, tried to outdo herself. Silvia was the one who frequently made them stop. “I’m tired, you’ve worn me out,” she’d say, and Trace would feel as if she’d won the right to another few days of Silvia’s affection. But now Silvia was saying sex with one person would never be enough. One person—Trace—could never satisfy her.

“Why do you need to do this?” Trace asked. There was a book sitting in Silvia’s lap. Trace wondered where it had come from. Had she stashed it by the couch earlier, specifically for this conversation? The spine read The Ethical Slut. It felt outdated. All sluttiness was enthusiastically supported now.

“Need feels like the wrong word,” Silvia said. “I think it’s healthy to learn about other types of relationships instead of defaulting to the norm. I trust our stability now. I think this is something we should try. It could be a good way to grow. And I just think—” Silvia stopped. “I think this might be a way to make sure we both get what we actually desire. I want you to experience anything you’re interested in, lean into any urges you have.”

“Is this because you don’t want me to fuck you anymore? You want someone else?” Silvia had continued pushing Trace’s hands away from her in bed until, at some point, Trace had finally stopped trying.

“I don’t want anyone else,” Silvia said. “But I also don’t want to hold you back.”

Trace marveled at Silvia’s ability to remain calm. Her voice was level and measured. To some extent this had always been the case, but it had become more pronounced since she’d returned from abroad. Silvia seemed stilted, her edges buffed out, as if she’d gone on a two-year meditation retreat. It was off. Silvia was a muted version of herself.

Trace felt like she had no control over her emotions. They came exploding out of her before she could even begin to figure out why. Next to Silvia she sometimes felt like a petulant child. It only infuriated her more. Trace drew her eyes to the ceiling. She would not allow herself to cry in front of Silvia.

“I only want to experience things with you,” Trace said. Her body screamed at her: She doesn’t want you anymore. “Are you bored with me?” There must be things Silvia wanted to try that she didn’t trust Trace with. After all this time.

Silvia put a hand on Trace’s thigh, oozing condescension. “Babe, no, that’s not it. I wanted to show you this book, I think there’s some really great stuff in here that will help you understand. It’s about way more than just the physical.”

Silvia removed her hand to flip the book open across her thighs, pointing out dog-eared sections she thought Trace should read first. Trace’s leg felt cold where Silvia’s fingers had pressed into her skin moments before. Trace would take being condescended to over being abandoned. At least one was a form of caring. Her blood hummed in her veins. She felt pulses in the fold of her stomach, above her right elbow, next to her ankle.

Trace had spent years building her life around Silvia. She had only come to Seattle for Silvia. She stepped away from her family because she had the safety of Silvia. To lose Silvia would leave Trace completely unmoored. She resisted an urge to infantilize herself—curl into a ball, cry out for attention and affection. Silvia might give it to her, but she would not take this conversation back. Trace remembered the promise she’d made to herself: Yes, yes, yes. Silvia was her person. She could not let Silvia go.

“I—I need you to stop,” Trace said. She bent her head and rubbed a hand across her face. “I need some time to digest this.” She stood up from the couch.

“Babe,” Silvia said.

“Don’t call me that,” Trace snapped, and Silvia looked as if she’d been slapped. Trace felt a shimmer of satisfaction as she walked into their bedroom and closed the door behind her.



Trace couldn’t sleep that night. She tried, Silvia lying motionless and silent next to her. They hadn’t spoken the rest of the evening. It was something Trace hated about Silvia—how respectful she was about giving space when all Trace wanted was for someone to run after her.

Trace had turned over to face the wall when Silvia entered their room. Hours later she found herself staring at the ceiling, unable to quiet her thoughts, exhausted, frustrated, sad. Trace had so many plans for Silvia’s first year back. Pride was coming up. Swims in Lake Washington. Day trips to islands. Ferry rides. Bumbershoot over Labor Day weekend. Trace felt pressure behind her eyes. Everything she’d hoped for was at risk now. The joy had been sapped from the summer. She felt a flash of anger. Silvia could have waited until August to talk to her about this. Only to ruin fall. There would never have been a good time.

When the sky began to brighten behind their curtains, Trace finally got herself out of bed. She fed Tegan, who pressed himself firmly against the side of her leg in his excitement for an early breakfast. Trace pulled open their sliding glass door and sat on a patio chair on their deck, coatless despite the chilly air. Dew dampened the back of her shirt and the bottom of her sweats. The cold felt clarifying.

Trace didn’t know how to write her future without Silvia. Silvia gave her adventure, roundedness, a hint of spirituality, endless hope when Trace was feeling skeptical about her future. But Silvia also gave her purpose, a role. Until the past few months, Silvia had never allowed herself to be taken care of. She had never fully cemented Trace as her partner, the one person who could provide. Trace always thought they just hadn’t been together long enough. They needed more time, or a vacation, or to understand each other’s love languages on a deeper level. Then Silvia left and the excuse was the distance. There was always something. When Silvia came back, Trace allowed herself to believe, despite Silvia’s diminished self, that things were clicking into place at last. She relished being depended on, proud of their newfound communication. Trace should have known it wouldn’t stay that way, suspended in air. Energy gives and takes. What did they say about an object in motion?

Trace leaned forward in the chair and shoved the heels of her hands into her eyes. The birds were beginning to chirp. It felt like a mockery. For a moment she had trouble breathing.

“Fuck you,” she muttered. She repeated it louder and louder until she startled the birds enough for them to fly off in a cloud. Her vision swam as she thought of Silvia moving her things out of their apartment, the two of them having to sit down and sort through their books, one by one.



There had been an afternoon a couple of months earlier. It was an unusually warm day for early March, and Silvia and Trace went to Green Lake, slowly meandering the concrete path that bordered the lake. The area was rapidly shifting, crisp new apartment buildings rising up around them. They’d reached the quieter section, south, near the boathouse, when someone came up on their right and touched Silvia’s arm. She yelped, her fingers sinking into Trace’s arm, her body shrinking. The man, a runner, looked confused at her outsized reaction. His forehead glistened with sweat as he reached out to hand Silvia a tube of ChapStick she’d dropped. For the rest of the walk, Silvia clung to Trace. Trace felt whole, needed, like everything had shifted into place. Space really did help. They had gotten past the worst of it. The future was clear.



The evening before, as they pretended to drink tea and talked about inviting others into their relationship, Silvia had said, “I think this could actually make us closer.”

Trace had immediately thought, Bullshit.

Trace went inside and retrieved the book from where Silvia had left it on the couch. A Practical Guide to Polyamory, the subheading read. She dug her fingers into the pages, finding the first section Silvia wanted her to read.

By the time Silvia woke up, Trace was sitting in the kitchen, scrambled eggs and bacon warm on the stove. Jordan had made herself scarce since the afternoon before. Trace wondered what she knew, if she was aware, even before Trace, that their relationship would be changing forever.

Silvia walked into the room as if she were afraid Trace might scare. She was wearing a kimono robe in deep shades of blue that was so long it nearly brushed the floor. Silvia had owned the robe since college. She was the first girl Trace had ever known to wear a robe so casually. It was eternally sexy to Trace—the flashes of skin, the ease of access, the question of what might lie beneath. In college, robes had seemed like the pinnacle of adulthood.

“Good morning,” Silvia said to Trace, resting her hands on the back of one of their kitchen chairs. The book sat on the table in front of Trace. Trace watched Silvia take it in.

“Yes, I read it. Most of it, anyways,” Trace said. “I made you some tea.” Trace nodded to the counter.

Silvia shook her head. “I’m okay for now.”

“Well, do you want to sit?”

Silvia sat in the chair across from Trace. Her robe fell open as she crossed her legs and Trace could see the strawberry tattoo that wrapped around her left calf, a pop of red and bright green vines. They had gone to get the tattoos on their first anniversary, a day trip with Jordan to Columbus. Trace’s Fibonacci spiral was on her left forearm, imposed over a shell. Perfect math, as nature intended.

Trace cleared her throat. Took a sip of coffee. “What would it look like,” she asked, “for us?”

Silvia’s face didn’t change, but her shoulders lowered an inch. “Uh, well, there are a lot of different options. It depends on the boundaries we decide to set. And how much you want to know.”

Nothing. I want to know nothing.

Silvia continued. “We’d have to discuss what kind of dating we’d want to do outside of us—is it mostly just hookups or are we open to more serious relationships?”

Trace thought she might throw up.

“And then there are conversations we’ll need to have about who those other people are, and how we meet them. Are we allowed to bring them here? Can we be active on dating apps in front of each other? Are we allowed to date someone that the other person knows?”

“No friends,” Trace said. “Like, Jordan has to be off limits.” Trace wasn’t quite clear why Jordan’s name had come so readily to her.

“Oh god, of course.”

“Okay.”

“I think there’s actually a list of things to discuss in the book,” Silvia said, reaching across the table to slide the book towards herself. Trace put a hand on Silvia’s, stopping her.

“Let’s look at the list later. I’m open to talking more about it, and potentially trying it out.” Trace wove her fingers through Silvia’s. “Can we enjoy the summer just us, though? I feel like I only just got you back.” She brought Silvia’s hand to her lips, kissing each knuckle.

Silvia smiled and nodded. “Of course, babe.”

There was relief. Trace squeezed Silvia’s hand. She loved nothing more than to see Silvia smile. She loved to be the cause of Silvia’s happiness. The words rang through Trace’s head again: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

23

Jordan

December

Saturn Is Returning

It had been three dirty martinis and a glass and a half of wine since the phone call with Jordan’s mom. Jordan was well on her way to drunk. They were at a bar on the Upper East Side that at one point might have been frequented by wealthy patrons but now had a worn-out sheen to it. There were rips in the leather on the stools and grime caked into the crevices of the bar. The olives, when Jordan bit into them, fell apart easily in her mouth, chunky and bland. But the bartenders all wore white dress shirts, and now that the alcohol had softened her vision, it was easy to pretend they were somewhere else, being served like royalty, living an upscale American dream.

Silvia had one elbow resting on the bar as she finished the last of her drink. Her legs were crossed at the knee, her chin tilted slightly towards the ceiling. She was wearing jeans and Doc Martens but so easily looked like she belonged; the audacity of anyone to challenge her. It amazed Jordan how Silvia was able to do that, to find a way for her body to be comfortable in any situation. Almost a decade of knowing Silvia, and Jordan still didn’t understand it. She couldn’t put her finger on what specifically it was about Silvia. Identifying that quality was something Jordan had long yearned to do, if only to embed some of it within herself, to be able to melt in socially, confident that if she ever stood out, she’d be looked at with awe, not confusion or disgust.

Jordan put the pick into her mouth and slid the last olive off onto her tongue. Silvia watched Jordan chew and then quickly swallow.

“The olives are fucking disgusting,” Silvia said.

“I keep forgetting.”

“But one simply cannot have a martini without them.”

“No, because then we’d just be drinking vodka neat.”

“Delicious.”

“A delicacy.”

“Russian for the night.”

“Where is our caviar?”

It was so easy to forget, when Silvia was all the way off on the other side of the country, why they had initially become friends. It was so easy to forget that there had once been something other than Trace tying them together, that even without Trace, there was still a reason to be in each other’s lives. Jordan felt a reassurance she didn’t know she needed. Her hand reached out to rest on Silvia’s knee.

“What?” Silvia asked.

“I just appreciate you.”

“Oh no, she’s drunk.” Silvia turned to the bartender and Jordan’s hand slipped back into her own lap. “We need another round, good sir.”

“Extra olives!” Jordan said.

“Yes, please, as many as will fit.”

Jordan had texted her mom some excuse about having a headache earlier that afternoon. They both ignored Jordan’s text about Summer. It was something her family had always been skilled at, even before Summer was gone: avoiding their fallacies at all costs. Accountability wasn’t necessary if no one ever did anything wrong.

“So, how’s your girl?” Silvia asked, and for a second so brief it hardly registered, a breeze blowing past her cheek, Jordan thought, Trace? But no, of course Silvia wasn’t talking about Trace. Trace had always been their girl. A shared ownership. A shared responsibility. Except for when Silvia disappeared to Africa. Perhaps Jordan should be grateful that this time Silvia had disappeared herself with Jordan. Jordan was complicit, but also hidden.

“She’s fine. Christmas with the family. Traditions. You know,” Jordan said.

Grace had asked Jordan about Trace the day before. “Is she coming to spend Christmas in New York too?” Jordan hadn’t known how to respond, so she just didn’t. That morning Grace had sent a picture of herself with her parents’ dog in front of the tree. Her hair fell over her left brow just so and the dog was licking her neck, and Jordan wished her stomach had flipped over when she’d opened it, but instead she just felt empty inside. Dead.

“Sure, I know traditions. I know your traditions at least. My mom liked to write me a check for a grand on Christmas morning and then started drinking at nine a.m. Not exactly a tradition you like to hold on to.”

“Yet here we are getting wasted on Christmas.”

“I do see your point.” Silvia lifted her glass up. “To Rhonda Wilder! May I not inherit any of your addictions, or at least go to rehab in a timely manner.”

They touched the edges of their glasses together. Liquid spilled over the sides of Jordan’s glass, seeping between her fingers.

“I’m going to pee.” Silvia slipped off her stool and walked, with an impressive amount of composure, to the back of the bar.

Jordan flipped her phone over on the bar. A missed call and voicemail from Trace sat waiting on her screen. The contact had ramped up in recent days. When Silvia had gone to the grocery store two days before, Jordan had listened to the voicemails stacking up in her inbox. Trace’s voice was tight, like a piece of twine on the verge of snapping. Jordan had deleted them all, closing her eyes in a rush of relief. She opened her voicemail. This message from Trace was long, almost five minutes. Silvia’s phone was sitting on the bar next to her. She picked it up, glancing quickly at the screen. Trace had left her a message as well. Jordan set Silvia’s phone down. She opened Instagram on her own phone. Trace’s picture sat in a circle at the top, rimmed in pink and orange. Jordan stared at it before locking her phone and putting it back on the bar. It felt like a thumb was pressed in the center of her clavicle, inching upwards towards her throat.

“Did you ever play that game when you were a kid?” Silvia’s voice was clear, even from fifteen feet away.

“You’re going to have to be more specific than that.”

Silvia sat down and stuck her arm out. It flopped, loosely, the back of her hand hitting Jordan’s knee. “The one where someone would put their finger on your arm, and you had to guess when they touched your elbow.”

“What?” Jordan asked, genuinely confused.

“Give me your arm,” Silvia demanded. Jordan complied, holding her inner arm out towards Silvia.

“Okay, now close your eyes.” Jordan closed her eyes.

“Alright,” Silvia said, “you’re going to tell me when you think my finger has gotten to your inner elbow.”

“Why were you thinking about this in the bathroom?”

“Keep your eyes closed!”

“They’re closed!”

Silvia began to slowly run her pointer finger up Jordan’s inner forearm. Halfway, she doubled back and moved down to Jordan’s wrist. She did this a couple times, making circles and loops, before getting high enough that Jordan said, “Stop.”

Jordan opened her eyes. Silvia was frowning. Her finger was almost exactly on Jordan’s inner elbow.

“That’s not how this is supposed to work. You’re supposed to get it wrong.”

“Well, that’s not a very fun game.” Jordan tried to pull her arm back but Silvia hung on to it with her other hand.

“How are you so good at it?”

“Maybe it has something to do with the fact that you last played this as a child when your spatial and bodily awareness was poor.”

Silvia was already shaking her head. “We’re going to do it again,” she said. Silvia was too drunk to be convinced of anything.

“Alright, fine.” Jordan leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes again. Silvia began brushing her finger against Jordan’s arm.

