“Don’t answer it.”

The phone in Claire’s hand vibrates again, the screen lighting up. She reads the caller ID.  Swallows once.

Devon grips her chin in his hand, tries to angle her head up so that she can meet his eyes, but she resists him.  “Don’t answer it, Claire,” he says, and every time he says her name, she feels more sure of it, feels a little more in love with him, feels so much like herself that the unease of her skin is so much less.  “We’re almost out,” he says.  “We’ve only got finals, and then we’ll be gone.  You don’t have to answer it.  You can just put it down.  Don’t do it.”

Claire presses her lips together.  Her eyes haven’t left the name etched in black on the lime green screen. She shrugs, rolling her shoulders with ease, and steps back, pulling her chin out of Devon’s grip.  “It’s Eve,” she says in a pained tone of voice as she answers the call.

“He left me.”

Eve doesn’t even say hello, doesn’t wait for Claire to say hello, just outs with it as soon as Claire picks up. Her voice, her throat, is tight; even tighter than Claire can hear, probably, given the immense static crackling through the phone.  Cell phones are supposed to be the future, but right now they still feel like absolute ass. A landline would be better; Devon doesn’t want Eve to have their number.

“Wait.”  Claire strides out of the living room; more often than not, she and Devon share a bedroom, but she has one of her own for moments just like this, for moments when she is less in love with him than he wants, than what their current plan calls for. If they are meant to be married, she should be in love with him all of the time, even if he’s given her permission to divorce him later, if she finds someone she truly loves.

There’s only one person Claire has ever truly loved.

She ignores Devon’s gaze as she goes into her room and shuts the door behind her, sliding the bolt into place.  “What’s wrong, Eve?  Who left you?”

“Ted,” Eve says, and Claire has never heard that name before.  “Ted left me, he left me, and I shouldn’t be calling you, I shouldn’t, I know this isn’t fair to you, but I’m pregnant and he left me, and I didn’t know who else to call, no one was picking up, and you are my best friend, Christopher, or you…or you were, and—”

“I’m here, Eve.”  Claire speaks into the crackling static as smoothly and gently as she can. On the other side of the phone, Eve is crying.  Her lips press together again.  “Where are you?”

“In our—”

The static is so loud that Claire thinks it cut out what Eve said, but it isn’t that at all, it’s that Eve paused, corrected herself, “In my apartment.”  She hiccups through her tears.

“What’s the address, Eve?”

“Huh?”

~

Claire leaves her room with an overnight bag slung over one shoulder, surprised that she’d been able to keep her head on straight long enough to get one put together. She’s probably missing something. Her clothes probably don’t match. She’d just shoved things into the bag without really thinking about it, too angry – rage pulsing through her chest – to focus on that.  In fact, she’s seeing so much red that she doesn’t even see Devon as she passes him on the way to their apartment door.

Devon grabs her wrist, holds her in place, stops her.  “Where are you going?”

“Eve needs me.”

“Claire.” Devon tightens his grip, even though she doesn’t struggle against him.  “She’s your ex.  She broke your heart.  Don’t do this.  Don’t ruin your life—”

“I’m not ruining my life, Dev.”  Claire still doesn’t pull her wrist out of his grip, doesn’t even try, but she doesn’t look at him either.  “And she didn’t break my heart.  I broke hers.”

“You have a chance, Claire.  An actual chance.  Do you know how rare that is—”

Claire chuckles lightly to herself.  “You’re acting like I won’t come back, Dev.  It’s not like that—”

“Isn’t it?”  Devon loosens his grip, fingers tracing circles on Claire’s wrist.  “Next week is finals week.  Senior year.  You should stay here, Claire.  Studying. You shouldn’t be traveling halfway across the state—”

“It’s only thirty minutes—”

“—because your ex-girlfriend called you,” Devon finishes, not even pretending to pay attention to Claire’s excuses.  “Does she even know?” he asks, and Claire’s heart crumbles.  “Does she even know who you are?”

