Wordsworth – Chapter 17

I would like to wax poetic about Lisa’s hair glinting like the sun when I wake up next to her, rousing from a gallery of unending stories that isn’t quite a dream, but it’s the closest I can now come to them.

I would like to dwell on the warmth in my chest at her falling asleep in my arms, exhausted after last night’s surge of emotions. To weave a tapestry of words about the way she makes me feel with her trust, with her vulnerability, so readily displayed even after coming so close to dying that I would gladly bring Saint George into this world.

I would like plenty of things: to celebrate her acceptance of my feelings, to treasure the guarded reticence with which she’s allowing herself to show her own, to…

To kiss her, caress her, embrace her, make her one with me,…

What I definitely feel I don’t want to do, though, is… this.

“Seriously?” I ask her, holding the black, ripped, sleeveless top she just picked for me from the pile of clothes lying on her perennially unmade bed.

She nods, her smile wide enough I’m afraid she’ll hurt herself.

“It… It has a white circle full of…” I look at the geometric design with distaste, my power almost sneering at it. “It’s not writing. I can’t take it, so it’s not writing—this doesn’t mean anything! It’s just a squiggly thing meant to look like occult stuff!”

“It’s the goth look, Tay. Get used to it.”

I glare at her.

“Make me,” I dare her.

She arches an eyebrow, steps forward, and kisses me hard enough I don’t even notice when I open my mouth to let her tongue in.

Then, her burning palms on my cheeks holding me in place, she leans back, and yet again smiles in that vulpine thing that she thinks makes her look oh so clever.

“Do you really not want to play it up as my hot goth girlfriend?” she asks, turning the smirk into a pouty moue that has me want to rub my thighs together.

…

“Thinkers are bullshit,” I grumble.

“We are! Now, try these on,” she says, passing me what looks like fingerless gloves long enough to almost reach my shoulder.

Stripped, black and purple gloves.

“… Why?” I ask with all the suspicion I can muster.

“Because it’s the goth look, Tay. Gee, you’re supposed to be the smart one,” she airily comments.

I bite the inside of my cheek, and she winces.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…” she starts, before composing herself. “No. No, I understand why it’s a sore spot, but you are smart. Even if your power wasn’t to learn with a touch, you would still be smart—no, brilliant, so, please, understand that if I ever tease you about that—”

My finger is on her lips—lips still wet and soft from our earlier kiss. Because I think nothing short of a physical barrier can silence Lisa when she gets going.

“I… I understand, Liz. I get it,” I tell her with a forced smile I don’t really feel.

And she strides forward yet again, but not to forcefully kiss me, but to gently embrace me. To surround me with warm, soft, bare arms as the rose spaghetti strap top she wears wrinkles against my ink, and the warmth of her chest seeps into always too cold pages, and…

“Say it,” she whispers, her mouth almost making me shiver as it brushes against my ear, her breath disturbing my black tresses.

“I love you,” I answer without even thinking what it is she wants me to say.

Her arms tighten, her legs pressing against mine.

“I’ll never hurt you,” she promises, lying with every word.

Because I’m too frail, too broken, and can be hurt far too easily.

But… But she means it. It’s a lie that she believes in, that she freely shares.

And that’s so much like a story that I can’t help but accept it.

***

“Why do you have all this?” I can’t help but ask when I step out of the bathroom.

“Would you believe me if I told you I got it for a costume party?” she cheerfully asks from the sofa as she gives me a very thorough (and pleasantly mortifying) up and down look.

“No.”

“Ah, how your distrust wounds me!”

“Liz…” I manage to grumble rather than chuckle.

And she… fidgets.

“You may notice those clothes aren’t in my size…” she almost whispers, not making eye contact.

I blink at her, not quite understanding the implied meaning until I look down at myself and…

Black, ripped jeans that tightly fit my legs, contouring them almost like stockings, a top that hangs just loosely enough to show some meager cleavage if I lean forward, a bulky leather jacket that can comfortably hide my shape if I feel too exposed, combat boots that reach up to my calves, a wide belt that…

Everything’s black, other than some color accents in white, silver, and purple.

Black in a way that, if I slip and let some parts of my dress come out, if my ink rushes across me in a moment of excitement, it won’t be noticeable.

And… these aren’t in Lisa’s size.

“Do you… like them?” she asks, unsure of my reaction in a way that’s so sincere I know she’s suppressing her power.

I nod.

It’s… not what I would’ve worn, before, but… It fits. Somehow, it fits.

It’s like something out of a story, the kind of clothes only a main character would wear, too distinctive for most people to wear in their everyday life, and that feels like a presumptuous thing to say, to even think, but it still appeals to me, to that part of me that can’t help but see the world as a tangle of stories waiting to be put in their proper order, to be written down in a way that makes them make sense…

And… well, black’s my color, isn’t it?

“Your hat… What can you do with it?” she asks.

I frown and… concentrate.

I dive into the rush of words, the black river hanging in a net lace veil that always filters my view of the world through moving passages of dark beauty waiting to unfurl into meaningful sound, and they move back, retreat to my hat, and it, in turn, melts into my hair.