“I do actually remember playing this game,” Jordan said.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.” The hair on Jordan’s arms lifted, and she felt a shiver run up through the center of her body. “I was always volunteering to have girls do my hair in class or draw on my arms after school.” Jordan felt Silvia getting closer to her elbow, but deliberately kept quiet until she’d passed it. “Stop,” Jordan said.

She opened her eyes to see Silvia smiling, her finger an inch past Jordan’s elbow. “Ha!” Silvia said.

“Okay, go again,” Jordan said. She remembered when she was younger, the goosebumps she got when girls would finger comb her hair as they sat on the floor during story time, twisting her strands into braids. “I wonder if there’s something about always trying to be touched by girls as a kid that I should have read as queer earlier.”

Jordan could hear the smile in Silvia’s voice as she responded. “I think it’s pretty easy to read queerness into most things.” Silvia thought everyone was some version of queer. It was all about gradients.

“Stop,” Jordan said. Silvia’s finger was halfway up Jordan’s forearm.

“Again,” Jordan demanded. “I do think some things are actually gay, though.”

Silvia was making little circles above the veins on Jordan’s wrist.

“Like what?” Silvia said.

“Like wanting to practice kissing with your friends.”

“Did you want to do that?” Silvia asked.

“Well, no,” Jordan said, and Silvia snorted. “But I’ve read about other people who did.”

A jazzy version of “Santa Baby” was playing softly over the speakers. The noise in the bar was just above a murmur.

“This is nice,” Jordan said. “Keep going.”

And Silvia did. Jordan didn’t know if they were even playing the game anymore, but she never wanted Silvia to stop touching her arm. Jordan couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so relaxed. When Silvia finally stopped, she took her finger off Jordan’s arm but still held Jordan’s wrist with her other hand. Silvia’s thumb pressed into the center of Jordan’s left palm. Jordan opened her eyes to see Silvia staring at her.

Jordan pulled her hand away. She mumbled something about the bathroom, awkwardly hopped off her stool. When she returned to the bar, Silvia declared they should go home, and Jordan agreed. The walk home was fuzzy. Their arms were around each other. Silvia wore the red scarf Jordan had gifted her; Jordan clung onto her waist. They kissed each other’s cheeks and shouted “Mamma mia!” into the street.

But then they got inside Jordan’s apartment and Silvia was staring at her again like she had in the bar. And Jordan didn’t know how it happened but suddenly Silvia’s whole body was pressed against hers.

It wasn’t the first time Jordan had kissed Silvia. Her friend had always been a drunk kisser—at parties and Pride, stamping her lipstick on cheeks, holding Jordan’s face with both hands as Trace laughed next to them. But this time was different. When their lips met, their mouths opened and Jordan felt her mind go blank.

It was surprising how soft Silvia was. It was unexpected from someone who faced the world with such shameless intensity. Jordan had never thought about kissing Silvia before. There had been moments, in the beginning of her friendship with Trace, where she had looked at Trace’s lips a second too long. Jordan had experienced flashes of desire when she used to hang out in Trace’s single room in the Tower during the nights she was on duty. But never Silvia. Silvia was off limits, untouchable. She was Jordan’s best friend but also somehow so far above her, completely out of Jordan’s reach.



There was a night in college, right after graduation, when Jordan had gone out with Silvia and Trace. They were deep into their honeymoon year, still always touching one another in some way. They were with a group of seniors, their voices loud with the elation and fear of freedom. Jordan took a drag of Silvia’s cigarette—her first inhale. Silvia held it in her hand as Jordan leaned forward. Trace clasped one of Jordan’s hands in hers. Silvia’s thumb brushed Jordan’s cheek as she released the smoke.

“What do you think, baby?” she asked.

What did Jordan think. What did Jordan think. What did Jordan think.



Jordan was thinking about female friendships. She was thinking about queer friendships, and how sex and platonic love can oftentimes be Venn diagrams. She was thinking about how confusing it could be to not know what you wanted from another person, to not understand what role they should take in your life, how it could shift and morph over time, but maybe something about the first time you saw them would always stick. Jordan was thinking all these things and then she realized what was happening and she pulled away and said, “No.”

Silvia was bigger, she had Jordan pinned up against the couch, and Jordan said again, as Silvia kissed her throat, “Silvia, stop.”

But it still continued and so Jordan found Silvia’s hips with her hands, she took a breath to steady herself, and then forcefully pushed Silvia away from her.

24

Trace

October

Three Years to Saturn Return

Trace’s phone lit up. A red square with a white flame enclosed. You have a new match with Naomi. The knife in her right hand, slicing through a carrot, paused ever so slightly. She had to finish dinner. Then she would open the notification. Trace shifted her weight, moving the knife up and down, up and down, but her eyes kept flashing over to her screen. Trace picked up her phone and crossed the kitchen to throw it on the couch in the living room. Out of sight, out of mind.

Trace had downloaded Tinder for the first time three weeks before. Silvia agreed to wait until after the summer to start seeing other people. “A fresh start for fall!” she said with a little too much enthusiasm.

They’d spent the past couple months discussing the parameters of their new relationship. Their old relationship was dead. They were building something different together now. Those were Silvia’s words: building, constructing, assembling. She loved a house metaphor. But all Trace could see in her mind was the big house on Capitol Hill with the stained glass window in the attic that Silvia used to be obsessed with. Trace imagined they might start a family there together. It was hard to envision room for a family in this new relationship. Regardless, Trace was “on board.” Trace was “committed to the plan.” She had a list of their rules in her phone. Silvia didn’t like the term rules, she thought it was too constraining, but Trace used it in her head, comforted with the knowledge that there were limitations on this thing they had chosen to do.

Said rules: Always tell your partner when going on dates—no surprises. No overnights with anyone else. The apartment was off limits to external lovers. Cannot use a strap with anyone else. Must use different emojis when flirting via text (fuck no was Silvia sending the smirking devil followed by an orange heart and a peach to anyone else). No texting other people or using Tinder while around your partner. No dates at their favorite spots—especially the Rose. No falling in love.

It would be fine.

Trace jerked the knife down, saw the blood before she felt the sting. She stuck her finger under the faucet, watched as the cut melted to an ache.

Silvia was not home. She was out on a date. A date that had been secured only hours after Silvia set up her Tinder profile. Silvia had wanted them to create their accounts together. She wanted to pick Trace’s pictures, write bios while curled up on the couch with a bottle of wine. Trace could think of nothing she wanted to do less than help curate a version of her girlfriend for other people to lust after. She said no. So instead, Trace sat on the couch watching TV while she listened to Silvia and Jordan’s muffled voices behind Jordan’s closed door.

It had only taken seven swipes for Trace to come across Silvia’s profile. The main picture was a close-up, one Jordan had taken of Silvia when she’d just gotten back over the winter. Her hair was still short, a whisper on Trace’s palm. She was mid-laugh, her lips wide, teeth two white rows, crowded, like her mouth wasn’t quite big enough for all it contained. Her eyes were squeezed shut, and one hand pressed against the side of her face, fingers encircled in the chunky silver rings she wore daily. It was one of Trace’s favorite pictures of Silvia. For a while it had been her lock screen. The picture was ruined now. She’d changed her background to one of Tegan. There were two other pictures on Silvia’s Tinder—one of Silvia and Jordan sitting on the beach at Golden Gardens, and another of Silvia from behind, standing on an empty dirt road in the village she’d lived in abroad. She was wearing sandals, baggy pants, and a plain white T-shirt. ENM, her bio stated. Creative spirit. Down for cute adventures or rolls in the hay. Recently returned to the States from abroad, show me what’s new around here. Trace had taken Silvia out almost every week over the spring and summer. She had tried to show Silvia what was new. It wasn’t the point, but the pain was worse than Trace had expected.

Towards the end of the summer, their sex had shifted. Silvia began pulling Trace’s hand towards her, guiding her fingers inside, even though Trace could tell she wasn’t completely turned on. Silvia, who’d once gleefully pulled out a box of toys from under her bed for Trace to choose from, shook her head no when Trace reached for the strap. She said she only wanted to feel Trace. Trace allowed herself to think this was romantic, as if they were connecting on a deeper level, even though a voice in the back of her head told her something was not quite right, there was something too performative about it all. She wondered what Silvia’s “rolls in the hay” would look like with other people. Trace thought perhaps she was the problem, no longer someone Silvia was attracted to.

Jordan had agreed to stay home with Trace that night so she wouldn’t spiral during Silvia’s first date. They were supposed to be making dinner together, but Jordan was stuck at work. Trace told Jordan it was fine. She would be fine.

She was definitely not fine.



Trace wrapped her finger in paper towels and wandered into the living room. She decided that nearly cutting off a body part granted her access to her phone once again. Trace pressed the home button. She had gotten two more matches since Naomi. Trace had to admit, the validation of a match did feel nice. She experienced a thrill when she came upon a particularly Hot Person, swiped right with a firm stroke of her thumb, only to see the app change, large turquoise letters flashing across her screen. It was a boost to the ego regardless of her level of interest in said person. And there had been plenty of matches. It was easy when you weren’t looking for the love of your life. Easy when the desire was simply for distraction. There were femme girls. Outdoorsy girls. Girls looking for fun. Nonmonogamous girls. Bi girls. Girls in town for the weekend, the week, a semester of teaching.

Trace had a vague recollection of what Naomi looked like—she had thin lips and long blond hair, with sharp nails painted a blush pink. Reading her profile, Trace learned that Naomi worked in consulting and enjoyed yoga outside in the summer. She was the type of girl Trace had always seen herself with prior to Silvia. Naomi and Silvia couldn’t have been more different. Trace had mustered up some excitement as she opened Tinder, but closing the app, she felt a pang of disappointment when there were no new texts on her phone from Silvia.

Silvia hadn’t told her much about the date, only the girl’s name and the neighborhood she would be in (for emergencies). Trace hadn’t asked any questions. She used the word cool so many times it started to become meaningless. Sitting on the couch, Trace wished she knew more. She wanted to be able to picture the girl’s face (so she could reassure herself that she was hotter). Or so she could figure out which of the queer Paytons she’d found on Instagram was the one buying her girlfriend drinks while she moped at home.

“Dude, I’m so sorry,” Jordan said, pushing her way into the apartment and dropping her bag by the door. “Justin just really needed me to get that retouching done.”

Trace had never been more grateful to see a person in her whole life.

“Whatcha doing?” Jordan asked, dropping down on the couch next to Trace.

“Oh, just Tindering,” Trace said. “Or whatever the kids call it.”

“They definitely do not call it that.”

“Well, whatever, you get the point.”

“Anyone interesting?” Jordan leaned over to see Trace’s phone screen. Her text thread with Silvia was pulled up, a message partially drafted. Trace immediately locked her phone.

“I was just going to, like, ask her how it was going or something,” Trace said. “But I probably shouldn’t. Never mind, it’s stupid.”

“Hey,” Jordan said. “It’s going to be okay. You know she loves you.”

“I know,” Trace mumbled, pushing her lock button so her screen lit up and then quickly locking it once again.

“I know what you need,” Jordan said.

“What?”

“An extra-large very dirty martini.”

“I think I need three of those.”

Trace watched Jordan gather glasses in one hand from the bar cart in the corner of the living room. There were rare moments, which had occurred more frequently while Silvia was away, that Trace wondered what life might have looked like if she’d never met Silvia. Or if Silvia had never kissed her at Jordan’s birthday. Would she and Jordan have ended up in another city? Maybe Chicago, like Blake? Maybe they’d already be in New York. Cohabitation with Jordan had always been simple, effortless.

Trace watched Jordan fill the martini glasses with ice and water to sit while she mixed the gin and vermouth in the shaker. She dumped the ice water into the sink and pierced olives with metal cocktail picks, dropping them into the center of the V.

Trace had known, from the moment she’d caught Jordan sitting by herself in that auditorium, scrunched down in her seat with a scowl, that she and Jordan were kindred spirits in some way. There was something that pulled Trace towards Jordan. She hadn’t been sure then what their relationship would become, but sensed it would be important, formative. The possibility of something more with Jordan had hovered, peripherally, for the first few months of their friendship. Trace never put it in front of her. Now, she allowed it to slip slightly into view. The feeling that arose was so overwhelming, Trace had to close her eyes. She pushed it away again, further than it had ever been before.

Jordan walked carefully back into the living room and handed Trace one of the fresh martinis. The outside of the glass was cool and slick. Trace felt a wave of gratitude.



By the time Silvia got home that night, Trace was lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, willing the room to stop spinning. Jordan had taken Trace’s phone away hours ago, after the second martini and the third time Trace had suggested calling Silvia.

“Hi,” Silvia said, leaning against the doorframe and looking at Trace.

Trace rolled onto her stomach and blew Silvia a kiss. “Hey.”

Silvia walked over to sit on the edge of the bed.

“How was your night?” Trace asked.

“It was good,” Silvia said.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, it was. We went to this place called Lulu’s, have you heard of it?” Trace shook her head no. “Me neither. It has craft cocktails and small plates. We sat at the bar. She insisted on ordering everything because she’d been there so many times and knew the menu so well. And honestly, she was right.”

It was an onslaught of information that Trace hadn’t asked for. She put a hand on the bed to steady herself.

Silvia continued. “She works at an art foundation in development. It sounded really cool, like maybe something I could do too. It’s a lot of grant writing. She said she could maybe get me an interview for a junior position there. It might be nice to make a little more money.”

In the spring, Trace had sent Silvia links to jobs almost every day. Trace spent her lunch hours searching through Indeed and LinkedIn. When Trace asked Silvia about the positions, she had shrugged and mentioned the café down the street. She might just like to make people coffee for a while, she said, something straightforward. Something needed but not necessary.

“After we left the restaurant, we walked around the sculpture park a bit, and then she dropped me off at the bus terminal.”

There was an expanding silence. Trace waited for Silvia to tell her about a kiss. It never came.

“Nice,” Trace said, perhaps a bit too brightly.

“Do you feel okay about this?” Silvia asked.

“Of course.” The words popped out. It was what she was supposed to say. Trace’s heart felt shrunken, a dehydrated organ in her chest, swinging between her lungs. Every time she took a breath, it seemed to become smaller.

“It’s so nice coming home to you.” Silvia leaned across the bed and touched her lips to Trace’s. She pulled back quickly and gave Trace a smile before standing up and leaving their bedroom.

Going to bed that night they didn’t touch. Trace was normally a clingy sleeper. She needed to hold something—a pillow, a blanket, but preferably a person. The first summer they’d lived in Seattle the two of them had woken up sweating every morning, still hanging on to each other. Silvia would laugh, calling Trace her little koala as she turned on the shower. They’d slept that way ever since. But that night it was as if a wall had risen up in the center of the bed. A border had been drawn that Trace couldn’t bring herself to cross.



A week later Trace was at a dive bar on Capitol Hill. A whiskey sour sat in a pool of condensation on the bar in front of her. She was waiting on Clementine, a girl from Tinder who had grown up on a farm and now gardened in her backyard and went hiking every weekend to “escape the city.” Trace hadn’t realized Seattle was the type of city people longed to escape. Clementine was a big biker and had a large black cat named Frankie. That was all Trace had learned before asking her out. Clementine was fifteen minutes late. Trace checked her phone again for a message, but there was nothing. Only a text from Jordan begging for details.

After Silvia’s night out the week before, Trace hadn’t put her phone down until she’d secured a date for herself. The literature told Trace that everything would be easier if she went on her own dates, slept with other people herself. “Forge your own relationships.” Trace had swiped in the bathroom at work, sent messages on the bus ride home and during her lunch breaks. She used emojis whose meaning she’d never properly understood. She was more forward than she’d ever had the ability to be before. Many, many people just stopped responding to her—whether on the app or after she’d gotten their phone number. Some said they were too busy when she asked them to get drinks (Trace didn’t understand why people were on dating apps if they didn’t actually want to date). Others needed to check in with their partner (what bureaucracy). It was exhausting. Finally, two days ago, Clementine had agreed to meet up. Trace picked a bar near her and Silvia’s first apartment in Seattle. Familiar, but far away from her current life.

