Make Room for Love

Chapter 13

13

Isabel settled on the armchair with an old sci-fi paperback, with Mira halfway across the room grading papers. When was the last time she’d sat in her own living room just to relax? She couldn’t remember. And she hadn’t expected both how familiar and how unfamiliar it would be.

The apartment had changed. In the last few months, slowly but surely, it had turned back into a real home. This wasn’t the dark, empty apartment she’d been used to, but it wasn’t the one she’d shared with Reina, either. Mira’s fingerprints were everywhere: the plants thriving thanks to her friend Frankie’s advice, her jars of lentils in the pantry, her hair clips and forgotten mugs of tea spreading to increasingly unlikely places.

Most of all, there was Mira herself, sitting at the table with her glasses perched on her nose and the end of her pen resting on her lower lip. Occasionally a smile or a frown would flit across her face, and she would write something down on her student’s paper. She was so lovely that it hurt to look at her. But Isabel looked, anyway.

She’d tried to avoid Mira for a while. It hadn’t dampened her feelings. It had just made her lonely, and with her looming family obligations, she couldn’t handle spending another evening alone. If that was selfish…well, she was weak. But being in the same room as Mira was stirring up the emotions she was having trouble keeping on a short leash. Or any leash at all.

Mira looked up, caught her gaze, and quickly looked down. Isabel was chastened. She returned to her book and ended up reading the same technobabble-filled sentence for several minutes. Classic hard sci-fi had always been her escape from the real world. But it wasn’t doing its job tonight.

Once again, she found herself looking at Mira, who was shuffling her papers. Mira noticed. “How’s the book?”

Isabel shrugged, her heart racing. “I don’t think I’m in the mood for this. Reading about a bunch of tough guys and maybe one woman on a space station. I should start going to the library again.”

“Hmm.” Mira’s lips pursed in thought. “Well, if you’re a purist for physical books, you can read any of mine.”

“I don’t have to take your Latin class first?”

“I do have novels. In English. If you want to read them.” Maybe Mira was eager for a distraction from grading. She took her glasses off—how Mira looked so sexy both putting her glasses on and taking them off, Isabel couldn’t say—and got up. They crouched in front of the bookshelf.

For the second time this evening, after they’d been torturously close while washing the dishes, Mira’s coconut shampoo wafted to Isabel’s nose. Her curls were stunning, bouncy and lush and the deepest, darkest brown. Isabel wondered, for the millionth time, how it would feel to gently run her fingers through Mira’s hair.

“Have you read Parable of the Sower ? You don’t have that one,” Mira said. Isabel snapped back to reality. Mira was examining the Octavia Butler books in Isabel’s collection. She shook her head. “It’s my favorite of hers,” Mira continued. “I’ll get it from my room. You can come with me and see my other books.”

Isabel followed Mira through her doorway, roiling with curiosity, wracked by guilt. And she had good reason to be. There was Mira’s unmade bed. And there were her pajamas, in a heap of pink cotton and lace on the bedspread.

Isabel’s face burned, her heartbeat pounding between her legs. Mira had pulled those pajamas off herself this morning before putting on the sweater and skirt she was wearing now. Isabel absolutely couldn’t be thinking about that, not after Mira had invited her in for the most innocent reason imaginable. Let alone picturing it in detail.

So many things she shouldn’t be thinking about. Like how if Mira wanted some stress relief, the kind that involved Isabel’s face buried between her thighs, Isabel would be on her knees on this wood floor in an instant. There must be some way Mira loved to be taken care of, some way to make her go from buttoned-up to fully unraveled, flushed and panting?—

If there was, Isabel was never, ever going to find out. Thank god Mira was looking through her piles of books and couldn’t see Isabel’s face.

“Sorry that all my books are on the floor,” Mira said. “I figured it wasn’t worth it to organize them, since I’m moving out soon anyway.”

Isabel bit the inside of her cheek. Hard. “That’s fine.”

She rubbed her face, exhaled, and took in the rest of the small, bare-bones room: the familiar blouses and skirts hanging in the closet, the alarm clock and prescription pill bottles on the windowsill that Mira was using as a makeshift nightstand. Someone who walked into Mira’s room knowing nothing about her might think she was just an academic whose entire world was in her books. But there was so much more to her.

Isabel took a small book from a pile on the floor. It turned out to be in Latin, but she idly flipped through it anyway. Mira had written notes in the margins, and seeing them was somehow more intimate than being in Mira’s bedroom—it was like being inside her mind. Isabel brushed her thumb over a line of Mira’s writing, her hand trembling slightly.

“Found it,” Mira said. Isabel, startled, closed the book she held. Mira stood up and handed over her copy of Parable of the Sower . It was an older edition, clearly well-loved. “Let me know what you think. I first read this in high school, and I thought it was astonishing. So clear-eyed and so hopeful. Before that, I didn’t realize that science fiction could be so much more than…” Mira stopped and frowned.

“Books about a bunch of tough guys on a space station?”

“I didn’t mean…”

“Don’t lower your standards just for me.”

Mira rolled her eyes playfully. “I don’t mean it like that. Let me put it this way. If we ever go to space, I’ll be an alien linguist. You can build the spaceship.”

“Deal. You brought a lot of books with you.” A few months ago, Mira had moved into her apartment with a small suitcase and two big boxes of books. It seemed like a lifetime ago.

“I have a hard time getting rid of them. Sentimental value, and all that.” Mira picked up a slim novel from a pile. “My boyfriend in college gave this to me. He was sweet, even if it didn’t work out. He was a gay boy and I very much wasn’t.”

