An erotic and desperate kaleidoscope of images filled in the answers to questions Cosima had never bothered with nor cared about. She couldn’t help thinking about Edie’s body, her skin, her mouth, how much of her shiny hair she could get in her fist. And it wasn’t only that. It was where all of those thoughts came from. Not between her legs, even if that part of her now beat with the same rhythm as her heart. They had come from Edie. In some particular way, they werehers.
Everything clicked into place so utterly and so neatly, like the hushed snaps of jigsaw pieces. This was what it felt like—for her, for Cosima Frank—to fall in love. It felt like opening the door to her room at the inn and finding the first person she thought was interesting in years. It felt like not knowing if she should avoid her or figure out how to be around her all the time. It felt like feeling her body relax when Edie restlessly changed position, fidgeted, and stimmed beside her.
Falling in love was a sleeper cell of interconnected feelings in her heart and brain and sexual self, and Edie had activated it by simply being Edie.
“Cosima?” Edie’s voice sounded far away.
Demisexuality was the part of the aro and ace spectrum that Cosima had learned and wondered about but decided she wouldn’t be able to completely know, for herself, until and if she got there.
She had gotten here.
Here she was.
She had gotten here utterly, and getting here validated everything she had learned about herself, showed her even more, and instantly created a personal disaster the likes of which would more than likely lead to heartbreak.
“Cosima, are you okay?”
She cleared her throat. “Yes.”
“Where’d you go?” Edie took the brochure from Cosima’s hands. She had been clutching it, crumpling its edges.
“I’m here.” Cosima desperately wanted to cover her eyes with both hands, drop to the floor, and sink into the center of the earth, where her feelings would be concealed from everyone, including herself. “Lots to look at, and I got distracted by you… what I mean is, by your idea to head to the staircase.”
“That was your idea.” Edie had a tiny wrinkle between her eyebrows, a wrinkle that was trying to understand why Cosima had suddenly exploded into three hundred pieces of herself. “You sure you’re okay?”
Oh, I know I’m not okay.With this thought, Cosima closed her eyes, but it only made the questions louder and the mental images more vivid. What if she rubbed her bottom lip against Edie’s forehead wrinkle? Would it smooth out? Would Edie rise up on her tiptoes and pull Cosima down to her lips?
She forced herself to take a steadying breath. “Let’s head to the staircase,” she rasped. “What direction?”
“This way.” Edie led the way across the marble floor,unbuttoning her jacket as she walked to reveal the first item of clothing Cosima had seen from her wardrobe that looked likeEdie. It was a navy cotton blouse with clever darts for her bustline that kept the row of red buttons from gaping. The collar was round but not twee, and Cosima had watched Edie roll up the long, fitted sleeves at Morag’s breakfast table, rapt as she secured and buttoned them at the elbow with sleeve tabs. Close up, instead of a staid Swiss dot or diamond woven into the cloth, there were small red mice.
Cosima felt feral about this blouse of Edie’s. She had a lot of sudden, feral feelings about Edie, competing with the terrifying domesticated ones involving Cosima bringing Edie tea and curling up by her feet.
Fucked. She was fucked. Transformed, enlightened, reborn, and doomed.
“Oh my god,” Edie said with a laugh when the staircase came into view. “Gregory Gregory is something else. The landing is bigger than my mom’s entire house.” She looked up the massive, carved wooden staircase, each tread longer than two park benches together, covered in miles of fine woolen runner. “It literally leads toheaven.” She pointed.
Indeed, the ceiling at the top of the staircase, at least a hundred feet above them, had been painted as though the skies opened up above the highest floor, framed in carved marble life-sized drapery. “Gregory Gregory seems to have had a very specific sort of taste.”
“What he had isa lotof taste,” Edie said, sitting down on one of the lower stairs. “Did he have good taste? Bad taste? I’m from Green Bay, so I have no idea, but this man did have a largeamountof taste.”
Cosima sat next to her, carefully in case bending a body so full of sudden want would break it in half.
Edie put the brochure down on her lap, frowning again. “For real, what is wrong with you?”
I found an unexplored realm, a whole secret garden of my sexuality overgrown with roses that smell like Pears soap.
“There’s nothing wrong with me.”
Edie tipped her head. “I feel like I’m losing you.”
Don’t say that, don’t say that, even if it’s true.
“I shouldn’t have convinced Morag to get out her coffee maker. I’ve had a lot of coffee.”
Cosima looked away from Edie to the ceiling, desperate to pull herself together, but it was difficult to find an anchor to reality with Gregory Gregory’s fantastical heaven soaring above them. “You know what it is?” she asked.
You love her, her heart answered.