“Trace,” Clementine said, hooking her fanny pack on the back of the chair. Her brunette, wavy hair was half up in a bun. She had a large flannel on over a tank top with a short black skirt. The laces of her Doc Martens were wrapped around her ankles. “I’m terribly sorry for being late,” she said in a tone that sounded more amused than apologetic. Clementine lifted an eyebrow and nodded at Trace’s drink. “What are we having?”

Trace felt like she was observing herself from above. At a remove, she clocked all the details that would have hooked her in the past: sheer tights, the curve of cleavage, chunky gold studs in Clementine’s ears that Trace might have imagined wrapping her tongue around as her hand crept lower and lower. But sitting next to Clementine, catching the hint of peony that wafted her way when Clementine lifted her wrists in the air, Trace only felt queasy. She wished it were Silvia she smelled, Silvia whose hair was brushing Trace’s arm as she leaned over to take a sip of Trace’s watery drink.

Clementine asked Trace how long she’d been in the city. Clementine herself was somewhat new. She had only moved to Seattle a couple years before and was still getting used to the noise (farms are quiet). They talked about their families—Clementine also had a younger sister—and their work. They shared their coming-out stories.

For a moment, ninety minutes in, Trace thought she might actually be enjoying herself. Clementine asked about the upcoming holiday, and Trace told Clementine how when she was six, she got to pick her Halloween costume for the first time. Her dad had taken her to the store and allowed her to select a cowboy hat, fake badge, and a small plastic gun that could be filled with water. She wore jeans and boots, a button-down shirt. It was the first time Trace could remember feeling happy with her clothes. It was the first time she looked in the mirror and recognized herself.

When she came downstairs to go trick-or-treating with her parents and her little sister, her mom’s expression was withering. She was disgusted. Trace was allowed to go out that night—they returned home carrying bags bulging with candy—but the costume disappeared from Trace’s room overnight. It was more personal than Trace had planned to get on a first date.

But then Clementine put a hand on Trace’s arm and it was wrong, too small, slightly rough, and Trace turned to order a new drink so Clementine wouldn’t see the look on her face.

Afterwards, Trace walked Clementine to the bus stop. Clementine’s chin tilted upwards as she said goodbye and Trace grabbed it with her hand, as she knew she was supposed to, and pushed Clementine up against the plastic wall of the bus shelter, her tongue opening Clementine’s already parted lips when their mouths met.

Trace made out with Clementine longer than she wanted to. Clementine was too short, and Trace hated the taste of mango on her tongue from the vape she’d hit as they left the bar.

Clementine smiled and called out “Text me” as Trace backed away.

Trace walked the two blocks to her car in a haze. She pressed the button to unlock it and paused before leaning over and vomiting into the curb.

“How was it?” Silvia asked when Trace got home.

“It was fine,” Trace responded, before getting under the covers and pressing her body against Silvia. She wrapped her arms around Silvia’s waist and buried her face in the back of Silvia’s neck. The feel of Silvia’s skin against hers was soothing. She wanted to stay like that forever: no phones, no work, no dating other people, no seeing anyone else—not even Jordan. Just the two of them, in bed, bodies converging, unclear where one ended and the other began.

25

Jordan

June

Two Years to Saturn Return

Jordan had been editing the same photo for nearly three hours when Trace messaged her. She was delicately removing rust from the pipes in a parking garage. The client was looking for a more polished look. Jordan zoomed out on the picture. She wasn’t even halfway done. Her eyes blurred as she glanced down at the box that had popped up on the bottom of her screen. Her index finger was cramping. She’d asked for a tablet and stylus multiple times, but Clark and Bell was too cheap to equip their photography assistants with anything that might make their job easier.

T: Hey

T: Did Silvia text you?

Jordan wanted to ignore it. She wanted to close the window and continue her wrist’s demise into carpal tunnel. But Jordan knew that if she didn’t respond, Trace would just come to Jordan’s floor at work, perch on the side of her desk, and speak to her in low tones, which anyone in a five-desk radius would be able to hear regardless. She jabbed her stiff fingers at the keys.

J: No

Jordan tapped the screen of her phone to confirm, knowing it wouldn’t change her response either way. She only had a news update from CNN.

T: Ok

It was as if Trace had said the word out loud. Jordan could hear her voice, laced with disappointment and a tinge of fear. Silvia was scheduling a date for that night with some girl from Tinder. Trace preferred to hear about Silvia’s dating life from Jordan. Jordan was done being the messenger.



Initially, working with Trace had been fun. The first year after Jordan moved to Seattle, she and Trace were attached at the hip. They commuted to work together, got lunch together, had happy hours with coworkers in Belltown together. They spent their days messaging each other about work gossip and celesbians on the messaging app installed on every computer at Clark and Bell. At times Jordan felt like she was twelve years old again, sitting in the desk chair in her parents’ office as she chatted with friends and strangers on AIM. Trace swept Jordan into adulthood with her, just like she’d swept Jordan into college. She made everything a bit easier, forged a path through the bush that Jordan could follow.

But then something shifted. Six months after Silvia left, it was as if Trace had stood up, looked around, and finally realized her girlfriend was gone. At work, she still excelled, wore a shirt she steamed every morning, made sure her pants had sharp creases in them, but at home she became agitated, was constantly on her phone. She wanted to know what Jordan’s communication with Silvia was like. She wasn’t sleeping and had started to see a therapist. Jordan didn’t know the details. She didn’t ask. She was scared of finding out something was wrong with her two friends, that the foundation of their relationship might have cracks in it.

And then, there was an explosion. The day it happened, Jordan heard Trace crying in her room. Jordan left the apartment, quietly, instead of checking on her. She felt the shame of that decision like someone had etched it into her skin. It wasn’t the last time Jordan heard Trace crying that year. And it wasn’t the last time Jordan pretended it wasn’t happening. The months went on and it wasn’t clear to Jordan whether Silvia coming home would improve Trace’s state of being or condemn her fully to despondence. Jordan hoped they would get an answer quickly, whichever way it was.

Silvia continued to email Jordan occasionally, writing around Trace. They skyped once, a session that was awkward. Silvia’s energy hadn’t changed and it seemed fake to Jordan, like they had a made-up friendship, like they were performing for a camera. Then Silvia went quiet. Weeks went by without any emails. When they began again, in late June, the responses were short. Silvia had no questions for Jordan, she barely remarked on the details Jordan shared from her own life—spilling coffee on a C-list Seattle celebrity at a photo shoot, accidentally getting so drunk watching a Seattle Storm game (with Trace, who wasn’t mentioned) that she woke up an hour late for work. Jordan had read about the depression that can come over service members, isolated as they were in a foreign country. She asked Silvia if she needed anything. The response that week was the shortest thus far: No, I’m fine.

When Silvia finally started speaking to Trace again, towards the end of the summer, Jordan could sense the shift before either of them told her. It was as if Trace had been administered a high dose of Prozac. The change seemed almost immediate. She woke up an hour before Jordan one Monday, went for a run around the neighborhood, left pancakes warming in the oven for Jordan. The next week Silvia’s email to Jordan included multiple paragraphs. There was a new student who she’d befriended, a young boy eager to learn English. They spent evenings talking back and forth about their families, their hopes, their dreams. Silvia felt, in a small way, like she would leave Lesotho having made an impact. Jordan thought: Love can pull you out of the darkest of places.

And yet, Silvia returned, and Trace and Silvia decided to open their relationship. At the time, Jordan thought they were both fucking idiots—though no one asked her—and she was only proven more and more right as time passed. Silvia waited several months after returning from Africa to bring up the topic of nonmonogamy. It had lured Trace into a false sense of security. Trace agreed to be open, perhaps only to avoid losing her girlfriend. Sometimes Jordan wished Trace had more of a backbone. Jordan knew Silvia was scared too. If Trace hadn’t agreed to be open, she probably wouldn’t have lost Silvia. She might actually have gained Silvia’s respect. Regardless, they both started dating other people, and Trace, ambitious as she was, jumped into the Tinder world with a vengeance. She began going on dates multiple nights per week, at times not coming home until past two a.m. Silvia and Trace each confided in Jordan about their dating lives. And both Silvia and Trace asked Jordan questions about who the other was seeing, defeating the entire purpose of being open and communicative with each other.

There was one girl Silvia had started seeing more regularly, and she’d dragged Jordan out for drinks with the two of them a couple weeks ago. Begrudgingly, Jordan had to admit to Silvia that she liked Eliza, a dyke with long braids who wore Vans and red work pants and had longboarded to the bar to meet them. When Silvia and Jordan got home that night, Jordan noticed that two of Trace’s fingers were wrapped with Band-Aids. Jordan had watched her peel the skin around her fingernails raw before, typically in the days ahead of a big client presentation. Seeing tissues dotted with blood in the bathroom trash can twisted Jordan’s insides into knots.

Jordan had stopped going to happy hours with Trace over the winter and no longer ate meals in the kitchen, instead taking her dinner directly into her bedroom every night. It felt painful to watch Silvia and Trace’s interactions with each other. It was a delicate dance. The satisfaction they each had with the new arrangement felt fake. There seemed to be an underlying fear of admitting it wasn’t working.

Silvia and Trace had set rules with each other—rules they’d long since abandoned—but hadn’t created a list of rules for Jordan. So she put up a wall and hid behind it. It was easier to not see what they were doing to each other.



Jordan’s computer dinged again.

T: Do you want to take a break?

Jordan sighed and stretched her right hand. Unfortunately, yes. She did want to take a break.

J: Sure

T: Cool, meet you in the courtyard.

Jordan took the stairs down two floors to the courtyard they always met in. Trace was sitting on their bench, upwind from the smoking area but still with enough shade to be pleasant throughout the summer. She handed Trace a cup of coffee—Jordan’s floor had the only espresso machine in the building.

“Thanks.”

Jordan sat down next to her and stared at Trace’s right leg, which was bouncing up and down.

“Are you sure you need any more caffeine?”

“This is my first cup.”

Wow, Jordan thought. Her phone buzzed on the bench next to her.

“Who is it?” Trace asked, too quickly.

Jordan flipped her phone over, shielding the screen from Trace. Silvia.

“It’s that girl,” she said. “Crop Top.” Jordan used the nickname Trace had given to a girl Jordan had been on a couple of dates with recently.

“Oh. How’s that going?”

Jordan shrugged. “It’s fine.” Crop Top was attractive in a Cara Delevingne kind of way—somewhat intense—and had intelligent things to say about the world, but Jordan didn’t feel a pull to see her, and she knew that it was only a matter of time before things fizzled, as they usually did.

Trace wanted Jordan to define someone as the One and stand beneath a window with a boom box declaring her love, but Jordan had a hard time filtering relationships through that lens. Fluidity appealed to her more than permanence. There was something terrifying about making such a choice. Jordan didn’t know how anyone could define what they might want in ten, fifteen, twenty years.

The first girl Jordan had been with was someone she worked with in Ohio at a Chuck E. Cheese her senior year. Jordan walked around taking pictures of the parties; sticky children with Chuck E. Cheese himself, their grimy hands leaving streaks of food on the fur of the costume. Eve was a server. She was getting her master’s in early childhood education and took her job seriously; she saw it as an extension of her degree. Jordan was in awe of Eve around kids. She could make any child stop crying in minutes. By the end of each party, she was the favorite.

Eve and Jordan started hanging out after their shifts, first just in the parking lot, recapping their day, bitching about their manager, who seemed afraid of children and spent most of her time in her office chewing wads of nicotine gum. Then they moved to a bar in the same strip mall as the Chuck E. Cheese—a Mexican restaurant that served six-dollar margaritas between four and seven o’clock and gave them bottomless bowls of chips and salsa. Months into this routine Eve put her hand on Jordan’s knee and raised her eyebrows, a question. They were three drinks in and Jordan was surprised to find that she wanted Eve’s hand to stay there. She covered it with her own in response. That night Jordan drove Eve home and they sat talking in her car outside Eve’s apartment until Eve said, “You know I’m not getting out until you kiss me, right?” And Jordan laughed, embarrassed, but leaned over and touched Eve’s face and pulled their lips together.

Eve was the first girl Jordan slept with. Not that she’d slept with any men, so technically Eve had taken her virginity, though milestones like that had never mattered much to Jordan. She enjoyed the sex just fine but found herself craving the moments after sex even more—lying in bed with Eve’s arm around her neck, her ear against Eve’s heart as they talked about their favorite bands in high school, their oldest friends, what trauma their families had inflicted upon them in childhood. Eve wore heels and eyeliner and lipstick and lipliner and carried tiny purses to hold instruments to fix said makeup. Because of that, Trace made an assumption. She tagged Jordan as being like her, started calling her a “baby butch” until Jordan asked her to stop because while no, she didn’t wear dresses or makeup, hadn’t for years, the word butch didn’t feel quite right. It wasn’t hers to claim and it felt to Jordan like you needed to do so; it was something that needed to fit like the perfect denim jacket.

Jordan and Eve ended softly, because Jordan was graduating and moving to Seattle. It wasn’t that serious and neither of them wanted it to be. Jordan hadn’t been in love with Eve, but she loved how it had started, how she could take her time, the way you’re supposed to drink a glass of fine wine, holding it in your mouth, tasting the flavors before swallowing. Dating apps felt forced. There was so much pressure to name the attraction right away, or else what were you doing there? But for now, Jordan found dating to be a means of getting out of the apartment. It was something to talk about with Trace that wasn’t Silvia, or whatever random girl Trace was dating that week.

“Did you see they’re starting a new in-house photo department?” Trace asked.

“In New York,” Jordan said.

“Yeah.”

“New York is three thousand miles away.”

“But it’s New York, Jor.”

As Trace spoke, Jordan imagined getting on a plane and flying across the country. She thought about working in an office without Trace and living on her own or with strangers. Suddenly, it seemed fairly appealing.



The next weekend was Pride. Gay Christmas. Pride was an excuse to get wasted at ten a.m. It was an excuse to kiss a stranger. It was an excuse to do drugs off the dimple in a stranger’s back. It was an excuse to dance until the sun came up. Hugs were given out at the drop of a hat. Rounds of shots ordered for people you’d never met before in your life. Cigarettes and joints shared like they were Werther’s Originals from your grandmother’s purse. Jordan never smoked, or snorted white powder off a stranger, but there was something about the ability to do so, something about how close Trace and Silvia brought her to this world that both excited and scared her. Jordan liked to situate herself on the fringes. It felt safe to be a part of the adventure but not fully sucked down into it.

They made their way through the streets of downtown Seattle. Trace wore a Pride flag around her shoulders. Periodically, she would stretch her arms out, one corner in each hand, letting it flow behind her like a cape. During a stop at a beer garden off Pike, Trace handed her phone to a stranger and squeezed Jordan and Silvia together for a picture. The two of them stood on either side of Jordan, as if she were their child. Grins ate up their faces. Silvia turned her head and pressed her lips to Jordan’s cheek, and Trace on Jordan’s left followed suit. For a few brief hours, it was as if the previous couple years hadn’t happened. Both of her best friends were there, her elder queer sisters shepherding her into a new phase of life. Pride was always a magic kiss of serotonin.

At Seattle Center they met up with some of Trace’s friends from the queer softball league she’d recently joined. Stages were set up for music, fences delineated where drinking could start and end. They spread out across the grass on a slight incline. Silvia left to get more drinks, and Jordan watched Trace laugh and hit one of her new friends on the arm with her palm.