Emotions swirled within Isabel. Relief that someone had once been good to Mira, and regret that she herself would never get to be. And a prickle of jealousy that she didn’t like in herself. Mira picked up another book, a much thicker one. “This was from the ‘literary criticism for classicists’ seminar I took in my first year of grad school. My French wasn’t really good enough at the time. But I was new to the city, and I felt so sophisticated, lugging around my big books and doing my reading in cafes like I was finally a real intellectual. But now I’m rambling.”

“No, no.” Isabel was parched. She could keep drinking up every detail of Mira’s life for hours. She held up the book in Latin that she’d picked up originally. “What’s this?”

“Oh, that was the edition of Catullus I used in undergrad. I had— I’m not boring you?”

Isabel shook her head. Mira went on. “The professor I had for that class terrified me. I was one of those insufferable students who breezed through the intro classes and thought I knew everything. And on the first day, she made sure I knew, in front of the entire class, that using big words wasn’t going to cut it anymore.”

They shared a smile. Mira continued, “She gave me a B-minus. And she wrote me a letter of recommendation for grad school, and I got in everywhere I applied. Last year, she sent me a long email about an article I’d published, rebutting everything she disagreed with, and it felt like the highlight of my career so far, that she took me so seriously.”

Isabel leaned against the foot of the bed. “I had a journeyman like that once. Steve, the one I told you about. The first time I showed him a panel I wired, thinking I was hot shit, he made me take it apart and do it all over again. Took me hours. He told me that anyone who sees my work should know immediately that the union electricians in New York City are the best in the world.”

“Do you tell that to your apprentices?”

“I do. I try to go a little easier on them, though.”

“Not everyone can be you, right?”

Isabel snorted. Mira leaned against the wall, mirroring her. “I’ve always thought that if I ever got to be a professor, that’s the kind of professor I’d want to be. Not that I’m counting on it. But last week, one of my students said something, and I found myself frowning and leaning forward and asking her to clarify her argument in the exact same way. It’s like how we all become our parents. Though I’m sure I wasn’t nearly as intimidating.”

“I don’t know about that.” Mira was probably underestimating herself.

Mira smiled like Isabel was joking. “Maybe I’ll get there someday. I do try to take my students seriously, which is why I push them. I think that’s more important than any specific thing I can teach them, ultimately.”

The two of them had plenty in common. Mira took real pride in her work, and she knew she was meant to be an academic and a teacher, no matter what people threw at her. Maybe Mira wouldn’t put it that way, but Isabel knew conviction when she saw it. “I’ve had people have a problem with me, and point out every little unimportant thing or ice me out because they thought I shouldn’t be on the job site in the first place.” Mira nodded. She obviously knew all about that too. “It’s different when someone’s pushing you because they believe in you.”

“Oh, absolutely,” Mira said. “Also, I don’t think I’d ever… Well, Catullus can be seamy. Before that class, I’d never heard a professor say the word face-fucking before.”

Isabel nearly choked. Her face flushed again. Hearing Mira say that word in a completely dry tone was doing something to her.

Mira smiled slyly. “Here, let me find you an English translation. Unless you’re too scandalized. In which case I’ll dig up one of those Victorian translations that left the good parts out.”

“I think I can handle it.” Isabel wasn’t sure if she could.

Mira took another book out from the middle of a stack. It wobbled, and Isabel rushed to keep it upright. “Thanks,” Mira said, standing back up. She flipped through the book, opened it to a page, and gave it to Isabel.

It was eyebrow-raising. “Huh,” Isabel said, still blushing like she was a prude.

“There’s a lot to say about that little poem,” Mira said. “Gender roles, sexual mores, the relationship of a poet to their work, and so on. Anyway…” Mira’s expression turned serious. “Well, he had quite the range. I don’t know if you’re familiar with his elegy for his dead brother.”

Isabel shook her head. Mira looked uncertain. “Tell me about it,” Isabel said, not wanting the conversation to end. She hated dealing with other people’s fumbling attempts to talk around her grief. Mira’s gentle matter-of-factness was different.

Mira took the book from her. Their fingers brushed, and sparks lingered on Isabel’s skin. Mira flipped through it, dog-eared a few pages—apparently she wasn’t precious about her books in that way—and handed it back to Isabel. “A few of his poems mention his brother, and 101 is the most well-known— and forever, brother, hail and farewell —but this portion of 68 is the most moving, to me. I don’t know if… Well, if you do read them, and you’d like to share with me, I’d love to hear what you think. You don’t have to look now, if you’re…”

Isabel wanted to. She was tired of shutting herself away. She wanted to get closer to Mira’s world, and she wanted to see what Mira wanted her to see.

She opened to one of the dog-eared pages. My brother, you have shattered my comfort. Together with you, our whole house was buried. Together with you, all our joys have passed away…

A surge of something vast from the depths overwhelmed Isabel before she could keep it down. Her face wobbled and her throat ached. Tears threatened to break through.

Isabel took a shaky breath, keeping the threat contained. She closed the book. Mira put more hairline cracks in her composure every day. Now, with this offering, Mira had almost split her open.

What if she allowed herself to crack?

She couldn’t. Not when she had to see her parents and Grace in a few weeks. She had to stay strong for them. But maybe there would be a time when she could pour herself out and let something new in.

What was Mira doing to her?

“Thank you,” Isabel said, with a tight hold on her voice. She clutched the books close to her. But she’d have to return them soon—Mira would probably be gone in less than a month. That realization nearly broke the dam. She swallowed around the lump in her throat, trying to control herself. “I’ll give these back before you go. I don’t know if… If I’m ready for the poems. But I appreciate it.”

“You can keep the books,” Mira said. Isabel looked away before she fell apart. “It’s a gift, okay? Take as much time as you need.”