Make Room for Love

Chapter 23

23

Isabel ran her fingers through her hair in front of the mirror. She felt like a teenager again. Giddy and anxious, and trying to project enough butch swagger that her date wouldn’t notice. She adjusted the collar of her button-down shirt, tugged at the cuffs to make sure they showed under the sleeves of her suit jacket, and tweaked her shirt collar again.

She’d gotten the suit made for Alexa’s wedding. Her body had changed after a few more years of hard work, but it still fit. Even if she felt like an entirely different person inside it.

If she waited any longer, she’d be late. She smoothed out her suit jacket one last time, left her room, and found Mira standing just outside. Mira smiled shyly.

Isabel stopped in her tracks. Mira’s makeup brought out her stunning eyes, and she was wearing that wine-colored lipstick Isabel liked so much and wanted all over her shirt collar. Mira’s dress was plum velvet—demure but fitted, the fabric darkly shimmering where her curves caught the light, practically begging Isabel to touch. She had on those sheer black tights that showed off her sinuously long legs. Delicate, bell-shaped golden earrings glittered against her hair.

Isabel was dizzy. Mira was perfect, in that exquisite femme way that made Isabel want to drop to her knees and beg and weep.

Mira came to her first. “Oh my goodness, Isabel. You look beautiful.” She ran a manicured finger down Isabel’s suit lapel. Just that light touch through layers of fabric set Isabel’s skin ablaze. “Could you zip me up?”

She turned and lifted her hair out of the way, exposing her back and shoulders, her skin burnished in the low light. A thin gold chain and its clasp gleamed at the nape of her neck.

Isabel’s heart skipped a beat. She itched to press a kiss to that exposed triangle of skin between Mira’s shoulder blades. Reluctantly, she pulled the zipper all the way up and latched the hook. When her fingers grazed Mira’s back, Mira shivered.

She turned around. Isabel’s throat went dry. “You’re gorgeous, Mira.” She tucked a loose ringlet behind the curve of Mira’s ear and brushed a thumb against her dangling earring. “I like your jewelry.”

“Thank you.” Mira beamed. “My dad’s sister gave a lot of it to me. I wish I had more chances to wear it.”

“You can leave that to me.” Isabel took Mira’s hand in her own and kissed the back of it. Mira’s bangles jingled softly. Gold jewelry was lovely on her.

Mira laughed. “You’re trying to seduce me.”

“Is it working?”

“Yes.” Mira pressed her body close and slung her arms around Isabel’s neck, and Isabel bent down to kiss her.

They had been kissing and talking things out all week, making time when they could around Mira’s end-of-semester work, trying to take things slow. Last night they’d kissed each other good night for twenty minutes, with Mira pressed up against Isabel’s bedroom door frame, neither of them able or willing to stop.

If they didn’t restrain themselves now, they’d miss their dinner reservation. After a few more heated kisses, Isabel pulled away. “I don’t want to smear your lipstick.”

“It’s waterproof.” Mira smiled. “Although I suppose we’ll see about that.”

Isabel’s face turned shockingly hot. She swallowed hard. They were in danger of not making it out the door. “Let’s go.”

They went to a little Greek restaurant with a view of the park. Isabel had agonized over where to take Mira—somewhere fancy but not too fancy, somewhere where she and her ex hadn’t gone a million times, somewhere with good vegetarian options, somewhere not too close but not too far, somewhere special. In the end, Mira had suggested this place. Sitting in this cozy neighborhood spot with tablecloths and candles, Isabel hoped it would become their place.

Isabel was captivated. She was completely gone. Half a year ago, she wouldn’t have thought she was still capable of this kind of wild, helpless delight. But here she was, across the table from beautiful, brilliant, wonderful Mira looking like a dream in candlelight, the murmur of the restaurant fading away.

Isabel wasn’t going to screw this up. As hopeful as she was, she couldn’t forget the truth: This was a new chance at happiness she’d done nothing to deserve. And she couldn’t take it for granted. Mira hadn’t promised her anything, and Mira didn’t owe her anything.

She was going to do right by Mira for as long as Mira wanted her.

“I read some of the poems you gave me,” Isabel said. She’d read about half the poems in the book, trying to get closer to Mira’s world. She’d been surprised. She’d found grief, but also heartbreak, anger, envy, and love. And plenty of obscenity. At times, it had seemed like the poet was just rambling to his friends. Mira was listening patiently. “I didn’t expect to get a sense of his entire life. He’s tortured over whether that woman loves him. He’s grieving for his brother. And he’s also caught up in his day-to-day life and talking shit about people he doesn’t like. It’s what you said about his range. The way it’s all mixed together.” The best and the worst of what life could throw at you, woven together with the mundane. She shrugged. What she had to say was probably far beneath Mira’s level.

“No, that’s exactly right,” Mira said. “Isn’t it wonderful? What you’re saying is why I became interested in lyric and elegiac poetry in the first place. It’s the human scale of it. Two thousand years later, all that sorrow and joy and envy still leap off the page. I think most of us can recognize ourselves in Catullus’s poems. Including, frankly, the parts of ourselves we may not want to admit to.”