Silvia returned with three plastic cups. One of Jordan’s friends showed up, a girl named Morgan, who she’d met on Tinder. Both had agreed almost immediately upon sitting down at the bar that there was no romantic spark but had managed to stay peripherally in each other’s lives.

Every time Jordan turned around, a new cup with alcohol was handed to her. Silvia sat next to Jordan on the grass and leaned her head on Jordan’s shoulder. At one point she got up to dance, and Trace joined her, an arm tight around Silvia’s waist.

Jordan found herself in deep conversation with Morgan and one of Trace’s softball teammates about the probability that Princess Diana was actually gay. Jordan glanced around at the rest of their group. Silvia had disappeared. Jordan checked her phone. There was a text from Trace, who was sitting across the circle from her.

Do you know where Silvia went?

Jordan looked up, made eye contact with Trace, and shrugged.

She probably went to the bathroom, Jordan texted. I’ll go check.

Jordan had walked ten feet past the bar tent in the direction of the porta potties when she stopped. Silvia was sitting on the grass near a row of shrubs, with Eliza. They weren’t touching, but their heads bent together as they talked, only inches apart. Silvia’s hair had grown out into ringlets again, but she’d decided to keep it short, an undercut skimming her neck, longer strands resting on her forehead. She took a drag of the cigarette in her right hand and looked up to see Jordan. Silvia waved Jordan over, but Jordan shook her head and pointed at the bathroom line. Once she was locked inside the gray plastic box, she took her phone out.

Does Trace know about this? she typed to Silvia.

Know about what? Silvia asked.

That you’re hanging out with Eliza. Jordan breathed in and out through her mouth. The stench pressed in on her from all sides.

She knew Eliza would be here, yes. We’re going to come over in a few. Calm down, everything is fine.

Jordan left the bathroom without peeing, letting the door bang shut behind her. She rubbed sanitizer into her palms out of habit. Everything would most definitely not be fine.

Twenty minutes later Silvia and Eliza wandered over to the group. It was late afternoon. Everyone was deep into their drinks, hazy eyes still covered by sunglasses. The smell of hops and smoke and sweat hung over them. More people were dancing now. Most were standing, bodies loose, limbs touching as the alcohol dissolved physical boundaries. Jordan watched as Trace clocked Eliza and Silvia’s appearance. She saw Trace take three seconds to fix her face and slather a smile on. Before it arrived, Jordan noted a flash of horror.

Trace hit a friend on the shoulder. “Time for shots. Let’s go!” Trace’s consonants were already soft. The last thing she needed was a shot. They left and returned with a tray, handing small plastic cups to everyone in arm’s reach. The fireball burned the back of Jordan’s throat as it went down. Trace grabbed Jordan’s face and kissed her cheek as she came up for air. Jordan was reminded of her twenty-first birthday, Trace killing shots in anticipation of seeing Silvia at the bar.

Silvia and Eliza were talking to Morgan. Jordan stood on the grass at a slight remove, unwilling to insert herself into the group, feeling a pulse of trepidation behind her clavicle. Jordan watched as Trace reached to grab for a vape that had been extended towards her. She took a hit and coughed. Trace wasn’t usually a smoker. Silvia called Jordan’s name, saying Eliza had a question about her camera, so Jordan turned towards them, her fingers pinching into the plastic of the full cup someone had recently set in her hand. She wondered where she could get some water.

Her back was to Trace, so Jordan didn’t see Trace walking over, but she felt a shift in the energy. She heard the shouts of the group behind her quiet. Jordan felt the weight of Trace’s arm across her shoulder. Trace threw the other across Morgan, whom she’d only met once before.

“Well, well, well, what’s going on over here?” Trace asked.

“Jordan was telling us about the difference between Canon and Nikon,” Eliza said. “I’m thinking about getting a DSLR.”

Trace looked at Eliza blankly, not offering a response.

“Trace,” Silvia broke in, “this is Eliza. Eliza, Trace.”

“Nice to finally meet you.” Eliza stuck her hand out, but Trace just frowned at it. She didn’t move her arms from where they lay across Morgan’s and Jordan’s shoulders, but Jordan could feel her body shift, her center of gravity lost to the afternoon.

“Yes,” Trace finally said. “You’re the one fucking my girlfriend. I’d say it’s a pleasure, but it’s really not.”

“Trace!” Silvia and Jordan spoke at once.

Trace started backing away from their group, shaking her head. She held up one hand in a peace sign, before flipping it around and raising her middle finger. The crowd of sporty dykes behind her welcomed her back with cheers of approval.

Jordan looked at Silvia. “Is everything still fine?”

Jordan remembered when Silvia had finally reached out to Trace again after months of silence. Trace had been left in a suspended state of limbo, the status of their relationship unclear, a small spark of hope still burning. The morning after, smelling pancakes, hearing Trace sing in the shower, Jordan had been filled with relief, quickly followed by rage. No one should be able to wield such power. The anger had flickered behind her throat, but each day she pushed it back down, unwilling to confront what addressing it might mean. By the time Silvia returned to them, it was a shadow in her memory.

26

Trace

December

Saturn Is Returning

Trace opened her eyes when her alarm started. She lay in bed as it continued to beep, her phone within arm’s reach. She couldn’t muster the motivation to move and turn it off. Her room was dark. The light had barely begun seeping into the day. Seattle winters were not for the faint of heart. Blink and you might miss the scant amount of vitamin D that made its way through the clouds. It was Thursday. Six days before Christmas. Trace wanted to chug half a bottle of Benadryl and sleep through the rest of the day.

Across from the bed stood their dresser, an antique refurbished by Silvia three years ago that took four men to bring inside and up to the second floor. Trace always swore it would stay in the apartment when they left, unwilling to consider the hassle of moving it ever again. Above the dresser hung a painting of Trace that Silvia had made just after they moved to Seattle, still in a blissful honeymoon state. They were poor but thought of themselves as so grown-up. Silvia brought home discounted art supplies from the bookstore. She set up camp in their living room, which was also their bedroom and their kitchen. She sat at the table while Trace lay in bed, a sheet thrown across her waist “for propriety.” A martini glass dangled from one hand—because it looked good, not because they were martini drinkers yet. A tumbler stained with red stood on the bedside table. Two Buck Chuck bought by the case was their chosen beverage at the time.

A pit settled in Trace’s stomach when she remembered. It grew branches in her limbs as her thoughts whirled. It had been three days since she’d last spoken to Silvia. That was before she’d left Seattle. Every text Trace had sent since had gone unanswered. The painting stared at Trace every morning, mocking her. It filled her with rage. She threw back the sheets and walked across the room, phone still asking her to wake up on the table next to her bed. Trace pulled the painting off the wall, her fingers digging into the cheap canvas. She wanted to rip it apart, stick her foot through it, throw it out the window, feed it to the coyotes who wandered, audaciously, down the middle of residential streets. But she wouldn’t. She held on to a murmur of hope. Somehow, perhaps, things could still be fixed.

Trace set the painting on the floor in the corner of the room, facing it against the wall. She walked back to the bed and tapped the screen of her phone to silence it. Next to her phone, propped up against the wall, was a picture that Jordan had taken of Trace in college. Trace touched the edge of it briefly before pulling her comforter over her pillows.



When Trace mixed the cat food in the morning—dry food first, then wet on top—she thought of her fiancée. Silvia normally delighted in Trace’s disgust, pretending to lick the spoon like an ice cream cone before throwing it into the sink with a burst of laughter while Trace clamped her lips together and left the room. Trace opened the cabinet, reached for her coffee, and saw Silvia’s boxes of tea—chamomile for before bed, ginger for when her stomach hurt, Earl Grey and English breakfast for the mornings, and peppermint for midafternoon. It sent an ache through her body. Outside on their deck, Silvia’s prayer flags fluttered in the breeze. Trace wished she’d listened when Silvia told her how they worked.

The apartment felt empty and hollow without Silvia’s voice, her cackles at whatever sitcom rerun she was watching, her shouts for Trace whenever she needed help or had an important question that needed pondering, such as: What do you think will happen once all the elephants are gone? (Trace had made her stop watching the Discovery Channel after this wormhole of a conversation.) Before, when Silvia was abroad, Jordan had filled the space that she’d left behind. But now Jordan was gone too—and she also wasn’t speaking to Trace. Trace wasn’t sure which loss was worse. It was like having to choose death by drowning or fire.

Trace had been having dreams about Jordan. She saw Jordan’s face when she closed her eyes. She pictured them walking the streets of New York together. They used to talk almost every day. They had spoken on the phone at least once per week. But now Trace’s phone was quiet. It lit up with alerts from CNN and emails about Christmas sales. Her worth was now measured only by capitalism.

Trace searched Jordan’s Instagram page multiple times per day, hoping for a glimpse of her and Silvia. She needed some indication that they were okay, a hint about what was happening with their lives in New York. Trace wondered if Silvia knew about Jordan yet.

Trace was surprised by how deeply she longed for Silvia once she was gone. She felt stupid for not realizing Silvia would disappear. She had only been thinking of Jordan.



Trace had found the picture in the back of her closet the weekend after Thanksgiving. It was a black-and-white print Jordan had made in the darkroom at McCallen. Trace was sitting in the meadow they often frequented, just outside town. In the picture, Trace is staring at the camera, serious. She remembered Jordan laughing as she took it. “It’s not a headshot. You don’t have to eye fuck the camera.” Jordan had given Trace the picture as a graduation present. On the back she’d written:

Thought you might want a copy of this for when you’re old and wrinkly to be reminded you were once young and hot. I don’t know how I would have done the last three years without you. I don’t know how I will do next year without you. Thank you for being my best friend. You will always be a VIP to me.

I love you,
Jordan.

The words had run through her mind in a cycle for days. Jordan didn’t want to be without her. Jordan loved her. Jordan thought she was hot. Had she missed something back in college? Did she pick the wrong girl? Trace remembered the bliss of her senior year. She remembered when Jordan moved to Seattle. All of her and Silvia’s best moments had been with Jordan. And maybe that was why something had felt off since Jordan had been gone. Maybe Jordan was what Trace really needed. Since then, it was as if she’d had blinders on.

She’d put the picture on her bedside table in early December, before everything happened. Silvia saw it and laughed, said, “I’ve always loved that one.”



Trace felt, in her ache for Silvia, the love that still existed. Could she love Silvia and Jordan at the same time? Different loves, perhaps. That was how polyamory worked. Trace should have mentioned that when she’d talked to Silvia. Maybe that would have helped. Her emotions felt tangled, confused.

Silvia was all over Jordan’s Instagram. But there were still a few images of Jordan. She rarely smiled for pictures, just stared at the camera as if she already resented what the outcome would be. Trace had those pictures, had Jordan’s grid, completely memorized by now. She could see it with her eyes closed. She could tell you that her favorite one was three down and two across, in the middle column, her two girls, staring at each other while sitting on their couch in Seattle, oblivious to Trace taking the picture four feet away. It was the only one where Jordan was smiling. Silvia, on the left, was smirking, her eyebrows raised, a challenge.

In recent weeks Trace’s therapist had suggested she take a break from Instagram. Trace conceded that it might be a good idea but struggled to get off the app. She couldn’t resist the thrill of those red notifications when someone responded to one of her stories of Tegan, her chest tight with anticipation that it might be Jordan.

Trace had been ready to delete the app the day before. The Christmas cheer of others reverberated through her body with discomfort. But then Jordan had posted. Trace opened Instagram and there it was, not even a story but a grid post. It was a collection of empty wine bottles and glasses on a counter, the mouths of the glasses smudged with lip prints. There was no caption, classic Jordan. Trace was so shocked she nearly burst into tears. Should she like it? She opened Jordan’s profile so her feed wouldn’t refresh and studied every detail of the mundane photo. What would Silvia think if she liked it? Would Jordan even tell her? Would liking the photo be a betrayal of Jordan’s ask for space? How much space did she even fucking need? Jordan would have blocked her if she didn’t want Trace to see it, Trace rationalized. Though that would be extreme. She paused. Told herself she was overthinking it. Trace refreshed Instagram to make sure she wasn’t the first one. Okay, ten likes, she was good. She pressed the heart. Her stomach hurt for the rest of the day. Jordan and Silvia seemed fine. She wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Trace refused to delete Instagram after that.



Thursday afternoon, Trace got back from a trip to the hardware store and threw her damp coat on the couch. There was no one to yell at her not to. She threw the plastic bag filled with screws and drawer pulls on top of her coat. Trace was grateful Clark and Bell didn’t make employees go into the office around the holidays. No one had to look at her in this state. She was making plans to fill her weekend, the days before Christmas. She needed to busy herself, wanted to fix up the apartment like she’d always promised Silvia she would. Using tools felt butch. It felt strong. It felt adult. It felt like Silvia might be impressed.

It was 2:19 p.m., but she still hadn’t eaten lunch. She opened the fridge and took out a Rainier, pouring it into a coffee mug for her 2:30 call. A liquid diet. Good enough. She’d been having trouble eating solids anyways. Her stomach had churned almost constantly since Silvia had left. It was easier not to eat. It was 2:23 p.m. She opened Instagram as she drank, tapping through stories as the minutes ticked by. Someone’s plants in a spray of sun. A puppy gnawing on a thick rope toy. A Christmas tree lashed to the top of a sedan. A plate full of cookies, glittering with green and red sugared sprinkles. 2:29 p.m. It was time to suck up to a client. Trace launched Zoom and smiled wide. “Veronica, it’s so good to see you again!”

After her meeting, Trace called both Silvia and Jordan. She left them voicemails. Short. Hopefully persuasive. She tried to keep her voice steady.



Trace had anticipated Silvia’s anger. The day she chose to tell Silvia, Trace had been so nervous she’d felt like she was gulping air, her body heaving as her heart drummed behind her chest. But when she closed her eyes she saw Jordan. She saw a new life in New York. She saw something different than what she currently had. Different felt important. Different felt better. Trace spit the words out so fast that it took Silvia a few moments to piece together what she was saying. “I’m so sorry but I need to tell you something. I have been thinking about this so deeply, and I wish we didn’t need to have this conversation. But I have to tell you, I’ve realized I’m in love with someone else.” Silvia’s face looked confused before finally smoothing out in understanding. She yelled. She screamed. Her vocal cords became hoarse. She called Trace a bitch. An asshole. A fucking cunt. And then she’d gone eerily silent, her face unreadable. She wouldn’t look at Trace, her eyes gazing just past Trace’s head, over the ridge of her ear. Silvia went into Jordan’s old room, now their guest bedroom, and shut the door. When Trace got home from work the next day, Silvia was gone, her suitcase missing. It was naive of Trace to have been surprised. But she didn’t understand where Silvia would go—Trace was one of the few people Silvia had. It had always been a bit too reassuring to Trace. And then she remembered the one other person Silvia called family, and Trace knew where she’d gone, and Trace’s stomach sank so low she thought she might shit it out onto the floor.



On Friday morning, Trace had therapy. She sat on the couch in Wendy’s office as Wendy waited for her to begin. Trace didn’t know what to say. She’d had a quick session with Wendy on Wednesday, thirty minutes squeezed into Wendy’s lunch break, which Trace had mostly spent crying, her body folded over on the couch.

“How are you sleeping?” Wendy asked. Fine. But it wasn’t fine. Nothing was really fine. It had been taking her hours to fall asleep. She lay in bed staring at the ceiling, letting the darkness blur her vision until her eyes finally closed. She had memorized every scratch on her walls, every imperfection in the paint along the line of her ceiling.

“Not well,” Trace admitted.

“Why?”

“I can’t turn my mind off. There’s so much churn.”

“What are you thinking about?”

Wendy knew. Trace wasn’t sure why she even asked. “Just, like, Silvia and Jordan stuff.”

“What about it?”