Claire doesn’t say anything.  She doesn’t have to.  There isn’t anything to say.

Devon drops his hand.

“Do you want the ring back?” Claire asks, twisting it easy around her finger, a new habit that she hadn’t thought she would ever need to break.

“No,” Devon says, rough voice soft.  “Keep it.  To remember what you could have been.”

Claire swallows again.  Harder this time.  There’s a lump in her throat that she hadn’t expected.  “It’s Eve,” she says, finally, turning back to him, blue eyes bright and wide.  “What do you want me to do?”

Devon sighs and gives a little shake of his head.  He has never looked smaller in his entire life than he does in this exact moment, shoving his hands into his pockets and hanging his head.  “Does it really matter, Claire?”

~

Claire barely knocks on Eve’s apartment door before it swings open and Eve falls onto her, curling her head on Claire’s flat chest.  “I can’t believe you came,” she moans into Claire’s skin.

Immediately, Claire wraps her arms protectively around Eve and holds her close to her.  She presses a kiss to the top of her head and murmurs, “Of course, I came, Eve.”  She threads her fingers through Eve’s hair, stroking it gently.  It’s only a few seconds, and already she can feel Eve’s tears through her thin shirt. “It’ll be okay—”

“He left me,” Eve repeats, balling her hands into fists, clutching at Claire’s shirt.  “He left me.”

Claire doesn’t know who this Ted is, but she knows she wants to punch him in the face.  “Do you want me to fight him?” she growls.  “I’ll make him wish he never—”

“No.”  Eve sniffles once, twice, and the word comes out as a long moan. She steps back, head lowered, refusing to look up, avoiding Claire’s gaze.  “Come in, it’s….”  Her voice trails off, and she rubs her arm with her other hand.  “I don’t want to make a scene.”

You are allowed to make a scene, Claire thinks angrily but doesn’t say. It would come out wrong, it would sound like she was mad at Eve, and she isn’t, she isn’t mad at Eve, nothing could be further from the truth, and she doesn’t want to make things worse by making it sound as though she is.  So, instead, she takes Eve’s hand in her own, interlaces their fingers the way she had so many times before she’d broken up with her, and gives her a gentle squeeze.  A reminder.  I’m here.

Eve squeezes her hand back weakly and then tugs her into the apartment.

~

It’s—

It’s—

Claire can’t help it; seeing the state of Eve’s apartment, her free hand clenches into the tightest fist she’s ever had, so tight that she can feel her sharp nails digging into the flesh of her palms, the sticky sweet drip of blood staining the skin beneath them.  Her nails are so much longer now than they’d ever been when she was dating Eve; she’s let them grow out a bit so that she can paint them, an act that has been soothing for years only she’s never felt confident enough to leave the decoration on. Right now, they look like a sunset. She hopes that Eve doesn’t notice.

It’s a hope that she can’t realize right now, though, staring at the hollow emptiness of everything.  A couple of the cabinets in the kitchen stand open, their few contents shuffled and almost thrown about, knocked over, crumpled.  Two spices have tumbled to the floor, their tops open – just from the smell, it must be cinnamon and sage.

As Eve pulls her further into the apartment, Claire sees the spaces where a life – lives – once were: an empty spot in the living room where a recliner must have been, another where the TV stood (there’s dust around where its base once was, around the rectangular spot where a VHS player must have been), missing slots in the rows of VHS tapes where movies have suddenly gone missing.  All of the pictures hung along the walls, however, are still there; it seems like this Ted hadn’t really cared about making the place seem more livable.

Asshole.

Eve leads Claire into her bedroom, which is…worse, almost.  There are clothes thrown everywhere, dresser drawers half-open, pillows missing, a blanket that seems to have been on one half of the bed, shoes scattered here and there – Claire stumbles over one, and she notices that one of the open drawers is full of Eve’s underwear. White hot rage boils within her.  “Tell me,” she growls, “that you didn’t let him take—“

“Half of them were already his,” Eve murmurs, voice tight, choked.  “He liked to collect them.  Said he liked the way they smelled.”  She still can’t meet Claire’s eyes.  “Said they helped him when I wasn’t here.”

