Page 45 of Make Room for Love

Mira tugged her camisole down, as though she were baring herself to Isabel, and the cool air against her sensitized skin made her gasp. She rolled a nipple between her finger andthumb as she rubbed her clit, squirming at the jolts of pleasure from two places at once. Isabel’s hands had set her on fire merely from brushing against hers. If Isabel palmed her breasts, cupped her bare pussy, made sure Mira felt those calluses?—

Mira moaned, unable to help herself. She had to do something to muffle the sound, but she couldn’t take her hands off herself, couldn’t stop, not with this sweet, searing tension coiling inside her.

Isabel would pin her against the wall as easily as she’d held up those shelves. She’d lift Mira’s skirt with one hand and push her underwear to the side, teasing Mira’s nipples likethiswith the other—oh, that was good—and turn Mira into a desperate, sticky mess pinned to the living room wall. Squirming like she was squirming against the sink now, her most soft, wet, sensitive places yielding to Isabel’s hand.

And then Isabel would sling Mira over her shoulder and carry her to Isabel’s own bedroom. She’d spread Mira’s thighs open and sink her fingers into Mira where they belonged. She’d would take what she wanted from Mira, but she’d make it good for Mira, too, taking control but being so careful?—

Mira’s orgasm tore through her so hard and fast it hurt. She let out a desperate, choked-off moan, her knees buckling, her toes curling against the cold tile. It was too much, but she kept going until she was wrung out.

She went limp against the sink. Too sensitive all over, too vulnerable, and somehow still unfulfilled.

And she was. The woman she wanted was a few rooms away, and Mira had just made herself come while thinking about her. Mira squirmed, this time from embarrassment. She pulled her camisole back up over her breasts, still so tender that the soft cotton felt like sandpaper.

She still couldn’t make sense of this. Her anxieties about wanting and being wanted were catching up to her fast. She’dindulged in a silly, illogical heat-of-the moment fantasy—and, yes, it had been unbearably hot. Which could mean anything or nothing at all.

It wasn’t like Mira had a problem with being queer. Before she’d realized that she was a woman, she’d quietly accepted that she liked men. And even before that, people had sensed something in her that they didn’t like, singling her out before she’d had the words and ideas to understand herself.

And Mira had known Vivian and her circle of queer trans women for years. She cherished her friends, but their lives weren’t quite the same as hers. Most of them didn’t date men or didn’t date them often. They had their own vocabulary and parties and dating drama that Mira wasn’t fully in on. They had their battles to fight, and Mira had hers, on top of what they all dealt with. Most of them had always liked women, and Mira had not.

She’d thought that was all there was to it. Saying yes to the men who pursued her, both the ones who’d treated her well and the ones who hadn’t, had always been good enough. Hadn’t it?

She hadn’t expected her life to take this turn. Desperately making herself come in the bathroom from the thought of a gorgeous butch touching her. Imagining herself with a woman, not suffocating in a man-shaped prison but asherself. Being forced to confront that she might want something different, something more.

She didn’t know how to be a queer woman, if she even was one. But one question crowded out all others—one she’d never been good at answering, one she’d spent the last two years pushing down until it had gone silent within her. What did it mean to want something for herself?

Isabel hadn’t asked anything of her. She hadn’t even put anything on the table. Evidently, she was planning to neverbring up her so-called feelings again. If something was going to change, it would have to come from Mira herself.

This was the freedom she’d wanted. It was terrifying, and she had no idea what to do with it.

She took another deep breath. Washed her hands in the sink. Avoided her reflection, since she’d be even more of a mess now. She turned off the shower—guilty about the wasted water, but she’d taken barely any time at all—and listened for sound from outside, trying to ignore the pounding of her own heart.

The coast was clear. She tiptoed back into her room, grabbed her phone with shaking hands, and texted Vivian.

20

“Okay,”Vivian said, after a few seconds to process Mira’s rambling account as they walked through the park. “I’m a little worried about this situation.”

“What specifically?”

“I don’t like that she’s coming on to you.”

“She’s not. Isabel isn’t like that. She didn’t ask me to date her or sleep with her.” Mira flushed. Her torrid fantasies from last night were embarrassing in the light of day. “She just told me how she felt. It was pretty obvious that she saw it as a problem more than anything else. Her problem, not mine.”

“And you’re fine with that?”

“I guess so,” Mira said. Vivian frowned. “No, I mean, she doesn’t make me uncomfortable. It’s me. I think I like her too much. And I don’t know what that means or what I should do about it. For one thing, I don’t know if this means I’m actually bi?” She looked out at the East River, reflecting the gray sky, and didn’t find any answers. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt this way about a woman before. Maybe I have. I don’t know.”

Vivian was silent. Mira let out a frustrated groan. “I don’t know what’s happening to me.” She was usually more articulate than this. Isabel had her at a loss for words.

“Well, she did express interest in you.”

“I don’t think I’m just responding to that. To be honest, I think I’ve felt this way about her for a while now.” Mira had never trusted her own memories or judgments much. She tended to second-guess herself, to talk herself into or out of things, and Dylan had worn away what little trust in herself she’d had. But even she could see it now: Every time she’d felt a tug toward Isabel in her body or her mind or her heart, she had talked herself out of considering the most obvious possibility.

Until the smile Isabel had given her yesterday. In one ordinary moment, Isabel had changed everything.

Still, the second-guessing was a hard habit to break. “Although, now that I think about it, I guess I have felt this way in the past. Not this strongly. Mostly with my female professors and TAs, and trans girls I really looked up to. Which makes me think that maybe it’s not…”

Vivian smiled. Mira said, “What?”

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