“Just, things I’d like to say to them. What I would try to explain if they gave me the chance. Well, when they give me the chance. I don’t think they can shut me out forever.” Trace looked away from Wendy as she felt her eyes burn. Trace was confused. Releasing this secret into the world hadn’t made her feel better. It wasn’t the freedom she was expecting. She needed to have a conversation with them. Trace was sure if she could just exist in the same room as Silvia and Jordan for a moment, she could figure out what had gone wrong. A panic rose in her chest. What if they never talked to her again?

Wendy suggested that Trace try writing it down, everything she’d like to say. Trace was not a writer. She said she would try but knew she probably wouldn’t.



On Saturday Trace watered the plants, bringing each pot to the kitchen one by one, setting them in the sink and letting a slow stream of water trickle over the soil. They littered the counter when she was done, leaving pools of water and dirt. Trace sent Jordan a text. Just checking in. She sent Silvia a picture of Tegan.

That night she binged Grey’s Anatomy season four. Meredith Grey was standing in the parking lot staring at McDreamy as it poured. It never rains like that here, Trace thought.



On Monday morning, Wendy smiled at Trace through the screen of her computer. Trace had texted her in a panic the day before, asking for an emergency session. “How are you doing?” she asked.

Terrible. Awful.

“The worst week of my life,” Trace told her.

She explained the voicemails, the texts. She explained the silence. Wendy told her that she needed to learn to sit with uncomfortable feelings. Wendy told her that other people need time and that boundaries are important to respect. Trace thought, What about what I need? Wendy suggested meditation and Trace just nodded.

After work Trace sat on the floor of her bedroom, her back against the bed. She pressed play and listened as a woman asked her to clear her mind—impossible—take a deep breath—how? The woman was describing a balloon. It was floating through the air in a space Trace needed to envision, a place where she felt safe. What color was the balloon? Red, obviously. The balloon was holding Trace’s fears. Trace would stay on the ground, where she was protected. What does the space look like? Is there grass? Flowers? How does the sky look? Trace was sitting in a swing at Corridor Park in Haysville, Kansas. She was wearing khaki shorts, a big blue T-shirt. Olivia, her sister, was swinging next to her. They were seeing who could go higher. They could see their house from the park. Trace was instructed to watch the balloon float up, up, up and away from where she was. It got smaller and smaller, until it was only a speck, and then it was gone. The woman on the recording suggested she might find comfort in child’s pose to close their session. Trace pressed her forehead to the floor. Her eyes immediately filled. The balloon was still there, tied to her wrist. She could not escape it. She was completely alone, and so she opened her throat and let sound fill the apartment, echoing against the furniture. She openly wept in a way she hadn’t since she was a swing-obsessed child in the Midwest, eager to escape it all. Her nose was blocked. She could only breathe through her mouth. She could taste the salt of her tears. She didn’t feel safe at all. Tegan, who was sitting on the bed, leapt to the floor to escape the room.



Trace woke up on Christmas Eve and the sky was gray, as it was nearly every day, the air moist, but this specific morning it pierced her in a different way. She opened her eyes and felt her despair coil out of her, beyond her control. She could not get up. She turned her face into the pillow, letting the light blue fabric collect her tears. Trace could not escape the pressure, the anxiety crawling at her neck, the things she’d like to say swimming in her mind at all moments. Trace opened a notebook, began writing her thoughts, what she wanted Silvia and Jordan to know. To see it all on the page, officially introduced to the world, only made her feel worse. She closed the notebook, stuffed it into a drawer in her nightstand.



On Christmas Day, Trace was drinking whiskey. She started with a whiskey sour, then made a hot toddy, then a Manhattan, and soon it was a splash into a glass on its own, then another one. Now Meredith Grey was back with McDreamy. She had her finger on a bomb inside a body. Trace opened Instagram. Jordan had posted a story—a story! Trace opened it, zero chill. Martini glasses on a bar. In the corner, a hand pressed to the wood. Trace recognized the ring Silvia wore on her right thumb. Thick, silver, with a turquoise stone. So they were together, drinking. And they seemed to be fine. Perhaps they were better than fine. Trace felt a sprinkle of relief, a warm trickle down her chest. She was happy everyone was okay, no one attempting to kill one another. In her moment of inebriation it was hard for Trace to remember that social media was all fake. There were two sides to every image, every story. Nothing was ever as good as it seemed. But as she sat, her body humming with adrenaline from this touchpoint, Trace decided she should just tell Silvia and Jordan what she wanted to say to them. If they wouldn’t listen, she’d just leave it all in their voicemail. She retrieved the notebook from her nightstand. She sat on the couch with her legs crossed. She dialed Silvia first, the phone on speaker.



The day after Christmas, Trace threw a spoon into the sink. Clumps of cat food splattered the sides of the bowl it landed in. She unlocked her phone and opened her voicemail, just in case. Empty. Her stomach moaned, but bile rose in the back of her throat when she thought about eating. She poured leftover coffee from the day before into a cup and put it in the microwave. A ring hung around the center of their French press. The microwave beeped at her. She stared at it from where she stood, leaning against the counter. There was an urgency in her chest, as if her heart were racing, though her pulse was resting. Trace couldn’t sit around anymore. She wasn’t satisfied by the short walks she took around the neighborhood, another suggestion from Wendy to soothe her mind. She needed something bigger. Trace opened Google Maps and looked at the drive to Orcas Island, likely deserted in the winter. She wanted a ferry, she wanted miles, she wanted to be taken far from her home. She hadn’t taken a day off in eight months. Trace pinched the map until she could see the entire United States. It all looked so small, so simple, so contained in the square inches of her phone screen. After a minute she updated the destination—2,832 miles to New York City. It would take forty-three hours to drive.

For a moment, Trace considered it. Driving through the night. The open road in front of her. The catharsis of her foot on the gas. Then Trace remembered the mountain pass. She looked at the weather for Snoqualmie, then opened Expedia. There was a flight in two hours. It cost over a grand. Trace clicked purchase.

27

Silvia

December

Saturn Is Returning

Silvia felt the press of Jordan’s palms on her hips, shoving her away, like a brand on her body. The rejection was a shock. Jordan was standing near the couch. There seemed to be a halo around her, a trick of Silvia’s drunken vision. She thought about the previous four hours, how if they didn’t look at their phones, they could almost pretend like nothing was wrong, just two old friends getting drunk on Christmas. She thought about the previous ten years, how she had kept trying to grasp at something that seemed entirely intangible, Jordan and Trace her only consistency. And now that had been stained.

“Silvia,” Jordan said. “Please, stop.”

Silvia felt the words roll through her, a coursing of frustration, and then something deep inside her broke, slivers moving through her bloodstream.

“Calm down, Jordan.” She turned towards the kitchen, reaching for the stoppered wine bottle on the counter, a glass drying in the rack near the sink. “Jesus Christ.”

She heard Jordan say her name, but Silvia just kept pouring, working to keep her hand holding the bottle steady.

Jordan was right next to her. “Silvia, let’s talk about this.” Silvia handed Jordan the glass she’d poured. Set another clean glass on the counter.

“Talk about what?” Silvia asked. Her body shivered. It was time. “You acting like you’re so much better than me? With your fancy job and a camera strapped across your body. The perfect artist. Always ready to be inspired. Or maybe you want to talk about the dozen missed calls we’ve both received tonight from my depressed fiancée? Or maybe, maybe you’re finally ready to talk about the fact that you’re the one Trace is in love with. You are the reason I’m even here in the fucking first place.” Silvia paused. “Please, enlighten me, Jordan.” Jordan’s name felt rough in her mouth, every consonant sharp.

“We can talk about all of that,” Jordan said. Her jacket hung at an awkward angle off her right shoulder. Her eyes were wide. Silvia enjoyed the fear in Jordan’s face as she scrambled for purchase in the conversation. She moved further away from Silvia, back towards the living room.

“But I need you to know I didn’t ask for any of this. That’s the problem—”

“Oh, is that the problem, Jordan? Is it a problem that everyone loves you? That everyone wants you? That you have two parents and two households to go to on Christmas and the woman who was supposed to become my wife wants you, not me—and, apparently, I fucking want you too? It doesn’t make any sense to me, Jordan, because, in reality, you’re so boring. So vanilla. Just the most basic person. What is it about you that makes you so irresistible? I really want to know, because I can’t even get one person to stick around. Mom dies, no family, the one person who’s held on to me for nearly ten years flees when it’s finally time to commit. There’s no way I could ever bring myself to try and find my father because if he is still around, I know he’ll disappear too eventually.”

Jordan’s face closed down as Silvia spoke. She stared at the floor. Silvia’s words rang in the air.

“Fuck you, Silvia,” Jordan said.

“What was that, Jordan? A little louder.”

“Fuck. You. I’m sorry that I apparently have everything you want, but it’s a little hard to feel sorry for you when you treat the people around you like shit. Trace has spent years trying to be whatever you need her to be, ignoring most of her own desires. You don’t know what you want, and she has molded herself again and again trying to figure it out for you. Do you even actually love her? Or do you love the way she accommodates you? Do you love the way she makes you feel about yourself, even when you’re awful? It lets you believe the way you behave is worthy of love. It’s not. It has been appalling to watch what she’s allowed you to get away with.”

“What did she say in her voicemails to you?” Silvia asked.

It was the first thought that had popped into Silvia’s head when she’d finished listening to her own at the bar earlier that evening. Jordan had been in the bathroom. She felt a desperation to know what Trace’s communication to Jordan looked like. Was it similarly pathetic? Guilt inducing? Or was it a further profession of love? Trace had accused Silvia of punishing her. It had sliced deep, despite Silvia’s assurance that Trace had started this, that it was all Trace’s fault. In the voicemail, Trace had told Silvia she wanted her. She had used the word please no less than eleven times. Did she do the same for Jordan?

“None of your fucking business, Silvia.”

Silvia’s anger was hot. Untouchable. She reached towards the empty wine glass on the counter. It was smooth against her fingers. When it hit the wall, it chipped the top layer of paint before sliding to the ground in pieces. The sound, the destruction, Jordan’s surprise, were all satisfying to Silvia. But then Jordan raised her own glass, still full of wine, and slammed it onto the floor next to her feet. A piece of glass skimmed across the room to stop right next to Silvia’s foot. Jordan stepped over the mess and entered her bedroom, closing the door behind her with a thud. Silvia picked up the chunk of glass, careful not to prick her finger, and placed it delicately on the counter.

She moved towards the sink, away from the shattered wine glasses, and slid to the floor, her back against the wall. Silvia realized her hands were shaking and she closed them into a fist. She had spent more time shouting in the past two weeks than she had in years. She hadn’t behaved like this since her mother was alive. Silvia knew she was a loud presence, but she had managed to bottle her anger with others throughout adulthood in a way she never could with her mom. Rhonda had been her only outlet. Why were girls so terrible to their mothers? Perhaps because their mothers were the only ones they could trust to keep on loving them in perpetuity, even if, like in Trace’s case, that love was for a person who no longer existed.

Trace and Jordan and Silvia referred to themselves as family, but Silvia didn’t know how powerful those ties really were. Sometimes chosen family needed to be cut off too. Her mom used to tell Silvia in the middle of fights that she had an attitude problem. Silvia would snap back, “Guess where I got it from?” But the words had churned in her stomach when the yelling stopped, deep into the night. What did attitude problem mean? Was there something wrong with the way she approached the world? At times Silvia felt like she had a filter over her eyes that was impossible to remove, blinding her to reality. The things Jordan said turned over and over in her head, melting together. Was this all her fault?



The next morning, Silvia woke up feeling refreshed. She pressed a finger to her temple, confused about the lack of throbbing. She sat up tentatively and reached for the water on the table next to Nicole’s bed. The room looked like an Airbnb, someplace where someone lived temporarily. There was no art on the walls, the furniture cheap and bland. It made Silvia feel more comfortable, less like she was staying in someone else’s space. She didn’t remember getting into bed last night, but she did remember leaving the bar, kissing Jordan’s cheek on a street corner, both of them laughing at the ridiculousness of it all, some bit they were playing. Nothing seems serious five drinks in. Jordan had thought it was a joke. Silvia didn’t know when it had changed for her. She remembered Jordan’s hands pushing her away. Jordan’s face, awash in anger. The splintering of glass.

Silvia walked into the kitchen. Jordan was sitting on the couch, working on her computer. The floor was clear. Jordan, always cleaning up their messes. She had left eggs in the pan for Silvia, spinach and feta. It was Silvia’s favorite breakfast. A peace offering, perhaps. Silvia bristled at anyone making assumptions about her, thinking they knew her too well. She couldn’t stop hearing Jordan’s words from the night before. Her accusations. How long had Jordan hated her?

Silvia left the eggs where they were and picked up a banana from a bowl on the counter. She pulled out a piece of bread and stuck it in the toaster, opened a jar of peanut butter, and stood waiting for the toast with a knife in one hand.

“Do you not want eggs?” Jordan asked.

“No,” Silvia said.

When Silvia opened the trash can later to throw her banana peel away, she saw the lump of extra eggs, lying congealed, cold and firm, and she felt a wave of satisfaction pass through her. It filled her with shame. Childish, like the gratification of winning a game of Sorry against a ten-year-old.

Silvia’s desire for subversion had begun before she could remember. There was something about seeing her mother too happy, too pleased with herself, when she laid a new outfit out on the bed for Silvia, or left a box with jewelry on the kitchen counter before school. They always had brand-name labels, were often worth thousands of dollars. It began to make Silvia feel sick, so she started requesting Forever 21, Claire’s, Hot Topic. Quality wasn’t cool. But then one Christmas her mother aligned to Silvia’s desires, and Silvia’s gaze chilled; she asked her mom whether she thought it was good for the planet, or humanity, to purchase items made in sweatshops.

The second her mother became thrilled Silvia was excelling in tennis, Silvia quit. Softball was the only sport Silvia would acquiesce to then, mostly because she knew her mother found it crass and masculine. It was a sexy sport, Silvia decided, before she’d even fully realized why.

The Peace Corps was an escape, but she also felt satisfaction in knowing how doubtful her mom would have been. You’ll only make it two months, she imagined her mom saying. Then you’ll be crying to come home. But she made it past two, to six, to a year, to two. She served her full service, even though it almost killed her.

Trace hadn’t exactly fit at McCallen. She was a little too polished, a little too corporate. Silvia had gone to McCallen to be an artist, and it delighted her to find someone who didn’t want that, who at times looked incongruent standing next to her. There were moments Silvia wondered what she was running from. What was wrong with being predictable? What was wrong with being known?



Silvia knew she and Jordan weren’t going to talk about it. At first, this realization was a relief. But then, a stone settled in her stomach at Jordan’s audacity. She was always so good at keeping things to herself. It was something Silvia admired about her, was at times jealous of. She and Trace always flung their thoughts and feelings out into space without thinking.

Jordan retreated to her bedroom that afternoon to edit for work. Silvia made a saltwater bath to cleanse the energy of her crystals, leaving them to soak on the island in the kitchen. She turned on the TV, watched two episodes of Sex and the City, then turned it off. Silvia pulled out her deck and lined up a set of cards for a reading, but she was distracted, unable to listen to what the images were telling her.

Hours later, Silvia was in the shower when she heard the buzzer. It rang twice before she turned the water off. As she stepped out of the tub, she could hear music coming from Jordan’s bedroom.

Silvia was toweling off her body when she heard the knock. She paused, wondering if Jordan would open the door, but she didn’t hear the clunk of the deadbolt. Silvia was wrapping the towel around her when the second knock came—louder, more insistent. Silvia heard the music quiet. She shoved her feet into her sandals and walked into the hallway. Jordan stood in the doorway to her bedroom, not moving.

“Jor?” Silvia said. The knock came again, more of a banging now.

“Who is it?” Silvia asked.

