Find My Way Home

Chapter Two

Vanessa's studio was small enough that once the couch was folded out, there wasn't much room for her on the floor unless she slept half under the bed. She spent a fair amount of time unplugging and rearranging electronics cords, trying to get the TV and the computer desk far enough into the corner to let her stretch her legs out; there was a lot of swearing involved as well, but Nina didn't offer to help. Vanessa needed to blow off some steam, and Nina needed to not be dealing with Vanessa right now.

Why did I come here?

Of course she knew the answer, but knowing it and admitting it were two different things, and it had been such a long day. Nina rolled onto her side and pulled a pillow over her face to block out the light and the noise, willing herself to sleep.

But the pillow smelled so much like Vanessa that it hurt. The lilac-scented conditioner she used; the odd contrast it made with her coconut body wash. Nina could swear she caught a whiff of cinnamon, even, and that was impossible. Cinnamon was the toothpaste Vanessa used, the Tic-Tacs she kept in her purse. That drink they served at the club last summer, the one that tasted like a cinnamon heart. A scent Nina associated inescapably with Vanessa, but she couldn't be smelling it now, in the pillow. Vanessa wouldn't leave the smell of Tic-Tacs behind on her pillowcase.

But it was all Nina could smell anymore, lilacs and coconut and a little bit of cinnamon, and this was hard, it was too fucking hard. She pressed her face harder into the pillow and let the tears come, quiet and stealthy. She never knew if Vanessa heard or noticed. She never really knew when she stopped crying and slid into dreams.

Vanessa's mouth had tasted of cinnamon and whipped cream and alcohol the first time they kissed. They'd found one another outside the club after the blackout. Nina was mad at Benny and Vanessa was mad at Usnavi, and then they found each other and it was the first safe, sane thing that had happened all night. They took off together just as the fireworks were beginning to go off.

For once it looked like Nina's place was going to be a worse scene than Vanessa's, so it was Vanessa's place they went back to. And Vanessa was a little drunk and Nina was beyond exhausted, and somehow it turned them both silly and they wound up in a game of truth or dare: relic of their childhood, when they'd had sleepovers most weekends and played truth or dare at every one. Nina mostly took truths when they played. You had to do enough hard stuff and stupid stuff and embarrassing stuff in real life, she figured, and Vanessa was the only one she could trust with most of her secrets. As for Vanessa, she always, always took dares.

So they were playing truth or dare again at ages 18 and 22, and all night Nina knew they were poised on the brink of something. Watching the easy, loose way that Vanessa moved, Nina wished she could have put back a few drinks herself. This (what?) might have been easier that way.

"Okay okay. Truth or dare?"

"What? It's your turn. Okay, so you have to –"

"No, wait, no, 'cause I was gone, right? My turn, like, expired."

Nina laughed. "Every time we play this you make stuff up! You don't get out of a turn every time you go to the bathroom. Especially since you've had to pee, like, four times since we got back here."

"No, but this is stupid! Come on. And anyway you come up with the lamest dares ever. What were you going to make me do, hop around the room on one foot? For the eighty zillionth time."

"Please. You wouldn't be able to hop to the door tonight."

"What's that, a challenge?" Vanessa jumped off the bed and made a precarious attempt at balancing on one foot. "See, I –" A tiny, excited little hop and she'd gone over again, landing flat on her back on the bed. "—am kind of drunk," she announced to the ceiling. Then it took them ten minutes to get over laughing about it.

"Okay, but really," Vanessa managed eventually. "Truth or dare?"

"Are we still doing that? I thought we were done when it turned out you couldn't stand up. Don't you want to pass out or something?"

Vanessa stopped laughing. "So I couldn't hop on one foot. I'm not going to pass out. I don't get pass-out drunk."

Oops. Nina hadn't seen Vanessa's mom since they'd gotten back, and she'd forgotten how touchy Vanessa tended to get about that stuff. "Sorry. My bad."

