The first time they ever met was on the coldest day of the year. It was also the only time Elle forgot to check the weather report and left her house wearing a light jacket and running shoes, caught unprepared for the coming blizzard like a dove surprised by hurricane winds. Within five minutes of their meeting, Grace gave her the thick winter coat she was wearing, telling Elle her shivers were from nerves. “My body is pretty much a furnace,” she said, “I’d let you borrow its warmth, but this is only our first date.” The coat was the next best thing. As she wore it, she noticed it smelled like strawberries and felt like Apollo's embrace. Elle wore it home that night after dropping Grace off at her apartment; she blushed deep enough to match the scent that had then seeped into her pores when their lips first touched. She called as soon as she got home and opened up to her like front doors welcoming extended families home for the holidays.
That night she fell asleep at one in the morning.
That night she dreamed of strawberries.
On their second date, instead of kissing Elle goodnight, Grace invited her in. The two women left a trail of semi-casual date-night garments leading from the front door to Grace’s bedroom. As Elle fumbled Grace’s blouse half-on-half-off her body, Grace asked, “Do you think we’re moving too fast?” She just replied with a bite on grace’s lip and a smack on her rear before she pushed her through the bedroom door.
After, they lay panting, tangled in sheets and limbs as Grace told Elle the story of how she came out to her parents on Christmas morning. “My mother nearly dropped a handmade vase from my grandma, and my grandma nearly needed to go to the emergency room!” They laughed and held each other but Grace’s face fell. “That was the last Christmas I ever spent with my family,” she said with tears running down her face. They weren’t really tears of sadness - she had long since moved on - but they were tears of pure truth. “That was the year I turned fourteen.” Elle leaned in closer and kissed her tears away like a baptism left salty on her lips.
In the morning, Grace made a pot of coffee and began steeping some tea for Elle that she found pushed to the back of the cabinet. She also made eggs and toast and brought it in on a small tray which she set down on the nightstand to lean in and wake Elle with a passionate kiss. Shortly, the two were sitting cross-legged on Grace’s bed eating.
“So, you never told me your story,” said Grace, “When did you come out to your folks?” Elle stopped chewing for a split-second to pull up the bedsheets further up, completely covering her thighs.
“I never really did,” she set her toast back onto the tray and brushed off her hands, “I guess its just something we always knew.”
“So they were fine with it?”
“No… my parents were extremely religious,” Elle pulled the sheets further up her body, displaying only her head and neck, like a father who let his kids bury him in the sand, “They sent me to a Christian summer camp for ‘troubled children.’ Actually, it was a really rough time for me." Grace leaned in to brush away her tears and kiss her on the nose.
“Lovely…” Grace gripped the sheets, “Let me see them.” Reluctantly, Elle allowed her to pull the sheets back to display the scars stacked onto one another like a pile of disheveled therapist’s notes. “Oh, Elle… baby…” Grace didn’t need to run her finger along the scars to feel the texture, but she did anyway. The scars ran from knees to hips, varying in depth and density. Grace touched her lips to the valleys on either knee, moving up until she had kissed each scar like every one was a star the children would wish on someday.
Elle took Grace’s face in her hands and pulled her into her arms. “Lover, I know, it gets hard sometimes, but you have to always know that everything gets better.”
“I know,” Elle did not speak the words, only whispered them softly to keep from crying harder, “I spent four months out of every year getting taught that my love was a lie; that God hated me for falling for the prettiest girl on the playground during sixth grade recess.” Grace held her as she opened up once again, rocking her gently to the rhythm of her tears. “There was this one girl at the camp, she was a counselor, only a few years older than me, she told me she was there to really help the kids, not brainwash them like the others. She caught me in the girls showers trying to bleed the unholy from my veins.” Elle used her right index finger to trace the only closed scar on her legs.
“She didn’t tell anyone but the nurse, and she didn’t even tell her that I was gay. That night we stayed up in the nurse’s office braiding my hair as she told me about her two moms. They were devout Catholics and had been together for two years before their church’s pastor agreed to unofficially marry them, despite their faith. She said ‘Ellie, every time you think you’re alone in this world, you call me, day or night. I’ll tell you how you can never truly be alone; how there are always so many more that feel the same pain as you.’” Grace and Elle both wiped tears from their eyes as Elle continued, “She saved my life that night. I planned on cutting my wrists free of the world and the pain without so much as a ‘thanks for nothing’ note to my parents.”
“Lover, so long as you live, you will never be alone.” Grace pulled up her shirt and turned to Elle, showing her rows of scars carved into her skin like a Mayan catalogue of events carved into stone.
Elle bent in and kissed them into stars left for their love to fathom into constellations.