Mira’s eyes were bright. Isabel could listen to her forever. “It’s part of why teaching matters so much to me. I want my students to understand that studying Classics is for everyone, because it’s so deeply human. Anyone can put in the work and find themselves in a shared conversation that’s been ongoing for thousands of years, and I don’t want any of my students to feel like it’s not for them because of who they are.” Mira paused. “I haven’t talked to you much about my research, have I?”

Isabel shook her head. “I asked when you visited the apartment for the first time.” That was an eternity ago. “You said you didn’t want to bore me. I figured you thought I wouldn’t get it.”

“Oh, no. You know I can’t abide that kind of elitism. I assumed you were just asking out of politeness.” At that, Isabel snorted. Mira smiled. “I thought that if I went on about it, you wouldn’t care. I’m happy to tell you as much as you want. If not more.”

“I do care. I found some of your papers online.” Isabel flushed. “I figured you should explain it to me yourself.”

Mira’s smile grew. “I guess there aren’t a lot of classicists named Mira Srinivasan-Levin, huh?”

“I guess you’re special.” Isabel’s face went red-hot. She wasn’t even trying to be smooth. She just adored Mira so much, and Mira was so sexy when she talked about her work. Isabel was out of her mind.

“Oh my goodness, Isabel. Stop.” Mira’s calf brushed against Isabel’s under the table, sending a warm jolt through Isabel’s body. That might have been an accident. But then Mira did it again.

Isabel’s breath hitched. Mira’s expression was perfectly innocent. “Anyway, as you might have seen, I study Latin lyric poetry and its relationship to Greek lyric. I’m interested in how the Roman poets took a tradition that was oral and musical and turned it into a literary genre for their own time and place.” She paused. “Did you read Catullus 51? Where the speaker sees their beloved sitting next to a man?”

Isabel took a moment to recall it. “I think so.”

“It’s a Latin adaptation of a Sappho poem. She sees the woman she’s in love with sitting next to a man, and admires his composure. Because she knows if she were the one sitting next to the woman, she would be at a loss for words.” She recited a few lines of poetry in Greek, in a lilting rhythm that sounded like music. She was entrancing. “‘For when I look at you, even for a moment, none of my voice remains. But my tongue has broken, and at once a delicate fire has run under my skin.’” Mira looked shyly at Isabel through her lashes. “Speaking of recognizing ourselves in poetry.”

Isabel shivered with desire. The things Mira could do to her just with words, sitting across the table… “Do you memorize every poem that you study?”

“I don’t go out of my way to do it. But the poems I’ve read and studied and taught for years stay with me.”

“And you never thought you might like women yourself?”

Mira laughed—a bright, pealing sound. “You know, for a long time, I was averse to any kind of personal identification with my work. I got tired of people assuming that I must study gender or South Asia or something. But all this time, I could have just been learning from Sappho herself.”

Her leg pressed against Isabel’s again. No, that was Mira’s foot, deliberately running up and down Isabel’s calf, insistent and warm through Isabel’s slacks.

For a second, Isabel entirely forgot what they were talking about. “Let’s get the check.”

The walk home from the park had never been so torturously long. By the time they stumbled through the front door, holding hands and giggling like loons, Isabel could barely think. She slammed the door shut and pulled Mira into a kiss. They warmed up fast from the cold, and Mira whimpered urgently as her lipstick slid against Isabel’s mouth. Isabel wanted to get lost in kissing this woman senseless forever.

Then Mira stumbled and yelped, and Isabel rushed and caught her before she fell. “These heels,” Mira muttered. She kicked them across the floor. Then she yanked Isabel down to her height for another kiss.

Isabel had to slow down before she got swept away—she had to make this last. She broke off their kiss. “Mira, sweetheart,” she said, their faces an inch apart. Mira looked startled. Isabel had let the word slip out. “Let’s take your coat off.”

Mira fumbled with her buttons, clearly impatient. Isabel leaned forward, cupped Mira’s face, and kissed her on the cheek again. “Take your time. We have all night, okay?”

Mira nodded. When she was turned on, she was unbelievably, adorably sexy, all pleading doe eyes and flushed skin and the sweetest needy sounds. Isabel was going to keep her promise from last week. She was going to give Mira the best night she’d ever had.

Mira finished unbuttoning her coat, and Isabel slipped it off her shoulders and hung it up. She did the same with her own coat and turned back to Mira, already mildly debauched with her hair tousled and her lipstick a little smudged. Not so waterproof after all.

It was hard to be patient. Isabel wanted to mess her up thoroughly, to unzip her out of that dress and tug those tights off… But she had to focus. She indulged herself in one more kiss. This time, Mira tugged at her suit lapels, and Isabel went weak in the knees.

“I’ve wanted to do that ever since I saw you in this suit,” Mira said, when they came up for air.

Isabel shivered. This was going to be the end of her. “Mira.” She ran a thumb along Mira’s jaw and took in the way her eyes widened. “Let’s get to my bed before I do all the things I want to do to you right in this hallway.”

Mira squirmed against her. “You could.”

Isabel grinned. “Don’t tempt me. Here, hold on.” In one swift motion, she crouched and scooped up Mira like a bride. Mira shrieked and laughed and held on tight. Isabel would never have anything more precious in her arms. “Let’s go.”