Make Room for Love

Chapter 7

7

“Oh, hi,” Mira said, coming through the door earlier than usual. She didn’t seem happy about finding Isabel on the couch.

Isabel put down the mail she’d been sorting through. Mira’s eyes were puffy, her makeup smudged. She looked bowed down by the overstuffed messenger bag she carried to work.

Isabel’s anxiety spiked. If anything bad had happened to Mira, she wanted to know. She resisted the urge to rush to Mira, to ease that heavy bag off her shoulders. “You okay? How’d it go?”

Mira grimaced. “Not good.”

“What happened?” Isabel said, too quickly. “Never mind. You don’t have to tell me.”

“Nothing too bad.” Mira’s voice was strained. “I didn’t do a very good job. I only talked to two people. One of them was a little rude to me and I overreacted.” Her face wobbled like she was about to cry.

Shit. Isabel wasn’t good at this. She wanted to hunt down whoever had done this to Mira, but that wasn’t going to help. At work, when younger women came to her crying, Isabel could usually help—backing them up when they reported whoever had wronged them, or getting into confrontations herself. But that wasn’t an option now.

And part of her wanted to take Mira into her arms, to hold her tight, to protect her from every awful thing in the world. It wasn’t a small part of her. It was overwhelming. But that was even less of an option.

Alexa had always been better at this. Comforting people, soothing their tears. What would she have done? “Do you want some tea?” Isabel said, desperate.

Mira blinked. “Sure. Thanks.”

Isabel stood and nodded toward the dining table. “Sit down.”

At least now she had something to do. Mira always made tea by dunking two or three black tea bags at a time in boiling water, and Isabel could do better than that. She filled the electric kettle with water, turned it on, and rummaged through the pantry until she found the good looseleaf black tea. After a moment’s thought, she took the glass teapot from the highest shelf in the cupboard and tipped a mountain of tea leaves into the strainer. If Mira liked her tea strong, so be it.

She exhaled. The water started boiling, and the kettle shut off. She poured hot water into the teapot and carried it out, along with two mugs, and set it on a dish towel on the dining table.

She sat across from Mira with the teapot between them. The tea leaves unfurled in the water, turning it amber. Isabel had once given Alexa a teapot like this for her birthday—it was the kind of fancy, impractical thing her sister had liked. Then Isabel had grudgingly enjoyed using it on her visits so much that Alexa had given her the same teapot to tease her. Isabel hadn’t used it in a very long time.

Mira sighed, interrupting Isabel’s thoughts, which was for the best. She pushed a pile of her students’ papers aside. “I know union organizing requires a thick skin. I just need to get better at it. It shouldn’t matter so much what people say to me.”

“You don’t have to make excuses for people who are rude to you.” It was an attempt at being comforting. But to Isabel’s own ears, she just sounded brusque.

“I guess not.” Mira sniffled, clearly unconvinced.

Mira was so crushed, and Isabel’s heart was breaking, too. She was at a loss as to what to say. “Uh, be right back.” She took the box of tissues from her bedroom and put it in front of Mira.

“Thank you.” Mira’s voice trembled. She took a tissue and blew her nose.

Isabel sat back down. “What happened?”

Mira eyed her nervously. Maybe Isabel was being overbearing. Mira hadn’t said she wanted to talk. They were on decent terms as roommates, so Isabel hoped, but it didn’t mean Mira trusted her.

But Isabel was the only person around. Sometimes you had to step up simply because you were there, no matter how inadequate and unprepared you were.

Mira recounted what had happened. “I’m so embarrassed.” She dabbed at her face. “It wasn’t a big deal. I’m just really oversensitive. Sorry for making you listen to all this.”

Isabel tamped down the increasingly strong, futile urge to hold Mira and wipe her tears away. She had to say something. Never mind how bad she was at inspirational talk. “Hey, don’t apologize. You didn’t do anything wrong. It’s not okay for anyone to talk to you like that, all right?”

Mira said nothing. Isabel was in way over her head. “Uh, the tea’s ready.” She returned to the kitchen for milk and sugar. Mira liked plenty of both.

She poured tea for them. It was going to be too strong for Isabel, but that was fine. She pushed one steaming mug toward Mira, who poured in several glugs of milk, added a heaping spoonful of sugar, and took a drink. Her nails were plum today.

If Isabel couldn’t close the distance between them, then this was all she could do. Make Mira a little warmer.

“Thank you,” Mira said. “Oh, this tea is good. Anyway…” She sighed, her eyes downcast. “What you said. Maybe it’s not okay, but he said it anyway, and there’s nothing I can do about it. I just have to get over it.”

“No, you don’t.” At that, Mira looked taken aback. “You don’t, okay? You can be pissed off. I wouldn’t let anyone talk like that to me.”

Mira frowned. “That’s the whole point. Of course you wouldn’t. You would have done something other than apologize and run away, which is what I did, because I’m not like you.” She sniffled. “You’ve dealt with so much worse and you’ve always been able to overcome it. I feel like such a coward.”

Isabel’s heart sank as she saw what Mira saw. She’d spent her whole life acting like nothing could get to her. She had been out and uncompromisingly butch since she was thirteen, and she was a construction worker. It was simply the price of living her life.

It was what the men she worked with saw, and the women, too. If Isabel ever shared any of her struggles with other women at work, it was calculated to encourage them, not demoralize them. Sometimes she forgot that she was acting at all.