“Eve—”

“I thought it was normal—”

“I never—”

“No, you never, and you left me, too.”

Eve doesn’t sling the words as an accusation, doesn’t say them angrily, barely whispers the admittance, but still, it stops Claire from saying anything else.  She steps barefoot, careful, across to the bed and curls up into the smallest ball Claire has ever seen, pulling her sheets and comforter around her and holding their edges close together in front of her.  She sniffles again, eyes red but dry.

When Claire follows her to the bed, she looks up, finally meeting Claire’s eyes; hers are bloodshot, swollen, a drop of the most beautiful blue she has ever seen in a deep sea of blood.  Claire slips onto the bed next to her and wraps an arm around her shoulders.  “Come here.”

Without saying anything, Eve curls into Claire.  She rests her head on her chest, hesitates, and then curls closer until she’s nearly in Claire’s lap.  But Claire doesn’t mind.  Instead, she only holds her closer and begins to stroke her hair again.  “It’ll be okay,” she murmurs soothingly.  “You don’t have to worry about that asshole any—”

“He wasn’t an asshole, Christopher—”

“Quit defending him, Eve; he left you—”

Eve sniffles again, and the sound cuts Claire off.  She’s not hear to accuse Eve of anything.  She’s here to make her feel better.  Apparently talking shit about the boy who literally left her is not helping.  She can’t imagine why.

“I’m here,” Claire murmurs instead.  “I’m here, and I will be here for as long as you need me.”  She strokes her fingers gentle along the curve of Eve’s spine, the way that she knows she likes, and then scratches gently along her back.  “I’m not going anywhere.”

Eve nods.  Closes her eyes.  Lets out a little sigh as she slowly, slowly relaxes.  It isn’t that she isn’t crying; it’s that she’s cried so much already that she doesn’t have any tears left.  “Thank you,” she murmurs, voice soft.  “I don’t….” She swallows again.  “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.”

Claire continues to stroke her fingers along Eve’s back until she feels Eve’s breath slowing into that peaceful churn indicating rest.  Her chest lifts slow against Claire’s, and Claire just keeps an eye on her, unable to comprehend how anyone could hurt her like this, could think that it was even remotely acceptable to just leave Eve because she’d gotten pregnant.

Their first date is in the dead of winter – except that, technically speaking, it is winter yet, since winter won’t start for another couple of days – so, really, their first date is in the dead of fall, when there are no more trees with leaves left to be transitioning from their summer green through their full glory of golds, scarlets, burgundies, just the bare branches scraping at a grey cloud covered sky, threatening to snow but never really doing it.  The sharp tree limbs haven’t broken through the barrier yet.  Alas.

Claire stands with her hands clasped together in front of her, uncomfortable the way she always is, looking up at the sky and the little puffs of white cloud her breath makes when she breathes out.  She shivers only when a hand rests on her shoulder and turns to meet the green eyes that glare so dark under the lamplight, the shorn undercut and long brown hair drawn back into a low ponytail, the t-shirt with sleeves torn off that reads fuck me yourself in all caps, blood red and edged with white against a black background.  Her date looks bad, grumbles that name that isn’t hers in a rough voice, and she nods.

It’s the dead of fall, when the leaves are gone, world running towards the darkest day of the year, cold bone deep with no snow to make it worthwhile, and her body is the world itself, dead and dying, uncomfortable, uncomfortable, discontented, skin stretched over wrong bones, wrong shape, wrong self, but the world gets to remake itself every year, and Claire is stuck like this, short nails painted black because that, at least, is acceptable.  She shoves a hand through her short, short, short hair and tries to offer her date her softest, gentlest smile.

Everything soft and gentle feels like teeth bared for an attack when she looks like this.

She hates it.