Lisa smiles and hands me a purple scrunchie that’s precisely the same shade as that of my stripped gloves. With my own smile, I take it and pull my curls into a fanning ponytail.

And… well, I guess that’s the last thing I need to be Lisa’s ‘hot goth girlfriend.’

“Not quite,” she says as she once again steps forward, taking a small box out of the pocket of her own jeans—though hers are a vivid navy blue without any sign of tearing.

The box is… The kind you see in jewelry stores, and I hesitate for a moment when she lays it on my cupped hands until her encouraging smile makes me snap it open.

I’m both relieved and (briefly, shamefully) disappointed to see it isn’t a ring.

It is… a silver ankh.

“This…”

“I know what you’re thinking, but it’s also a word. Several, actually,” she interrupts before I can voice… before I can decide what I want to voice.

“Explain,” I settle on as my fingers trace the graceful curve of the silver pendant.

“It’s… It’s a hieroglyph, right? But it just meant a sequence of consonants; nobody really knows what vowels went in there. What we know is that those consonants were in the word for life and… and plenty of derivatives, such as mirror, and bouquet, and—”

“You’re rambling.”

“When am I not?”

“When you aren’t feeling unsure about what you want to say.”

Her jaw shuts with a clicking of teeth that takes her by surprise, and her hands rise to protectively cradle her elbows as she shifts away from me, Lisa once more retreating, and—

And I step forward.

I can’t let her be the one who keeps doing it, can I?

So I gently cup her cheek, peering into green eyes that are almost tremulous as she shily looks up at me.

“Tell me, Lisa. What do you mean with this?”

“It’s… Nothing, it’s just a silly accessory to sell your look, nothing more. I—”

I kiss her.

Softly, barely brushing our lips together, only closing my eyes for a second as she sharply takes in air and then slowly lets it out when I lean my forehead on hers.

“Tell me,” I whisper.

And she closes her eyes.

“It’s… It’s jewelry that is a word, so it’s yours. And the word is life, because… Because you have one ahead of you, Tay. One that you earned. One that you made after… after everything. You have a life, your life, and I don’t want you to ever forget that.”

I stop breathing, just staring at her face contorting in guarded anguish as I feel words rush beneath the clothes she’s given me, as I feel them wanting to reach out, to weave something worthy of her in this very moment.

I don’t let them. Not now.

I… I need to do this with my own words.

“Thank you,” I begin. And then I stall, because what else could I add? What else can I really tell her that… that…

I close my eyes, breathe.

And when I open them, I let go of Lisa for the brief moment that it takes me to put on the necklace, to let the key of life hang over the top she bought me I don’t know how long ago, and then cradle her face, my thumb slowly and carefully tracing her left cheekbone in a repeated caress that doesn’t stop until she opens her own eyes and the tremulous green looks once again at me, her power suppressed to allow us this moment of naked vulnerability, of uncertainty.

“I love it. No, I love you, and the words you gift me, and the meaning you’ve put in them. I love every single part of you, and… Liz, I… I wish I could give you something—”

She laughs.

Almost broken, with an edge of hysteria, she laughs.

“Tay, you… You freedme. You took me away from Coil, you… You have given me my own life back. This,” her smile is frail as she points at the pendant lying between my breasts, “this is no more than a… a token for something you’ve literally granted me.”

I manage not to look taken aback, and then I dope slap her.

“Hey!” she protests, rubbing the back of her head.

“Wasn’t I supposed not to idealize you?” I wryly remind her, yesterday’s tear-filled night quite fresh in my mind.

“That—! It’s not the same! I’m just being grateful to—”

“Liz, you gave me my very being back; I merely rescued you from a supervillain—”

“Merely?! Do you even realize what Coil could’ve done to—”

“And now he neverwill. But you can’t tell me you couldn’t have done that without me—”

“And you would’ve eventually regained your memories—

“Eventuallycould’ve taken decades! I’m here, right now, because of you!”

“Well, so am I!”

We stop. Look at each other.

She breaks down first.

“Oh God, what even is this?” she manages to say through her guffaws.

“I think the word is ‘adorkable,’” I do much the same, my inability to die of asphyxiation allowing me to replicate her feat with far more ease.

She leans on me, her body shaking in wild mirth, and I hug her, not quite feeling like trying to control myself.

“You’re not supposed to call yourself that!” she accuses.

“But I can call youthat?”

She looks up at me, her wet eyes glimmering beneath the ceiling lamp of her bedroom.

“You must call me that.”

She still giggles, though not so violently, and I…

I smile, warmly and perhaps not fitting my current attire, and lean down to take her lips.

The kiss lingers, none of us fighting it, none of us in a rush to end it or turn it into something else.

And when I finally lean back, her eyes narrow in a grin I’m far too familiar with. The grin of a fox who thinks herself clever.

“Right, now that you’re all dressed up… let’s go on that date,” she says.

I blink down at her, and her grin widens.

“What?” I can’t help but ask, almost feeling my power’s disappointment at my lacking eloquence.

And, going from fox to Cheshire, Lisa’s grin impossibly widens as she takes my hand and pulls me to her apartment’s door.

To our first date.

…

I didn’t bring her chocolates or flowers, but I guess I can come up with some poetry.