Jordan looked at her, and Silvia knew. She knew in the way you can sense a spirit in the room with you. A soul hanging over yours. They both moved towards the door.

28

Trace

September

One Year to Saturn Return

Trace shifted in her seat. She hated flying. Silvia was asleep next to her, body tucked towards Trace, left hand gripping Trace’s forearm. The plane moved up and down in a strong gust of wind, and Trace’s throat dropped into her stomach. She’d taken a Xanax before boarding, but it only did so much. She avoided flying as much as possible.

Silvia murmured something into Trace’s shoulder in her sleep. Silvia could get mad, but her body didn’t rebel in moments of instability the way Trace’s did, rejecting food and all other forms of comfort. Most times Trace was grateful for Silvia’s general sense of ease. They never would have lasted this long had Silvia also ridden an emotional wave through high-stress moments. Sometimes, though, it made Trace angry that Silvia couldn’t seem to get distressed. Trace’s discomfort never bothered Silvia. It made Trace wonder at times—did she even care? Then there were moments, such as this, where Trace felt jealousy rip her open. Silvia was relaxed through the bouncing turbulence while Trace felt weak, on a roller coaster she hadn’t consented to. She could count the body parts she’d be willing to lose to relieve herself of the burden of anxiety. Toes, of course, hardly ever visible. An ear lobe? Absolutely. Part of a finger but perhaps not a whole one, unless it was the pinky. Her ring finger, above the first knuckle, done. She imagined Silvia sliding Trace’s wedding band onto her half finger. They would both laugh.

The plane dipped again in the air and Trace tightened her grip on the armrest.



The year before, Silvia and Trace’s adventures in polyamory had unraveled. In October, Silvia got a text from someone in her service cohort. CBS was working on a story about sexual assault in the Peace Corps. Late at night on a weekday, as they both were trying to fall asleep, everything that had happened with the principal at Silvia’s school in Lesotho came out. Trace fought the urge to punch a wall.

Silvia told Trace she’d only slept with Eliza a couple times. They mostly smoked weed together in parks. Getting high was a way of forgetting. It numbed her feeling of failure. This made Trace sick, thinking of all the girls she’d had sex with, her own form of numbing. Silvia’s voice was small in the dark that night, and Trace was grateful that her own face was hidden as she wrapped her arms around Silvia.

Trace found Silvia a therapist. She found the two of them a therapist, who sat in sessions with them once a week for months, talking through the difficulties of their physical intimacy, helping to repair the hole that had formed in the intervening years.

Trace proposed that spring, at the top of the trailhead at Rattlesnake Lake. They stood on a boulder as Trace sank to her knee, surrounded by mountains and trees and blue sky. Silvia nodded quickly—speechless—and Trace glided the ring onto her finger. The hikers around them clapped. It was a moment Trace had imagined a thousand times. But the memory of it was chalky in her mind. It left her feeling dusty, like there was something she was trying to wipe away.

And then, Jordan left. She finally took the photography job in New York. And though Trace had been the one to push her, annoying her constantly with requests for updates on the process, it startled her when Jordan was actually gone, like a wind had suddenly blown her from their lives.

“I can’t keep living with you, anyways,” Jordan said.

“Why not?” Trace asked.

“Trace! You’re engaged!”

When Silvia proposed back to Trace over Pride, she’d presented a sliver of gold to encircle Trace’s forth finger. Silvia told Trace she wanted to get her something special for her wedding band, something wider, like a cuff, the inner edge engraved with all my love in her own handwriting. Silvia’s engagement ring winked at Trace from Silvia’s left hand now—a pear-shaped emerald set in a gold band. It was partially surrounded by a cluster of diamonds that ended in a point reaching towards Silvia’s knuckle, like an inverse crown. Jordan had come with Trace to pick it out. Silvia loved it.

Now that Trace had the ring on her finger, she felt satisfied, like she had gotten what she’d set out to achieve. Neither of them had brought up searching for venues. No orders for wedding bands had been placed. The wedding suggestions, when they came, were merely hypotheticals. It still felt new. Too early to plan. They were just enjoying this phase. Or so they told themselves, and others, when asked.



An hour later, Trace and Silvia landed at O’Hare. Blake and her girlfriend of four years were getting married. They took the train into the city, rolling suitcases clamped between their legs as they whipped past cars stopped on the highway. They had an Airbnb in Lincoln Park for the weekend.

There was something strange to Trace about being at an age when people—themselves included—were getting married. Wasn’t she still nineteen? Didn’t she just graduate from college? Too frequently, Trace drank one too many glasses of wine on a weeknight and woke up head throbbing, hardly able to think. Trace had become a manager at work, but before every meeting with her team, she felt a flash of panic: Would today be the day they realized she had no idea what she was doing?

Trace wondered how quickly babies would start popping up on her Instagram feed. Some girl Trace RA’d with had posted an ultrasound picture the week before with a mawkish caption about what Saint Valentine would be bringing them next year. Trace still felt like a child; children shouldn’t be trusted to raise other children. Silvia seemed to agree. Every time Trace brought up the topic of kids, Silvia would turn to their cat and say, “But I’m already a mother.”

On the train ride Silvia sat with her hand on the back of Trace’s neck, stroking her index finger absentmindedly up and down Trace’s spine.

That night they ordered delivery and ate Chinese food as Silvia complained to Trace about one of her employees, a twenty-three-year-old barista whose primary ambition was to be a DJ, which resulted in frequent late arrivals at work, eyes red and hazy from drugs and lack of sleep.

“They think just because weed is legal, they’re free to use it like an over-the-counter drug,” Silvia said. “I really like Kris, and their music is fucking sick, but if they show up high one more time, I think I have to fire them.”

Trace nodded along and scooped fried rice into her mouth. After years of bickering, Trace had finally understood that Silvia wasn’t looking for a conversational partner in these situations, just a body to rant to. Trace kept her opinions to herself, feeling some part of her begin to shrivel inside. She thought about Silvia, who used to write poems and dabbled in watercolors and who cared so much about the beauty of life but who now included words like payroll and P&L in everyday conversation, and Trace wondered why it made her so sad.



On Saturday they got up early and walked along the edge of the lake. Silvia and Trace held sweating cups of cold brew. They came across a rocky outcrop and climbed up. Trace turned towards the city, the line of gleaming, icy-blue buildings, and felt a thrill at being somewhere new and large. It was brimming with potential.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it,” she said, and in a distant voice she heard Silvia agree, but when Trace turned towards her, she saw that Silvia was standing with her back to Trace, facing the water and the fading horizon line. Trace felt a twinge in her chest, one that had become more frequent in recent months. She thought, Oh no. Trace always seemed to be a few pages away from Silvia, sometimes in a completely different chapter. The gap felt like it was widening. Were they even in the same book anymore? Had they ever been?

That afternoon they tossed rice as Blake and Liz descended the steps outside the courthouse. Blake wore a cream jumpsuit with a short cape, Liz high-waisted trousers and a lacy tank top. They both held one single white rose and a sprig of baby’s breath.

“No one ever tells you that baby’s breath smells like shit,” Blake said to Trace after they’d taken the requisite postceremony photos. Years had passed since they’d last seen each other. A distanced sense of intimacy had been maintained through social media and an ongoing chain of memes DM’d back and forth to one another. Trace held a tenderness towards Blake for their easy friendship throughout college and beyond. Neither expected too much, nor asked for something they knew the other would not be able to give. The only thing Blake requested of Trace for the wedding was a speech. The promise had been sealed with a pinky swear after Blake’s second bad breakup sometime during their senior year and was followed up on the moment Liz said yes. Trace was more than happy to oblige.

Blake threw the bouquet in a trash can on the corner. “Is that what actual babies smell like?”

“Maybe you’ll find out eventually,” Trace said.

“Oh no, we’re not doing that,” Blake said. “The cats are enough. We don’t need any tiny humans sucking our time, energy, and money.”

Blake was so sure. Trace remembered being sure of her own future at one point in time. She didn’t know when it had changed.

Twenty of them crowded into a private dining room for dinner. The five courses would be followed by a barhop through all the places Blake and Liz had taken each other on early dates.

Trace was delighted by the itinerary. In the email they’d sent out, a quote was included next to each location describing a moment from the date: First kiss stolen outside as I waited for my Uber. Heard B snort for the first time two hours into this date. One of the restaurants had since closed, so the group would be drinking champagne on the sidewalk as a tribute.

At the table, Blake’s parents sat on one side of her, Liz on the other; Liz’s mom and stepdad were to Liz’s left—the nuclear fan of a supported queer union. A wave of emotion passed through Trace. She worried she might cry and ducked her head, running a hand up the back of her neck until Silvia caught it with her own and held it quietly in her lap.

She looked at Trace. “Who needs parents, though, am I right?”

“All they’re good for is trauma,” Trace replied.

Trace stood to give her speech as the salad course was being cleared. Her tongue still tingled from the vinegar in the dressing. She introduced herself to the room, making a joke about how she wasn’t Blake’s first friend from college but could guarantee she was Blake’s favorite, given no other McCallen alums were present, aside from Silvia as her plus one. They all laughed. She told them there would be footnotes available for all the queer references she was about to make. Again, she heard chuckles. Trace excelled at public speaking. She told them a story about her grandfather passing away. How Trace’s grandmother had stood at the front of the church during his service and said to everyone: “He made me a better person.” Trace thought that Blake and Liz were better together than they were apart. She thanked Liz for making Blake shine, and also for bearing a striking resemblance to Cate Blanchett. Trace paused for more laughter. She reached for her wine glass on the table. “Everyone, please raise your glasses to Blake and Liz. May your love be long, and may you only ever have five cats max at a time.”



Silvia immediately fell into bed when they returned to the rental. Trace joined her. The room wasn’t spinning, exactly, but it shook slightly as a dull pain started at the back of her head.

“Their wedding was so straightforward,” Silvia said. “No bridal parties, no showers or bachelorettes, no large rental halls.”

“We could do something like that too,” Trace said, turning to face her.

Silvia picked at a thread on the edge of the blanket. “Yeah, maybe.”

“We should probably have a conversation about wedding stuff at some point.”

Silvia reached for the glass of water on the table next to their bed. “Can we just get through the holidays first?”

“Okay,” Trace said. Silvia’s lack of urgency relieved her. There was no rush. They could take their time. They were queer. There weren’t any boxes they were looking to check.

“It’s nice that Jordan called,” Silvia said. On the third stop of the night Trace had handed her phone to Blake, where Jordan was waiting on FaceTime to congratulate her.

“It made Blake very happy,” Trace agreed. “I’m bummed she couldn’t make it, though.”

Trace missed Jordan every day. She kept thinking it might get better, but as she watched Jordan’s life in New York blossom on Instagram from thousands of miles away, Trace felt the ache reverberate inwards, to parts of her body she didn’t realize could yearn. She was attached to Jordan in a way that almost scared her. Trace worried the need was like a smell that seeped from her pores. Could Silvia sense it? Could the person on the bus next to her? It felt wrong to be so dependent on a friend, to feel so bereft about a platonic relationship.

“She’s very brave, that girl.” Silvia stretched her arms above her head and pointed her toes. She rolled onto her stomach. “Moving across the country to do this big fancy job without knowing anyone.”

“Sil, you did that. You moved to a different country.”

“But I would never do it again,” Silvia said. “And I was partnered. I had help. Kind of.” The last two words trailed off. They mostly avoided talking about Silvia’s years abroad. It was a bruise that had only just yellowed over for Trace. She had spent most of that time longing to have a promise of commitment from Silvia. Now that she had it, she felt distracted by Jordan’s abandonment, like her support system was crumbling.

Trace was grateful when Silvia covered Trace’s mouth with hers, climbed on top of her, pressed her body into Trace’s. They frequently seemed to be on the cusp of talking about the fissures in their relationship. Trace held a lingering fear of letting sentences out into the world that would impact their connection. It was the one topic they were both skilled at avoiding.

Earlier that evening, when Trace sat back down after giving her speech, Silvia kissed Trace’s cheek. “You did so great,” she said amidst clinking glasses.

Trace had practiced the speech four times. Three days before, she’d forced Jordan to listen to it over FaceTime. But it wasn’t until she was speaking the words aloud at the wedding that Trace thought about her own relationship. Was she a better person now than she’d been eight years ago? She wasn’t sure. She felt like she’d been disintegrating, slowly coming apart at the seams.

29

Jordan

December

Saturn Is Returning

Trace looked like shit. Jordan could smell her from three feet away. Her hair was stringy and flopped limply across her forehead. Her cheeks had a sticky sheen to them; Jordan imagined if she reached out to touch Trace’s face, her hand would come away oily. Trace’s eyes, normally a bright, crystalline blue, now appeared darker, like a shadow had passed over her face. There were zits sprouting on her chin, some recently popped, others with whiteheads begging for fingertips, all a screaming pink. She wore light gray sweatpants and a sweatshirt that swallowed her body. Had she looked like this when Silvia left? Was it possible someone could fall apart so quickly?

It was Silvia who spoke first, breaking the stalemate.

“Did you tell her to come here?” Silvia was looking at Jordan.

“No, of course not.”

“You didn’t call her last night?”

Jordan shook her head.

Trace’s voice, when she spoke, was raspy. “I can confirm that neither of you called me. Or texted me. Or bothered to even react to a single message I’ve sent in the past week.” She appeared on the cusp of tears. Or perhaps recovering from a bout already.

“I guess you should come in.” Silvia stepped to the side, forcing Jordan to do so too as Trace walked into the apartment. Jordan closed the door and Trace stood in the center of the room, occupying the two square feet of space that was neither the kitchen nor the living room.

Jordan had imagined Trace and Silvia visiting her for the first time on countless occasions. But not once had she thought they might come of their own volition, separately, without her consent, appearing here as if in a nightmare. It all felt unreal, her own version of a horror film.

Trace was standing there, shoulders sagging to such an extent that her body seemed on the verge of folding over, like her arms were pulling her towards the floor. How did she get here? Where was her stuff? She didn’t even have a backpack, a fanny pack. Was there a phone? A wallet? Did she walk from Seattle? Hitchhike? Jordan scanned Trace’s pockets for lumps, analyzed the scuffs on her shoes, the creases in the leather.

Silvia had busied herself in the kitchen, pulling out glasses—a thick tumbler meant for water and two mismatched wine glasses. The other wine glasses were now gone. She popped the cork out of a bottle, body still tucked into a towel that skimmed the top of her thighs. A trail of water followed behind her, small, raised droplets on the wooden floor.

Silvia handed Trace a glass half full of a light maroon wine and nodded at the couch behind them. Trace moved as if in a trance, like she wasn’t sure why she was there. Silvia met Jordan’s eyes briefly when she handed Jordan her own glass. Jordan couldn’t read what she found there.

Silvia and Trace sat on one couch, Jordan sat on the other. She wasn’t sure if she should be a part of the conversation that would follow, or if it would be better for her to leave. Earlier Jordan had put on the Netflix fire. It still flickered on the TV, giving off a false aura of heat.

“Where is Tegan?” Silvia asked.

“I left him with Bronwyn,” Trace said. Silvia nodded, satisfied by the answer, though Jordan didn’t know who Bronwyn was. There was a pause. Everyone looked down at their drinks, raised them to their lips in unison.

“What are you doing here?” Jordan surprised herself by being the one to ask first. Silvia turned towards her with brows raised, as if she, too, was surprised, perhaps a little impressed. Jordan realized her hands were gripping tightly, fingertips pressed firmly into the thin glass. Jordan wasn’t sure if Silvia handing her one of the last two remaining wine glasses was a truce or a reminder. She set it on the coffee table in front of her, suddenly concerned about breaking it.