"Whatever." Vanessa rolled over on the bed, propping her head up on her hand; her hair cascaded down over the edge of the bed in a narrow black waterfall. "Come on. I'm serious, Nina. Truth."

"What, I don't get to pick?"

"No, because I want to know. Truth."

"Um… okay." Nina grabbed her little pile of clothes – Vanessa had loaned her a nightshirt – and rolled them up under her head for a pillow, then lay back against the floor. "You want to know what?"

Vanessa glanced down at her. "Why are you laying like that?"

"What? That's what you want to know?"

"No, but you look ridiculous with your head in dirty laundry. Come up here." She rolled back over, sweeping her hair out of the way so it lay across her shoulder, and patted the bed beside her.

"Um…" But why was she hesitating? She and Vanessa had shared a bed approximately a million times. "Thanks," she said, climbing up into the bed. Vanessa had changed into a tank top and some old gym shorts, and Nina was suddenly very aware of the heat of Vanessa's bare arm against her shoulder. "So what's this big truth you wanted to ask me?"

Vanessa tilted her head towards Nina. The scent of lilacs teased lightly at Nina's nose. "Why did you drop out of Stanford?"

Shit. Nina rolled onto her side, back to Vanessa.

"No! I'm serious. I really want to know."

"Yeah, and I really want to not talk about it. Do we have to go into this now?"

"Yes, we do, because you never pick up the phone when I call you. What's that about?"

Nina closed her eyes. "My cell phone service was spotty out in California."

"Right. Stop bullshitting me, Nina. What the hell happened out there?"

"I… Vanessa, please?"

"You said truth."

"You didn't give me a choice!"

"You never pick dare."

"Well, maybe I'm changing, okay?"

"I'll say."

"Give it a rest!" Nina shot upright in the bed, catching her elbow on the bedpost. "Fuck!"

"Wow. Hey. Okay." Vanessa reached out for Nina's other arm. Nina let her, fighting for composure. Breathe.

"Forget about it," Vanessa said eventually, and Nina exhaled sharply, massaging her elbow. "Look, if you don't want to talk about it, we won't talk about it. I just…"

"What?"

"Nothing. Forget I mentioned it." Vanessa rolled over to face the wall. Nina could still feel the ghost pressure of Vanessa's hand on her arm. After a minute she lay back down.

"It isn't some big thing I didn't tell you," she said. "I was working two jobs and I couldn't handle the pressure. My grades tanked and I bailed."

"Yeah. That's what you said. But that's not why, Nina." She flipped back over in a sudden movement, dark eyes searching Nina's face intently. "I know you better than that. You don't just let things happen to you. And you don't just 'bail' on things."

"Well, I did on this."

"Right. See? You did it on purpose. Why?"

Nina let out a small, choked sound. Vanessa waited her out.

"You're being a bitch," Nina said eventually.

Vanessa laughed. "That's what all the boys say."

After a second, reluctantly, Nina joined in the laughter.

"Okay," she said after a minute, not looking at Vanessa. "You want to know a true thing about why I left?"

"Yeah."

"I shouldn't have bought my books."

Vanessa's brow crinkled in confusion. "Come again?"

"My course books. Do you know how much college textbooks cost?"

"Um, no."

"Sorry." Nina sighed. "A lot. Like hundreds of dollars apiece, some of them. And one of my classes had six textbooks."

"Jesus." Vanessa paused. "So, let me guess. Not covered by your scholarship."

Nina gave a short laugh. "Hardly. My parents and I went through the tuition expenses a million times, but we weren't counting on six textbooks per class. I was supposed to be working one job sixteen hours a week. That might have covered, like, the textbooks for one class. Maybe laundry for the semester, if I was lucky."

"So that's it? You dropped out because you couldn't afford your textbooks?"

Nina was silent for a long time.

"I figured out I was in too deep pretty quickly," she said finally. "After I started working at the fast food place. And I probably could have quit if I resold the textbooks and used the library."

"So…?"

A little section of Vanessa's hair was lying over Nina's hand. Nina picked it up and started to braid it, slowly. "I didn't want to."

