Page 37 of Even If the Sky is Falling
“But you’re different. They accept you. You’re the Black Poster Child to them. Light-skinned with fine hair and green eyes. Thin so that pencil skirts don’t ride up your ass. Demure and docile. They look at me, tightly coiled hair and dark skin and dark eyes and a full body and all they can latch onto is how different I am, how aggressive they presume me to be because I don’t smile in their faces. And you gobble up their acceptance like you’ve earned it, never once stopping to realize the privilege you carry. And it makes me so angry that I can’t stand to look at you sometimes. The first day I saw you, I thought...”
“You thought what?” Dianna urged. She knew that she got along with her classmates more than the other students in the Black Law Student Association. She had never found it helpful to separate herself. But she had, of course, missed the community that the other BLSA members seemed to have with one another. Like they were more like family than friends. She had never looked at herself hard enough to determine if the opportunities she had been given werebecauseshe had latched onto power. The power. The rich classmates. The legacy students. But at what cost?
“I thought I had a built-in ally. A friend.” Jones shrugged. Her mouth worked over her words like they were sour candy. “Someone who would look around the room with me and acknowledge the bullshit. But then you just fell in line withthemand I felt betrayed.”
“I—” Dianna began, but she didn’t know what to say. She had always felt like she was the one who had been rejected. She had never considered that it was she who had done the rejecting. She had sought certainty in her success, but that had required her to forget the people who were already like her and understood her in exchange for people who never would, and probably would never care to.
“Just don’t do it again.” Dianna was surprised to see Jones smile at her. Before today, she could have counted on one hand the number of times Jones smiled at her, and she wouldn’t even need all of her fingers to do it.
Dianna released the breath that was caught in her throat. She felt guilty, but mostly she felt sad. She might have had better friends in her life, friends she was comfortable opening up to about things like finances or diabetes or her grandmother’s passing if she hadn’t been, well, Jones had said it well. A bitch.
“Seriously,” Jones said again, placing her palm on Dianna’s knee with a squeeze. She was starting to touch Dianna more, with more ease and greater comfort. It was starting to feel like she couldn’t stop herself from touching Dianna actually. “You know now.”
“Well, I am sorry,” Dianna responded, her eyes fixed on Jones’s hand. She had always known she ran hot, and Jones was cold to the touch right now, but it felt right. Like when you flash froze molten lava and were left with something crystalline. Something uniquely beautiful.
Jones kept her hand in place, like she had completely forgotten where it was. It had happened quickly, but being near Dianna, touching her, breathing her in, had become comfortable. Natural, even. Jones had always wondered how lovers’ hands always seemed to find one another. While walking Michigan Ave. Between the sheets in the middle of the night. But maybe she was starting to understand it. The magnetism of infatuation.
“Good thing you have the rest of your life to do things differently,” Jones said.
“Too bad the rest of my life could be just a few minutes.” Dianna tried to laugh, but dread sank through her body like lead.
The comment reminded them both of why they were stuck in this room in the first place. Doom. A meteor ricocheting toward Earth, God knew how close to them. Or when. They could be alive for minutes, or hours. They could leave this room and have years. Maybe together, maybe not. It felt necessary to do something, anything, that would make their possible last moments spectacular. Dianna refused to die having lived half a life.
Once again, Dianna placed her hand over Jones’s. Jones looked up at her, long lashes heavy against her bottom lids. Dianna did not stop with just her hand. She moved her whole body. Jones felt the air quiver with static. Or maybe that was just her, shivering.
Dianna was close now, so close. Even in the lighting, Jones could make out the sparse beauty marks splashed haphazardly over Dianna’s face. One above her left eyebrow. One below her right nostril. One near the corner of her mouth, which was parting.
“Did I ever tell you I liked your haircut?” Dianna asked, the finger of her free hand tracing Jones’s hairline. She needed a new lineup, and all she could think about other than Dianna’s orange scent getting stronger, was that she hoped Dianna didn’t notice.
“What?” she responded, but before she could clarify, if she even could clarify, Dianna’s lips were pressed against hers.
She had known it was coming, but her body still responded with surprise. She hiccupped into Dianna’s mouth, earning a chuckle that grated across Jones’s teeth. It was a soft kiss, but kinetic energy built beneath their lips. Jones pressed harder and Dianna scooted to the edge of her chair, making Jones’s head tilt farther up in order to not break contact.
Dianna released Jones’s hand on her knee, moving her own to cradle the back of Jones’s neck. Her nails swirled through the curls at Jones’s kitchen, a different curl pattern from the rest of her hair. Dianna noted that the back of Jones’s neck was impossibly soft and instead of thinking about what it would feel like, she released Jones’s lips and dropped her own to the space between Jones’s chin and collarbone.
Jones sighed, the noise filled with more yearning than she thought existed within her. Jones’s hand moved from Dianna’s thigh to her waist, pulling her even closer. Dianna pushed herself off the chair completely, until she was off the seat and sitting in the scoop created by Jones’s crossed legs. She wrapped her legs around Jones’s waist.
“Dianna,” Jones whispered. She had meant it as a question, but it came out as an oath. Like a prayer to a deity. Dianna. Dianna. Dianna.
Dianna released her neck. The spot she had been kissing felt like it had been plucked from a suction cup.
“Do you want to stop?” Dianna asked. She looked at Jones seriously, like whatever Jones said, she was ready to comply. Jones hadn’t realized she had been nervous about feeling pressure, but with concern having settled into Dianna’s glance, tension released from Jones’s shoulders with quick release.
“No,” Jones answered, her voice raspy and barely audible. She cleared her throat and tried again. “No, I just—I’ve never—I don’t really know what I’m doing.”
“You’ve never? Like never, never?” Dianna asked, incredulous. “I’m not judging. I’m just surprised.”
“No. I mean I have, just with a man. Only with one man, so not even super experienced there. But definitely not experienced at all with...” Jones waved her finger between the two of them.
“Jones Miller, are you afraid of the wordvagina?” Dianna chuckled.
“I’m notafraidof vaginas,” Jones laughed. She pressed her hands into her face and dragged them down. Maybe she could scrub the embarrassment off her face. Or at least scrub off her face itself so that she wouldn’t be recognizable as the biggest moment ruiner who ever ruined a moment.
“Jones, stop,” Dianna laughed, grabbing both of Jones’s hands and clutching them between her own.
“Can you die of embarrassment?” Jones asked. “I think I’m having a stroke.”
“I can talk you through it,” Dianna offered. “If you want.”
