It was a wild request. She didn’t hate the idea, which surprised her.
“I meant what I said, before. I’m not sure wecouldever build something, but I know we can’t while you’re living with him. I’m not asking you to get a divorce so we can maybe, someday, possibly be closer. However, I will point out, you could get a divorce to stop being miserable.” Her mother nodded, acknowledging this. Miriam pushed herself to standing. This was about as much Ziva Drama as she had emotional space for. “I’m going to go see who won the reindeer race.”
Eventually, everyone retreated to their rooms for naps. Miriam was snuggling into a blanket pile when Noelle knocked a little melody on her door and called, “Come on. Put on your coat.”
Miriam yanked open the door. “I’ve been going all day, Noelle. I’m going to introvert now. Look, I have this copy ofTheSecret in the Old Atticthat outdates Carrigan’s itself. I crossed out every mention of Ned Nickerson in it when I was twelve. I shipped Nancy and George.”
Noelle leaned against the doorframe, and Miriam was briefly hypnotized by how her forearms crossed over her breasts. “I have a Christmas present planned.”
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” she grumbled.
Outside the front doors, the sleigh waited, drawn by the farm’s grumpy middle-aged horse team. Mr. Matthews sat in the driver’s seat, and he winked at her. Noelle lifted Miriam up beside her. She smoothed a big faux-fur rug over their laps and held one of Miriam’s hands in both of hers, under the blanket. They stole sidelong glances at each other as they whooshed deeper into the woods. Miriam’s heart sped up along with the sleigh runners.
Icicles hung from branches and glinted in the dusk, refracting the evening like crystals. It felt like a place out of time. A chickadee chirped, the only sound beside the wind tinkling through the ice and the horses’ snorts. Even their hoof falls and the sound of the sleigh were muffled by the snow.
Miriam thought again of Narnia. In some ways, all of Carrigan’s was a portal world, where joy and laughter and light in the darkness was the steadfast rule.
“Tell me something nobody ever thinks to ask you about yourself,” Noelle asked quietly.
“You have to give me more specifics,” Miriam replied. “People don’t ask me all that much about myself. Or, I guess Bloomers do, but they definitely don’t want anything real.”
“Okay,” Noelle paused. “What Avatar tribe are you?”
“Earth. Easy. Why be anyone else when you can be Toph?” She stomped her foot for emphasis.
Noelle laughed. “What DnD alignment are you?”
“Chaotic goodobviously. Ask me a hard one.” Her curls were blowing around her head, her cheeks were wind-chapped, and she was grinning so hard it hurt.
Noelle leaned back against the seat and tapped her finger against her mouth, pretending to think hard. Miriam followed the movement of her finger and thought about Noelle’s lips.
“You’re bi, what does that mean to you?” Noelle asked finally. “There’s no universal ‘this is what bisexuality looks like.’ What is it for you? You don’t date men? It doesn’t seem like?”
“I mean, not to get too deep into queer theory—” Miriam said.
“That’s the sexiest thing anyone’s ever said to me,” Noelle interrupted, and Miriam laughed. She snuggled in closer to Noelle, letting herself relax into her warmth and scent.
“If Josh Jackson or Timothy Olyphant showed up at my door, I would probably faint from lust, but romantically and emotionally I rarely meet cis men I can connect to. Also, I have Cole, you know. He’s one of the great loves of my life, one of the cornerstones of my happiness. I haven’t often found that cis men can find room in their lives for my relationship with Cole, and it’s nonnegotiable.”
She looked out at the glinting world, then back at Noelle. This space they’d created compelled her to go deeper, tell more of her truth. “But also, there’s this Ocean Vuong quote about how being queer saved his life, and in a bigger way, that’s what being bi means to me. If I’d grown up in my house and I’d not had this piece of me that refused to bow to expectations, that grew wild in the cracks of all my attempts to be like everyone else, I don’t know if I would even have been able to do art. To see that art was a possibility. It gave me the option to be something other than what I was told I had to be.”
“It freed you,” Noelle said, nodding. “Being butch felt that way, for me. This immense freedom.”
Carrigan’s had opened the dam of Miriam’s feelings, and now, she was always talking through them out loud to someone, trying to describe them to herself as much as anyone else, cataloging them as they came pouring out of her. Noelle understanding her was a revelation and a relief. All her life, she’d blamed herself for her parents not understanding how she felt. She’d thought she must be terrible at explaining herself, so she’d stopped trying until she got here.
Maybe she’d always been perfectly fine at it. Her parents just hadn’t been listening.
“I love your butchness,” Miriam said dreamily, overwhelmed by how grateful she was that Noelle was here, with her, sharing these inner pieces of themselves. “I want to start a Butch Appreciation Society.”
“I would prefer you stick to appreciating one butch,” Noelle said seriously.
“I’m satisfied with that.” Miriam’s gaze dropped to Noelle’s mouth and she dragged her eyes away. Mr. Matthews did not want to listen to them make out like teenagers. “Okay, it’s my turn to ask you questions!”
Noelle spread her arms, as if to say,I’m all yours.
“I don’t even know where you grew up,” Miriam said.
“Santa Fe. My hometown is Santa Fe.” The way Noelle said Santa Fe had a certain lilt to it, a softness that Miriam didn’t think Noelle knew was there. Was she homesick? Did she wish she were in the Sangre de Cristos instead of the Adirondacks?