Trace turned to Jordan with a look of betrayal. She didn’t say anything, just stared at Jordan with dull eyes. She seemed to be a different Trace from the one who had left her that voicemail, was it only the night before? That Trace had waxed nostalgic, said there had always been something different about her relationship with Jordan—she wanted to know if Jordan had felt it too, if Jordan had known when she came to Trace’s room to listen to music that they’d be in each other’s lives for the long haul. Trace had seemed confused, lonely, grasping at straws. She seemed unable to parse the nuances of their friendship, wanting deep feelings to slant either romantic or platonic. Trace said she was jealous of Jordan’s life, and that’s when Jordan really understood.

“Well?” Silvia asked, her voice laced with a twinge of annoyance.

Trace clamped her teeth together. Jordan could see the muscles in her jaw working as her molars ground down. Trace held her glass like it was a mug, palms wrapped around the bulb as if for warmth. She stared at an invisible point somewhere in front of her, near the ground. No one said anything for what felt like years but was possibly only two minutes, maybe three. They were all frozen, shoulders and backs unnaturally straight, aside from Trace, who sat as if someone had removed the bones from her body. Jordan tried to make eye contact with Silvia, but she was focused on Trace, glass perched on one knee, index finger tapping lightly on the side.

“I’ll wait,” Silvia said, and Jordan almost wanted to laugh at her audacity, her sass, her ability to stand up for herself in the face of someone so pathetic. Jordan was grateful she didn’t have to confront Trace alone, where she might forgive too quickly, be incapable of speaking all her truths.

Trace brought the glass to her lips with both hands and drank half the liquid inside. “I don’t know how to answer that question,” she said when she was finished.

“You don’t know why you’re here?” Silvia snapped, fingernail a metronome against the side of her glass.

“Obviously I know why I’m here, Silvia. It’s just such a stupid question I can’t even begin to answer it. Why do you think I’m here? Jesus Christ.”

Jordan had heard Trace speak in this tone before, from her bedroom when they’d all lived together. It felt almost too personal to be witnessing this in person, as if Trace and Silvia were naked in front of her, vulnerable.

“I want to hear you say it,” Silvia said.

Trace leaned forward and refilled her glass from the bottle of wine Silvia had set on the coffee table. Wine sloshed over the lip and trickled down the side of the glass. They waited a few moments longer before Trace responded. “You abandoned me.”

“You abandoned me first, Trace,” Silvia said.

“No, I didn’t. I never left you.”

“You told me you were in love with someone else.” She glanced at Jordan. “Leaving out a pretty huge detail. How was I supposed to take that?”

“You’re the one who was so into polyamory. ‘Being in love doesn’t mean anything has to change, there’s enough love for everyone.’ Isn’t that what that book you gave me said?”

“Trace, you are not poly. We learned that three years ago. And that is not how you presented that information to me. You’d already taken your fucking engagement ring off.”

“And you left! You could have stayed and talked to me, but you ran, like you always do. You never want to work through the hard shit. We’re so good at not talking about things. Relationships don’t work without conversation.”

“Relationships also don’t work when you drop bombshells on people after proposing to them. What the fuck is that, Trace? You bought this ring. You asked me to marry you. Did you know this then? That you were so deeply in love with our best fucking friend?”

Their voices were rising, and Jordan fought the urge to cover her ears with both palms, hum until it was all over. It reminded Jordan of her parents before their separation. She had sat upstairs in her room feeling utterly helpless as their voices broke against one another. They had never been a shouting family before the accident.

“I don’t know, Silvia.” Trace took a deep breath. “I don’t know.”

“What do you want?” Jordan asked then, causing them both to look over at her.

“Do you want her?” Silvia asked. “She is a fairly good kisser, I’ll give you that.” Silvia took a sip of her wine.

“What?” Trace asked.

“Silvia,” Jordan said.

“What did you do?” Trace asked.

“Well, you know,” Silvia said.

“Oh my god,” Jordan said.

Trace stood up then. “No, I don’t know. So why don’t you tell me?”

Silvia said nothing. Jordan took a breath to speak, but was unable to find the words.

Trace’s voice began to climb then, reaching a pitch Jordan had never heard before. She kept repeating, “Oh my god, oh my god.” She was still holding her wine. Her empty hand went to her head, fingers grasping at her greasy hair. Silvia stayed seated as Trace began to cry, whimper, really. Her body shook. She stepped away from the couch. Jordan resisted the urge to cross the room, place a palm on Trace’s back, hand her a tissue. Jordan had learned to comfort from a young age.

Silvia asked Trace to sit down. Silvia wouldn’t look at Jordan. Trace had stepped to the side of the couch, was pacing in front of Jordan’s bedroom door. She was repeating the word “no” again and again under her breath.

The next time Silvia asked her to sit, Trace let out a low wail and bent over until she was nearly on the ground. Wine from her glass trickled onto the floor. With her free hand she began hitting her head, a closed fist, first lightly, and then harder.

“Stop it, Trace,” Silvia scolded. Jordan was paralyzed with fear. It alarmed her to see Trace on the ground, like her age had spun back twenty-five years. Jordan wondered, for a moment, if Silvia had kissed her on purpose, if she’d wanted even more to happen, all for this end, and she allowed herself to feel angry. She allowed herself to feel enraged at both of them for using her as a pawn in their relationship. But she couldn’t hold on to the heat of her indignation. Jordan had never known how to sustain such intense emotion. It was one thing that drew her towards Trace and Silvia, two people who lived as if the world had been designed especially for them. She had always been in awe of how much they claimed—time, energy, emotions. Jordan knew she had allowed them to give her life shape, become less amorphous. She hid in the middle of Trace and Silvia’s mess in order to ignore facing her own. Jordan feared, deep down, that if she looked too closely at herself, she would understand why her parents couldn’t let Summer go, their remaining daughter utterly lacking.

Trace continued to pound her head. Silvia got to the floor and grabbed Trace’s arm with both of her hands. “I said stop, Trace!” Wine sloshed out of Trace’s glass onto the floor, sending splatters across Trace’s sweats and Silvia’s white towel. Neither seemed to notice.

Trace pulled away from Silvia, whose towel had fallen open. Her hand stilled.

“Get away from me,” Trace said. She looked at the floor, like she’d dropped something she couldn’t find. “I—I have to go. I need to leave.” Her movements were jerky, her body still shaking, like an addict looking for their next fix.

“Trace,” Silvia called out. There was a puddle of wine next to her on the floor.

“No, no, no,” Trace said, opening the front door. “You need to leave me alone. I need to go.” She shut the door behind her. Moments later, Jordan heard another door slam shut in the hall. Neither Silvia nor Jordan ran after Trace. The apartment was silent aside from the hum of the refrigerator.

“We have to explain it to her,” Jordan said.

“We will,” Silvia said, still on the floor.

“What was that?”

“That was Trace,” Silvia responded, adjusting her towel.

“I’ve never seen her like that before.”

“You don’t know everything, Jordan.” Silvia dragged a finger through the wine on the floor beside her and brought it to her mouth, lips puckering as she sucked slightly. “It’s a pretty good pinot,” she said, as if none of it had just happened. “I’m going to get dressed.”

Jordan stared at the licking flames on the TV until her eyes blurred. She was struck by a thought: There was so much she didn’t know about Silvia and Trace. Perhaps she didn’t really know them at all. Was it possible to know someone deeply without a specific kind of intimacy? Was it possible to truly understand who someone was without hurting them so badly they were stripped entirely raw, their deepest fears exposed to the air?

As she sat in the living room, the air calm but still shimmering with the heat of their emotions, Jordan remembered something she hadn’t thought about in over a decade. Three weeks before Summer had gone to that last game, three weeks before her family was ruptured, Jordan had opened the bathroom door without knocking. Summer had been standing at the sink naked, working a moisturizer into her face. “Jordan!” she screamed, and Jordan stepped back quickly into the hallway, closing the door. But her eyes had been drawn to them, a series of short lines down the side of Summer’s body where her bicep closed against her torso. A bathing suit top would probably hide them, or at least obscure. Some were healed, white and puckering, but a couple were raw, red, with dots of blood. For days Jordan was confused, unsure of what she’d seen. It wasn’t until after Summer was gone that Jordan had put the pieces together.

The night before Summer’s funeral, Jordan couldn’t sleep. She was thinking about the cuts. No one had gone into Summer’s room yet, but it would happen at some point. She didn’t want her mom to stumble across whatever Summer was using to do it. Jordan spent three hours searching that night, but she couldn’t find anything. Summer had covered her own tracks. She was always careful with the mask she wore.

It wasn’t only that everyone put on armor to present themselves to the world—your rising sign, Silvia would say—but people were always changing. As soon as you figured out an element of someone’s personality, something else shifted. Jordan was surprised at how liberating the realization was. If Trace and Silvia could change or hide parts of themselves from her for ten years, so could she. Jordan wasn’t sure she really knew her own self. If she ever would.

All at once Jordan decided: She would leave New York. She would go upstate, or to Vermont, or to ride horses in Montana. She would get out, sit in a cabin somewhere surrounded only by nature. She would rip herself from expectation as soon as she possibly could.



Silvia returned to the living room in jeans and a T-shirt. She refilled their wine and sat on the couch next to Jordan, not saying a word. Silvia’s tarot deck was on the table in front of them. Jordan was surprised that Silvia hadn’t pulled a card yet. It was her self-soothing tool.

There was something Silvia had told Jordan about when she’d graduated from college. Jordan had complained that this was her last big transition. She said it felt anticlimactic. Silvia disagreed. Astrologically, she told Jordan, there were many more moments of transition Jordan would face.

“Saturn returning,” Jordan said now.

“What?” Silvia said.

“Saturn returning, that thing you told me about, this is what they mean, right? It blows up your life.”

“Saturn return,” Silvia corrected.

“Right, that’s what I said.”

“Yes, Jordan,” Silvia said with a sigh, “this is what they mean.”

Jordan put her hand down on the couch, face up, and Silvia grasped it with her own.

“We have to go find her,” Silvia said.

“Well, she’s locked herself on the roof,” Jordan said.

Jordan grabbed her keys and they both left the apartment.

30

Trace

December

Saturn Is Returning

Trace sat on the roof, her back pressed against the concrete wall of the stairwell. She was sore. It was as if her muscles had been tensed, her entire body ready for attack, for days, weeks, months, perhaps even years. Her heart contracted, in and out, at a rapid clip. She thought it might burst out of her rib cage. Trace pressed one hand into the cavity of her chest to keep it in place. She couldn’t let her vital organs escape and splatter across the tar paper.

She moved her limbs as slowly as possible. She needed to stop shaking. She closed her eyes and took a couple deep breaths. It made no difference. Instead, Trace raised the wine glass in her other hand to her lips. She’d taken it with her when she stormed out of the apartment. It wasn’t until her head was tilted back, tongue pushed forward, that she realized the glass was empty, a single drop of red staining the bottom. It made Trace furious. She needed something to help quiet her mind.

There were more bottles downstairs, but she wouldn’t go back. Not yet. She couldn’t face Silvia and Jordan again. It was like they didn’t recognize her, like they wouldn’t have known the sound of her voice if she’d called out to them from across the street. Maybe they weren’t even in the apartment anymore. Perhaps they’d left, walking side by side to the park, to the grocery store, to where the tip of Manhattan met the sea. They were probably giddy to be rid of Trace.

But maybe they were still downstairs, grateful to have the apartment to themselves again. Thinking about the two of them together made Trace want to vomit. She imagined them kissing. Is that really all that had happened? Or had Silvia removed Jordan’s clothes too? Knelt between her legs? Trace couldn’t stop the images. They moved quicker and quicker, flashing behind her eyelids. Did they spend the past week laughing at Trace? Playing her voicemails out loud to each other? Joking about her stupidity? Or worse, did they not think about her at all? Oh no, she actually was going to throw up. Trace leaned to the side and heaved. Pink-tinted bile splashed onto the black surface of the roof. Trace couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten. Maybe Christmas morning. A slice of toast. She really was pathetic.

Earlier that day, Trace hadn’t even changed before she’d gone to the airport. She texted a friend to watch her cat, left an extra set of keys under their doormat. It had been days since she’d showered. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d brushed her teeth. Sleeping had been difficult recently. Fits and starts. The hours she lay awake in her room, alone in the bed she normally shared with Silvia, were torturous, a new kind of hell.

Trace wasn’t sure how long she’d been on the roof, it seemed like an hour, maybe two. Her phone had died somewhere over Illinois. She’d been keeping it in bed with her at night, only plugging it in when the notification popped up on her screen—Low Battery, 5% battery remaining.

At the airport, Trace had stared at the subway map, charted her path to Harlem. There were three different trains. It had taken over an hour to get to Jordan’s neighborhood. Once she got to street level, it took her thirty minutes to find the right building. She’d memorized Jordan’s address, repeating it to herself softly as the plane carried her across the United States.

Trace had snapped. Maybe it was the lack of sleep. Maybe it was seeing them together, even if the energy in the room was off, and also why was the energy off? If they were mad at each other, couldn’t one of them have contacted her? Why didn’t they want to talk to her? The conversation hadn’t been going how she’d thought it would. She knew she looked terrible. She’d hoped it might make them feel bad. A part of herself she now thought was stupid had figured they might apologize. Trace felt herself slowly peeling away. She was worried that soon there might be nothing left.

Trace hadn’t realized how tightly she was holding the wine glass until a crack appeared beneath her finger. She dropped the glass and it rolled against the soft material beneath her. A spool of scarlet unraveled from the pad of her thumb. Trace stared at it as it began to drip, curious that she felt no sharp edges of pain. Trace stuck her thumb in her mouth, sucking as her tongue flooded with copper.

Her heart still hadn’t slowed. She felt like she’d run all the way from Seattle. All Trace wanted was to be able to breathe normally again. A breeze moved strands of hair across her forehead. Wendy had recommended meditation. She remembered the balloon. Trace could still feel it, the string cutting tightly into her wrist.

Trace uncurled her body, lay on the roof, her chest to the sky. It might have been cold, but Trace couldn’t really tell. She wrapped her thumb in the sleeve of her sweatshirt. She closed her eyes. She recalled the narrative of the meditation. She saw the red balloon. It held inside it the past week, her many years with Silvia, her confusion over Jordan. The whole of her twenties. Her anger. Her frustration. She imagined herself on a swing. Her sister was beside her. Trace pumped her legs as the swing went higher and higher. She breathed in her nose, out her mouth. She kept swinging. It might have been minutes, maybe hours. She imagined letting it all go. She imagined starting new. She tried to remember what she had once wanted, what she had envisioned for her future. It surprised her to learn she could still yearn for it: the city, a life as big as possible. Maybe it wasn’t too late.

Trace opened her eyes. She could see the balloon, a red speck disappearing into the clouds. Her arm felt lighter.

Banging on Jordan’s door, the words I’m sorry had been there, right at the top of her throat, waiting to be released. She’d repeated them to herself over and over again on the plane. It was what she’d planned to start with. But then the door had opened and Trace had seen the looks on their faces and she couldn’t bring herself to say anything. It had all just vanished.

Trace stood up, walked to the edge of the roof, and pressed her body against the wall that rimmed the perimeter.



Weeks ago, the first time she’d revealed the sentiment in a session, Trace’s therapist had asked her why she thought she loved Jordan.

“I mean, it’s just a feeling,” Trace said.

“Describe the feeling to me.”

Trace was sitting on the couch in Wendy’s office, both feet pressed to the ground. Wendy stared back at her, face expressionless.

“I just, I don’t know, feel so different with Jordan.”

“How do you feel?”

“More relaxed, I guess? More seen? Like, I know that I could say anything to Jordan and she wouldn’t judge me.”

“And Silvia judges you?”

“No, she doesn’t.” Trace paused. “But she challenges me more.”

“And being challenged is bad?”