"You… wanted to work at a fast food place?"

"Sort of. Not really. It just…" She twisted the braid around her finger. "You know, it was the only place where anyone spoke Spanish."

Vanessa laughed.

"I'm serious, V." Nina gave the braid a little tug; the strands unraveled.

"Ow. Sorry. Why are you pulling my hair about it? And why did you go all the way to Stanford if you wanted to speak Spanish with a bunch of losers in a fast-food joint?"

Nina shot her a glare. "Cut it out with the 'loser' thing. They're no more losers than anyone from the Heights." She caught Vanessa's raised eyebrow, cut in before she could speak. "Don't say it. You're from here too."

"Believe me, I know." Vanessa sighed, then raised a hand to stave Nina off as she started to retort. "But we're not talking about me. We're talking about you quitting school to work in a hamburger joint, for God's sake. What is that? You were always more than that. You were gonna make something of yourself. Shit, you were something already. Why would you throw that away in a fast-food place?"

"Right, I was going to 'make something of myself,'" Nina said, a shot of bitterness edging the words. "I didn't figure out till I got there that I had no idea what that was supposed to be."

"What it was supposed to be? What about being a lawyer? Or a politician? When we were kids you were going to be the first female president."

"Yeah, when we were kids. Then I got out there and - V, do you know how many kids at Stanford were going to be the first female president?"

Vanessa twitched a shoulder impatiently. "So? What does that have to do with you?"

"So they're all the same! It's all the kids whose great-great-great-whatevers came over on the Mayflower, the ones who probably had ten million dollars put in a trust fund for their presidential campaigns when they were born. That's all the kids in my dorm, and I didn't know how to talk to any of them or - or anything. I'd go to the dining hall and listen to them talk about their internships and their a cappella groups and their vacation plans and their shopping trips, and then I'd go to Carl Jr.'s and -"

"And what? You felt like you belonged there?"

A long pause.

"No," Nina said, and by the way she pressed her lips together Vanessa could tell she was trying not to cry.

"I don't know where I belong," she said finally, a thread-thin crack running through her voice.

"Hey," Vanessa said softly, and looped an arm around Nina's neck, pulling her close so that Nina's head was resting on her chest. She twined one of Nina's curls around her finger, let it rest there like a ring. "You belong here," she said, and Nina's breath caught a little in her chest.

They lay like that for a minute or two. Nina thought that she'd never felt so at peace and so anxious at the same time.

"Truth or dare?" she said eventually.

Vanessa glanced down over the tangle of curls on her breast. Nina tipped her chin up to meet the look.

"Uh... really? Still?"

"Yeah, V. Truth or dare."

"Um, okay. Dare."

Nina blew out a breath and pushed herself into a sitting position. "Right. Here's a dare for you. Why don't you take a truth for a change?"

"Okay..." Vanessa said slowly. "Truth, then."

Three, two, one.

"Nina? What are you -"

The rest of the sentence was lost as Nina kissed her.

The kiss was a long one - longer than Nina had meant it to be. But she'd never kissed a girl before. Never kissed someone who kissed back the way that Vanessa, after a brief frozen moment, was doing now. She'd never kissed someone and then found that she didn't know how to stop kissing them. Vanessa's shirt had pulled up in the back; Nina slid a hand around to feel bare skin, pulled Vanessa closer. She wanted to do so much more, everything at once, she had no idea how much she could dare -

Vanessa broke the kiss in the end. Pushed Nina an inch or two away, stared at her wide-eyed.

"Holy shit," she said.

Nina stifled a wild, slightly hysterical giggle. Vanessa's brows had drawn together.

"How was that a truth?" she asked after a minute. Her voice was a little breathless.

"Truth," Nina whispered, holding her gaze. "What are you thinking?"

Vanessa hesitated. Nina's world went on pause.

Then her mouth was on Nina's again, and Nina's body tossed up against hers like the slap of a tidal wave, and when the next train blew past the window, both of them were past being able to hear it.