As they proceed, Claire doesn’t read the barest hint of attraction from her date, not that she’s ever been particularly good at that, but she feels a sort of kinship that she can’t explain.  Maybe that’s why they’d been given each other’s numbers, not that they’d both decided to stay in their halls over winter break instead of going….

Claire can’t go back.

She can’t.

Maybe her date feels the same way.  But she doesn’t ask.

~

It isn’t their only date, but it is for a long time.

Instead of dates, they meet up just to hang out.  To the outside world, it might look like dating, but to Claire, it isn’t.  If she isn’t being honest, then how can it really be a date?  Except…except the first was a date.  But something about that felt different, like there were expectations.

There are none here.

Eventually, her not-date invites her, in that low, gruff voice, to come to a support group.  She asks what sort of support group but never gets an answer.  Well, she’ll support her new friend in whatever way she can, but she’s not sure she’ll be of much help if she doesn’t know what the group is.

For people like us is the only answer she gets.

Claire doesn’t know what people like us means until they get to the group.  Support group is not what she would call it; it’s a queer group, and it bothers her immensely that her friend would include her as someone they might help.  (It bothers her, but it warms her.  She can feel the heat straight in the middle of her chest, radiating out to her fingertips, and she wonders if she’s actually been seen.  She wants that; she’s afraid of it in equal measure.)

It is only afterwards, when he kicks the toe of his boot through drifts of snow, his hands shoved into his pockets, that her friend confides in her that he’s a guy.  “I thought you should know,” he says, staring down at the ashen snow instead of up at her. “It wouldn’t be fair to you if you didn’t.”

Claire opens her mouth just enough to let a puff of warm air cloud above her. She doesn’t want to confide in him now, but she feels it, that small opening of acceptance.  “What’s your name?”

“Tom,” he says, “although I’m still working out the kinks.  It doesn’t feel right, you know?”  He shrugs. “Or maybe you don’t.  Names are so weird.”

“I think it’s divine.”  Claire hesitates then sets one fingertip under his chin, lifts his head so that his dark green eyes meet her calm blue ones.  “I’m Claire,” she says, voice soft, quivering, because it feels wrong to say it out loud, but it also feels right.  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Tom.”

The corner of Tom’s eyes widen.  “Oh.”

Something in the center of Claire’s chest tightens.  Maybe she was wrong.  When Tom said people like us, he must have just thought she was gay, not like him.  Maybe she shouldn’t have—

Tom smiles.  “Hey, Claire. Nice to finally meet you.”  Then he leans up, brushes a hand through her too short hair, and, without hesitation, kisses her.

It’s the first time she’s ever been kissed in her life.  None of the others count, because they weren’t kissing her.

This is the first one that does.

~

Privacy is a weird and beautiful sort of thing.

Tom changes his name to Joseph until Claire asks him whether or not it would be okay for her to call him Joe or Joey, at which time he promptly changes it back to Tom.  That only lasts a few moments before he requests she call him Matthew – he doesn’t have a problem with Matt, but the moment she drags it out to Matty, he makes a disgusted face.  “I hate the –ie nickname,” he says, pushing a hand through his hair, and then he grimaces again, raking fingers through the longer length.  “And I hate my hair.”

“You could cut the rest of it off,” Claire suggests.  She tilts her head to one side and reaches across, picks a strand up, and runs it through her fingertips.  “I don’t know how you get it so soft.  Mine’s always,” she gestures, “like this.”

Tom-Joseph-Matt gets up immediately, pads on bare feet through his apartment, and returns with a fancy shampoo bottle. “Mom’s a hair stylist,” he says as he passes the bottle over and sits down on the floor.  “You can keep that.  She’ll get me another one if I run out.”  He scowls, crosses his arms, and leans back against his couch, stretching his feet out in front of him.  “She’ll also literally kill me if I cut my hair any shorter.”  He leans his head back with a sigh.  “You should grow yours out.”