And Mira had believed it. How could she not have? Isabel had kept up the act for her, like she did with everyone else. The only person who had known better was Alexa, and she was gone.

Isabel was exhausted. She had been propping herself up for so long.

She took a sip of tea. It was too bitter, almost undrinkable, which was what she needed. This wasn’t about her. It was about Mira.

“You’re not a coward,” Isabel said. She was dead serious—she owed that to Mira—and she hoped Mira could see that. They’d never talked about the night they met, but it had been obvious how much it had cost Mira to leave her ex.

“I am.” Mira sounded wretched. “I just want to give up. We’re not going to get a contract until next year at the earliest, and hopefully that’ll be my last year. Maybe second-to-last, at the rate my dissertation is going.” Her gaze was still lowered. “I just want to keep my head down and let things happen. If we lose, so be it. I don’t think that what I do in the union matters. They’ll succeed or fail without me. Maybe that’s not true for other people in it. It couldn’t be true for you. But it’s true for me.”

Mira’s demeanor could change in an instant. She was radiant when she let the fire inside her show, but now her flame had been snuffed out. Isabel’s anger surged. Not at Mira, but at whatever had made her feel this way. “What the hell do you think I have that you don’t?”

That startled Mira. “Everything,” she said, as though it were obvious. “All the stories you told in your speech—I could never do any of that. And you stood up to Dylan when I couldn’t even say anything because I was so afraid. And I was with him for two years in the first place because I was too scared to leave him. I just couldn’t do it.”

“You still broke up with him.”

Mira gave her a defiant look, as though she couldn’t believe Isabel was so dense. “He cheated on me. That was the clearest possible reason he could have given me. And I still…” Mira was crying now, speaking through sobs. “He kept texting me afterward. He was surprised I didn’t run back to him. And I know why. Because I let him trample all over me the whole time we were together. And he wasn’t totally wrong, because even after all that, I still second-guessed myself and thought about going back.” Mira took a shuddering breath. “So pathetic.”

“So you made a hard choice,” Isabel said. Mira stared at her blankly. Isabel exhaled and rubbed her face. “It’s not easy for me, either. I don’t just pick myself back up every time someone says something to me or tries something. I told you all about the time the owner of the shop I was salting was cornering me in his office and screaming in my face, calling me…” Isabel shook her head. Mira didn’t need to hear it.

Mira nodded. Isabel sighed again. “I had a brave face on while he screamed at me. But I cried in the porta-potty afterward. I couldn’t let him or the other guys see.” Admitting it made her gut twist like she was in free fall. “Some things just wear you down, and it never gets easier. The point is, you’re not a coward just because you’re scared.”

Mira needed to hear something to keep her going, just this once. Isabel wasn’t going to get into the habit of pouring her heart out.

“I guess so.” Mira looked at her tea for a few seconds, her shoulders hunched, emotions flickering across her face that Isabel couldn’t fully see. “Crying in a porta-potty sounds awful. Makes me feel grateful to be crying in a regular bathroom.”

“Hey,” Isabel said, “you don’t have to compare yourself—” Mira looked back up, smiling faintly.

Isabel relaxed. They eased into a more comfortable silence. Then something occurred to her. “What you said earlier about being oversensitive. Did someone say that to you? Like your ex?”

Mira stiffened, and she nodded. She folded into herself, her light growing dim again.

Isabel didn’t pick fights. She’d been in one real fight—not by choice—and had broken up a few others, and that had been enough. But part of her wished she’d really done something to make Dylan regret what he’d done to Mira.

“Fuck him,” Isabel said. Mira gave her another small smile.

Isabel poured more tea for Mira, who added milk and sugar until it turned a light tan color, and they drank their tea together.

Mira deserved so much. She deserved to be free from her awful ex, and from the hold he still had over her. She deserved to be paid fairly and to not be overworked. She deserved a warm, safe apartment to come home to, and sweet milky tea whenever she wanted it, and every other small comfort and joy.

She deserved someone who would take care of her and treat her right. Someday she’d find the right man. Probably long after she moved out of Isabel’s apartment. That was none of Isabel’s business.

Mira broke the silence. “I just wish I had better news after you helped me.”

“You’re not doing this for me.”

“I know. I’m doing it for myself, and all my coworkers.” Mira hesitated. “I kept thinking, what would Isabel say? But I guess that’s not… I don’t have to do that.”

“Don’t. Look, they’re your coworkers, and you know how to talk to them. You’re smart. You can figure it out.” Mira scoffed. Isabel went on. “Don’t think about me. Forget everything I’ve told you, if that’s what you need to do.”

“I’m not going to do that. It was helpful.”

Isabel shrugged. “You’re a good listener. And you care about people when you talk to them. You’re better at that than I ever was. I’m serious. Just keep doing that.”

Mira groaned. “I don’t know if I want to try again. And I know what you’re going to say. If everyone thought this way, we’d never get anything done.”

“You’re saying it, not me.” They shared a smile. “It’s not enough to just win your election. You’re always going to have to get together with your coworkers and fight to keep your rights. If you stop, your bosses are going to take back everything you’ve won.”

“I know.”

“You might as well make a habit of it now.”

Mira’s brows lifted slightly. “You’re pretty persuasive.”

“But don’t listen to me,” Isabel added. How had she gotten so swept up in this? “It’s your life.”