She lifted Belle from the rug and gave her wet, sloppy kisses all over her chubby face. Belle squealed with the absolute glee that only babies and puppies have.
“Maybe give it a year,” Gwen said. “There should be, like, a cooling-off period for new mothers.”
“Maybe give it a year,” Leigh repeated. “That should be the title of my memoir.”
“I would read it.”
“Nathan is always telling me to wait things out. He says I’m too impulsive. I get discontent, and I want out. He calls it my itchy feet.”
“Have you always had the ... itchy feet?”
“As long as I can remember,” she said.
Maybe this was what drew Gwen to Leigh—this sense of mild chaos. Gwen’s life had been the opposite of chaos up until they’d cut open her belly. From that moment forward, nothing had felt still or stable. Maybe Leigh had come into her life to show her that life could be lived this way, that it was possible to settle into pandemonium.
“Nathan, like all men I’ve been with, thinks he can change me. I think men like the challenge, until they get tired.”
“Why haven’t you just been with a woman, like, from the start?”
“Oh, silly Gwen—that would be way less interesting.”
Gwen felt herself flush. She felt naive in Leigh’s presence. It brought her back to middle school, when the girls in PE class teased her for not yet wearing a bra.
“Have you ever been with a woman?” Leigh asked her.
“No.”
Gwen spat out the response too quickly and immediately worried it gave the impression that she was disapproving.
“Not that I have anything against it,” she clarified.
Leigh looked at her with a quizzical expression, eyes squinting.
“You weren’t ever curious?” Leigh asked.
Was there something erotic in the way she’d posed the question? Or was Gwen imaging that?
She stared at Leigh’s lips, considering. What would it be like to kiss them? They were incredibly plump, the bottom lip more than the top.Bee-stung, that was the term. They were the types of lips modern women aspired to, the types of lips people paid money to obtain. Gwen knew Leigh would never inject anything into her face, though. She couldn’t even be bothered to wear ChapStick, as evidenced by the vertical lines of her dry lips. Gwen imagined kissing her, transferring some of the gloss on her own lips to Leigh’s.
“No, not really curious,” Gwen said. “Is that weird?”
Leigh shrugged. “You might be very straight. It happens.” Leigh said it like heterosexuality was an unfortunate ailment, like nearsightedness.
“When did you first kiss a woman?”
“A woman? In college. But I kissed a girl in elementary school.”
Gwen felt her mouth drop. “Elementary school?”
“Yeah. This girl named Bonnie,” Leigh said. She looked pensive. “Nobody is named Bonnie anymore.”
“So you knew that young that you were ...”
Gwen wasn’t sure what word to use.
“Curious about girls?” Leigh said, refusing a label.
Gwen nodded.