Claire startles.  “No.” When he gives her a look, she shakes her head.  “No.  My hair looks all greasy and grotty when I grow it out.  Trust me.  I’ve tried.”  She shoves her head in her hands.  “Why haven’t they made a body-swapping machine yet?  Then we could just switch.  Your mom would love me.”

“What about Jared?” Tom-Joseph-Matt says, twirling a strand of hair around one finger.  “You can’t make a nickname out of that.”

“You can make a nickname out of anything, Jare.”  Claire raises an eyebrow.  “Red.  You could dye your hair and be a ginger with that one.”

Tom-Joseph-Matt-Jared shoves her hard enough that she topples from her perch on the arm of his couch. “I’m not a ginger.”

“It’d bring out the color in your eyes nicely.”  Claire stands, brushes crumbs from her thighs.

“Ugh, you sound just like my mom. Are all girls like this?”

Claire shrugs, but her lips curl with happiness at how easily he refers to her that way.  She leans forward, softening as she brushes strands of his hair away so that she can kiss his forehead.  “You’d know if you were one.”

At her words, he startles, and his cheeks flush a bright red.  He looks up, eyes drifting easily to Claire’s lips, and crosses the distance between them to kiss her.  “I love you, Claire.”

“I love you, too.”  Claire doesn’t use his name before kissing him back, unsure whether Jared was an official change or something he’d thrown out to debate.  She cups his face, runs her fingers along the shaved down sides of his undercut, and tilts his face up, closer to hers.  “I love you, too.”

~

Once, Tom-Joseph-Matt-Jared-Wilbur-Bartholomew asks Claire how she’d chosen her name.

“I think it chose me,” Claire admits, leaning up against his headboard. She stares up at the popcorn ceiling, focusing on the texture as she remembers.  “I always….”  She presses her lips together, cuts herself off, wets her lips.  “I just heard it once, and I knew.  That was my name.  I knew it like it had always been my name.  I…I don’t know how to explain it any better.”

He snorts, and Claire glares down at him.  “I’m sorry my name is so amusing to you.”

“No, ugh, Claire, that’s not what I meant.”  He pushes his hand up his face the way a cartoon character might push up slipping glasses and leans forward until his chest flattens against his bent up knees.  “It’s just not fair.  Your name coming easily to you and mine just…ugh.”  He wraps his arms around his knees and stares forward.

Claire kisses the sharp edge of his shoulder blade.  “You’ll figure it out eventually.  Maybe look at meanings.  Is there anything you want it to mean?”

He shrugs.  “I want it to mean me.”  Then he glances up, meets her eyes.  “Why don’t I just use your name?  It’s not like you want it.”

Claire shoves him as hard as she can, and when he barely moves, she presses both hands onto his shoulders and pushes him back until he lays flat on the mattress.  “You can have it,” she says, still pinning him down.  “I’ll hate it, but if it fits—”

“It doesn’t,” he says, staring breathlessly up at her.  “I tried it for myself before I even met you.  It’s a horrid name.”

“It is, isn’t it?”  Claire situates one leg on either side of his hips and leans down, kisses the tip of his nose, and grins as he wiggles his nose, grins as he leans up with a matching grin, grins as he kisses her, hands curving slow up her back.  Like this – with him – she feels as close to herself as she’s ever felt with anyone else. She hopes, suspects, it’s true for him, too.  His strap presses hard between her legs, and she wonders.

~

They walk to class hand-in-hand.

Tom-Joseph-Matt-Jared-Wilbur-Bartholomew-David-Jonathan-Nathan drops Claire off at her upper level poli-sci classes and picks her up after class is done, at which point she promptly clasps his hand in hers and walks him to his upper level art classes.  She pecks his lips when she drops him off, and he wraps his strong arms around her in a nearly bone-crushing hug when he drops her off, and everyone thinks they are the most in love couple they have ever met.

They aren’t in love – not in that sense – but they are open and honest and themselves with each other that they really aren’t with anyone else.  He’s a little more open than she is, frequenting the queer club at least once a month, but after that first time, Claire never goes back, not even to drop him off.  Being that public scares her.