“No, it’s not that.” Trace was frustrated. “But it makes me feel like she doesn’t really understand me.”

“Okay,” Wendy said.

And then Trace tried to talk about New York. She tried to tell Wendy how she and Jordan wanted the same life in a big city where things actually happened, where it seemed like the center of existence had been born, filled with food and shows and interesting people and clubs that stayed open until the sky lightened. She and Jordan didn’t ever want to be bored.

Trace said that all she’d done was put Silvia in a box. Silvia was never someone who was meant to be contained. Trace could feel the pulse of Silvia’s resentment, so close to the surface. Now that Trace nearly had everything she thought she’d always wanted, it felt terrifying to commit to someone so flighty.

“Jordan has told you that she wants this kind of life?” Wendy asked.

“It’s what she’s doing now. She has that life already.”

Wendy said nothing. Trace often wondered what her therapist was thinking in these moments. How deeply was Trace being analyzed? What was Wendy holding back? What was Trace not seeing? Trace took a sip of water, swallowing slowly, and then began playing with her engagement ring. She spun it in a circle on her finger, around and around and around.



On the roof, Trace could see so much of Manhattan. Trace stretched her arms out to either side and let the wind tickle the tips of her fingers. She wanted to swallow it. She wanted to let each piece of the city meld with her insides, become a part of her—Broadway in her big toe, subway performers in her kneecap, Wall Street in the second knuckle of her middle finger. She wanted to be swept up by it. She wanted to float above the earth.

She could still feel her heart in her chest. There was a shifting in the wind. In New York, the thought of being without Silvia, even without Jordan, didn’t seem quite as bad. The beating seemed now to be made up of excitement, not fear. Trace let herself smile. She could no longer feel the blood rushing through her body. She felt weightless. Like she might just be able to fly.

The door to the roof creaked open.

“Trace, don’t!” she heard from behind her.

31

Silvia

December

Saturn Is Returning

There was a restlessness buried deep within Silvia. She blamed her moon in Gemini. She had a desire to live every type of life possible. She wanted to settle in Seattle, open a bookstore and a café. She would know all her customers by name. She thought about New York. But not the type of New York Trace wanted. She envisioned a garden on her fire escape. She wanted dive bars and layered flannels, doing mutual aid on the weekends. The idea of the Southwest appealed to her; she could make art with her hands, sleep in the desert under the stars. Or live by the sea in Northern California among the redwoods, or along the Oregon coast. She’d heard Portland, Maine, was beautiful, and that she might match the vibe in Austin. Perhaps she could find a way to go back to school. She could get an MFA, teach poetry at a small Midwestern private school just like McCallen. They always said those who couldn’t do taught. Or she could pivot and become a lawyer, fight for human rights in America and abroad.

For a long time, Silvia had dreamed of living overseas. She had romanticized the idea of being an expat. Until she actually did it. They told her not everyone was capable of doing such work, and she knew it was true. For a while, she felt special for accomplishing it. She felt tough. Until the moment she didn’t.

Silvia figured the future would get clearer as she got older, but if anything, life seemed to confuse her further. It became more complicated, not less, as the opportunities available to her dwindled. She had never really fantasized about a wedding, but she had thought about a partner, someone who would gallivant around the world with her, never force her to put roots down too deep.

Silvia had been with Trace for eight years, and though she thought about her future often, that partner’s face in her fantasies had never held Trace’s dimples, her sky-blue eyes. Silvia told herself it didn’t matter. No one’s life turned out the way they thought it would. But there was a reason, Silvia knew, that they’d never really looked at venues, had never talked seriously about a guest list.

This other hung in a soft place, deep in the back of her mind. She’d wake up gasping from a dream, already missing someone who had never existed.



When they opened the door to the roof, Trace was standing at the edge, her back to them, her hands on the wall, leaning slightly forward. Silvia knew the slope of those shoulders so well. It used to thrill her, to see Trace’s shape in a crowd. Then it had comforted her. She didn’t know when it had begun to feel like dread.

“Trace, don’t,” Jordan shouted, and she thought Jordan was joking until Silvia turned to look at her. Jordan stood back by the door, holding it open with one arm, concern drawing her features downward.

Trace turned towards them. She was smiling. It was a face that could have broken a thousand hearts. Perhaps it still might. Silvia saw Trace’s face looking up at her at Bob & Betty’s, under that orange hat; Trace’s face waking up in the morning, slack with sleep; Trace’s face making dinner for her for the first time in their studio on Capitol Hill; Trace’s face at the airport when she returned from Lesotho; Trace’s face at Pride after Pride after Pride; Trace’s face when she came. She saw Trace’s face as she knelt on that boulder at Rattlesnake Lake, in her hand a green velvet box. The images came in a tidal wave, washing over her, the lifeline of their relationship, and Silvia realized she was seeing its death. It was all over.

Silvia saw Trace at the edge of the roof and she was ripped back in time, twenty-one years old, taking a call in the library to learn that her mother was gone. She had been holding her breath since then, she realized, always waiting for the other shoe to drop, trying to leave before she could be left. She longed for affection but didn’t trust it. Her mother’s had always come with strings.

But what Silvia had needed when her mom died was a mom. What she had needed in Lesotho was a mom. Instead, she’d found Trace. Trace was a caretaker, a helicopter partner. Over the years, Silvia had found her both annoying and reassuring, words to describe family perhaps, but not a partner. It wasn’t fair. Silvia had let her chaos spread too far outside herself. She had taken advantage of the kindness of others. Perhaps she was more like her mom than she realized.

“Did you think I would jump?” Trace said. “Come on, I’m not that kind of lesbian.”

Something had changed. It was both the Trace Silvia knew and loved and also a new Trace, someone she didn’t quite recognize, an alertness in her eyes that hadn’t been there before.

“Then don’t stand at the edge scaring the shit out of people,” Jordan said.

“I’m going to break up with Wendy,” Trace declared. “Then I’m going to move here.”

“Great,” Jordan said. “You can take my room.”

“Where are you going?” Trace asked.

“I’ll tell you inside. It’s freezing out here.”

“I’m sorry,” Trace said.

Silvia didn’t say anything, but she saw Jordan, out of the corner of her eye, nod once. Trace turned and looked back towards Central Park peeking through the two buildings next to Jordan’s.

“Can’t we stay up here for a bit? The sun is about to set.”

Silvia looked up and saw that the sky was beginning to turn a soft orange.

“Let’s get blankets,” she said to Jordan. “We can make hot toddies.”

“I’m going to stay here,” Trace said, still not facing them.

“No,” Jordan said firmly. “You’re going to go to the bathroom and clean yourself up and you’re going to get a proper coat.”

Silvia saw a flash of red on Trace’s hand. “What happened to your finger?” she asked.



Jordan made Trace take a shower and gave her a change of clothes and a Band-Aid, while Silvia stood in the kitchen, cutting lemons into wedges, waiting for water to boil. The acid stung a cut on one of her fingers, and as she rinsed it she looked down at her hands. Most of her fingers were encircled by silver bands. Her engagement ring was a pop of gold. She’d always imagined that wearing one would feel constricting—a heavy metaphor. But it hadn’t been that way. Silvia loved the glimmer of the gems, watching other people’s eyes draw towards it, the recognition, moments later, that she was chosen. It was satisfying in a way Silvia hadn’t expected. Perhaps that’s why it had taken her so long to consider removing it. She turned off the water and dried her hands. She slid the ring off her finger. Silvia was scared to be floating in space again without the tether of a partner. She put the ring in the pocket of her jeans. She felt no different without it. Her worst fears were always more terrifying in her head then when she encountered them out in the world.

Silvia thought she might rent a car, go south, take the long way back home to Seattle. She would take her time. She would let herself be alone in the world, force herself to face what she’d previously been afraid of. She had the money, of course. What else was all that saving for?

Jordan came out of her room, her arms full of blankets.

“I texted Anthony. Told him I’m quitting starting tomorrow.”

Silvia laughed. “How professional of you.”

“I’m trying to burn every corporate bridge I have to ensure I never go back.”

Silvia could tell Jordan was ready to drift off into the woods. She needed her Walden years. Silvia would permit Jordan to disappear for a while. But it wasn’t time yet. Silvia needed them to have one last moment. One moment without spilled wine, or broken glass, or yelling. One moment to remember who they were and who they had been.



On the roof they sat in a circle, blankets over their shoulders, mugs in hand, as the sky bloomed into pink. Silvia spread her cards across the blanket they sat upon. Trace went first. Ask a question, make sure you have something in mind as you shuffle, she reminded Trace. The cards needed to feel your inquiry. She turned over the World. Trace looked at Silvia for translation.

“The ultimate yes card,” Silvia said. “What did you ask?”

Trace was smiling. “Don’t worry about it.”

Jordan pulled the Fool. A new beginning. Faith in the future.

Silvia mixed the cards together for a while before stacking the deck. She selected one from the middle. She flipped the card over and saw it—beams of orange and yellow. The Sun. She held a small flame of hope within her palms.



The week before, Trace had made tea for them when she sat Silvia down in their living room. It reminded Silvia of the evening, years earlier, when she’d asked Trace to pry their relationship open. Both times, the mugs sat untouched throughout, the water cooling as the strain in their voices rose. This second time, Trace led the conversation. She was uncomfortable at first. But as she continued speaking, she gained confidence, assurance. She was looking down at her hands, twisting them together on her lap, but when she moved her head up, finally meeting Silvia’s eyes, Silvia felt a spark pass between them. Excitement. Silvia sensed it, under her own anger, a thrill for the drama. They loved a crisis. They got bored, then they tried to blow it all apart. It would never stop, not while they were still attached. Silvia understood then, before she even stood from the couch, how it would end. She knew it was finished.



Silvia remembered the ring. She pulled it out, tried to hand it to Trace, but Trace shook her head and pushed Silvia’s hand away. Silvia slid the ring onto a chain around her neck, found solace in the prospect of keeping it close to her heart as long as she needed. From her other pocket she removed her piece of obsidian.

“You need this now,” she said. It was no longer serving her; time for it to find a new home.

Trace nodded, and Silvia realized she was crying. Jordan picked up Trace’s left hand. Silvia folded her fingers around her right, the obsidian biting into the meat of their palms, and she and Jordan reached for each other, closing the circle.

They sat in silence, clinging onto one another, letting themselves need and be needed, the string that connected them to each other as taut as ever.

It had already ended, Silvia realized, and it had only just begun. They had the rest of their lives to define themselves. They had the rest of their lives to become.

Acknowledgments

First and foremost, thank you to Nina Haines. You picked this book out of a stack of unrepresented queer novels to be your debut title. Sapph-Lit is the perfect home for these messy lesbians. I am so honored. Thank you for loving and understanding these three women just as much as I do. You’ll never know how much you changed my life.

Thank you to Jo Ramsay, for being the kind of agent who read my manuscript while camping with your family in Australia over the holidays. Thank you for making that drive into town just to call me. I don’t know what I would have done without your guidance and support throughout this process.

To everyone at Girl Friday Productions—especially Kim Kent—thank you for all your care in shepherding this book into the world. Thank you to Charlotte Strick and Ekaterina Zagorska for the cover of my dreams!

Thank you to Kristie Redfield and Sarah Zabrodski. You read the beginning pages of this book back in 2020 and were the first people to show me what having a writing community is like. Your encouragement kept me going when I had no idea what I was doing.

Thank you to my beta readers: Syd, Nate, Jasmin, and Yesi. Thank you to my writing groups past and present, especially Arielle, Grace, and Chloe. I so appreciate you being with me in spirit and on my screen so regularly.

To the Hannahs! Hannah Beresford, dev editor extraordinaire! You helped me turn this manuscript into a book that was so tight it got sold without an agent. Working with you was the best decision I ever made. And Hannah Elnan—your feedback turned this book into something even better than I knew it could be.

Jami Attenberg’s 1000 Words letters got me through many, many phases of this project. I will always be grateful for what she’s taught me about writing.

Thank you to Kelly Anderson, who sat with me for hours on Zoom from halfway across the world to help me understand what it’s like to be in the Peace Corps. I am so appreciative of how much of your time you lent me.

Thank you to Laura Beckerdite for explaining to me what photographers actually “do” for work.

To Morgan (tarot master!), thank you for answering my ad on Lex and helping me parse the nuances of the different readings in the book (alas, reader, I am not that much of an astrology gay, though I aspire to be one).

Thank you to Amanda D’Archangelis. You introduced me as a writer before I even believed I could call myself one. I’ll never forget how that made me feel.

To the Kids Centre girls, thank you for teaching me about friendship literally from day one.

Thank you to Laureline, who keeps reminding me that in high school I said I wanted to move to New York and become a writer, and wildly, I have somehow managed to do just that.

Thank you to the girl who canceled our date in early 2020 because your best friend broke off her engagement and told you she was in love with you. That bit of tea kicked off my own Saturn return (which you now hold in your hands).

Thank you to my family, who always thought writing was a cool (and legitimate) thing to pursue. I appreciate you letting me read at the dinner table and in the car and under my desk during class (whoops) and during commercials while watching TV. It was all research for this.

To the Sapph-Lit community—I cried when I saw how many of you had voted for my pitch, before I even knew that Nina wanted my book. Your support means everything.

To the reader, thank you for getting this far. You are the whole entire point.

And to my queer family, past, present, and future, thank you for being your beautiful, wonderful, messy selves. I still love you all, no matter how much we hurt each other in the process of figuring ourselves out.

Thank You

This book would not have been possible without the support from the Sapph-Lit community, with a special thank-you to the Producer members:

Alex Alberto

Andrea Blake
ariel orellana

Cameron Haines

Caroline Skelley
celi

Clarah Grossman

Dakota Carter

Daramillz

Des Arevalo

Erinrilke

Gabrielle Alvarez

Hannah Blakley

Hunter Green

Isabel Robertson

Jazzyjbox

Jenny Armstrong

Kate Shear

Kia Borner

LaneyJames

LongStoryShort
lori

Maddie & Otis

Malaysia Wray

Malia Turner

Mandie M. (@BookishCatsandCoffee)

Michele

Michelle Lim-Tan

NinaLover69

Nina Stemwedel

Olivia Neal

Rebeccapodos

Samantha Aho

SGP

Sophie Herrington

Stefania Ruxandra

Stormy Avalos

Veronika Wiszniewska

About the Author

Photo © Brittany Anikka Liu

kim narby is a queer writer from Seattle. She is an alum of the Tin House Summer Workshop and is a contributor at Write or Die Magazine. Kim has organized with the New York City Dyke March, and she currently lives in Brooklyn with her cocker spaniel, Georgia. Saturn Returning is her first novel.

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Nina Haines is a writer, freelance marketer and content creator, and the founder of the sapphic book club and imprint Sapph-Lit. With thousands of members from over sixty countries, Sapph-Lit’s community is a safe space where queer women and nonbinary folks can come read sapphic books, chat about life, ask for and offer support, and celebrate their identities.

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Table of Contents

- Praise for Saturn Returning
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- 1: Trace
- 2: Silvia
- 3: Jordan
- 4: Trace
- 5: Silvia
- 6: Jordan
- 7: Jordan
- 8: Trace
- 9: Silvia
- 10: Silvia
- 11: Jordan
- 12: Silvia
- 13: Jordan
- 14: Trace
- 15: Jordan
- 16: Silvia
- 17: Trace
- 18: Silvia
- 19: Silvia
- 20: Jordan
- 21: Silvia
- 22: Trace
- 23: Jordan
- 24: Trace
- 25: Jordan
- 26: Trace
- 27: Silvia
- 28: Trace
- 29: Jordan
- 30: Trace
- 31: Silvia
- Acknowledgments
- Thank You
- About the Author
- Sapph-Lit x Bindery Books