Already, Claire is a politician.  Whoever she is, she has to be something more in public.  She can’t be herself.

She hates it, but it is what it is.

~

“Why don’t we go somewhere?”

Tom-Joseph-Matt-Jared-Wilbur-Bartholomew-David-Jonathan-Nathan rarely brings the subject up, but he does so now, tossing a baseball back and forth from one hand to the other.  It’s a nervous habit, but an endearing one.  “After college.”

“I can’t.”  Claire shakes her head.  She always shakes her head.  “All of this will follow me, Nate.  It will ruin me. I want to be a force for good here, and even the Dems are….”  Her lips press together.  “They won’t vote for me.  Not if we – if I—”

“So we go somewhere,” he says again, stepping to her, clasping her hands in his.  “Somewhere no one knows who we are, and we just…we become us.  And we restart.  From the ground up.”

Claire steps back, but she doesn’t take her hands out of his.  “Nate, I—”

“Claire.”  He takes her face in his hands, runs his thumbs along her cheekbones, and meets her eyes.  “Claire, you have to do it.  If you have the chance, if you know what you want, do it.  And fuck the rest of them.”

Her gaze drops.  “It’s hard.  Restarting.” She licks her lips.  “And we’d have to have our names straight before we get out there, or else…else they’ll track us back here.”  Her brow furrows, and she looks up.  “Both of us, Nate, or they’ll track you here, they’ll find me through you, if we do this together—”

He swallows.  Nods.  “I’ll figure something out.  We’ll change our names here, before we move.  Get all of our ducks in a row.”

Claire’s gaze drops again.  “I’ll have to get married,” she muses, stepping back away from him.  She taps her chin with one finger, turns, begins to pace.  “Men tend to do better in political polls, women do better if they’re married, if I want to make up lost progress, then…then I’ll have to get married.”

“I’ll marry you.”

Claire barely pauses in her pacing.  “That’s funny.”  She shakes her head.  “I’ll think of something.”

It won’t work.  She knows it won’t work.  But he’s…but he’s right. If she can…if she can—

~

Claire’s hair curls unnaturally at the top of her ears.  Uncomfortably.  She’s tried to tuck it back more times than she can count, but it isn’t quite long enough yet.  The shampoo Tom-Joseph-Matt-Jared-Bartholomew-David-Jonathan-Nathan-Gabriel-Troy gave her so long ago has worked its magic; it’s made her hair so much softer that she’s decided to try and let her hair grow out again.  It still doesn’t look quite right, but….

It’ll get there.  Everything will go well, and it will get there.

The words hang in the air between them again – I’ll marry you – and he holds her long-fingered hands in his stubby ones.  She never thought he was serious, but then he’d gone through the benefits of friend marriages and assured her that if she found someone else, he would divorce her quietly; that would be fine because so many politicians had so many divorces and remarriages that if she had one in her past, it wouldn’t be too horrible.

“You’ve thought this through,” she says, and she glances up to meet his dark green eyes.

He nods.  “I wouldn’t want to jeopardize your chances, Claire.  You know that.”  He almost smiles, corner of his lip quirking ever so slightly upward.  “You’re the only politician that I feel actually gets me, you know?”

Claire chuckles lightly at that.  Her head tilts to one side.  “You know you’re going to have to finalize your name.  No changing it after we get married.”

“Oh, I’ve finally found one,” he says.

At his words, Claire’s sculpted brows raise with curiosity.  “Oh?”

“This is going to sound crazy,” he says, “but Devon.”

Claire makes a face.  “No.  No. Absolutely not.  You’re not that kind of bro.”

Devon holds up a finger.  “I took your advice, you know.  Looking at meanings and stuff like that.  And do you know what Devon means?”

“No.”

Devon grins.  “Finally, something I know that you don’t.”  He leans forward across the table, whispers in her ear.  “It’s divine.”  As he settles back in his chair, his grin spreads, nearly beaming at the shocked look on Claire’s face.  “And I was thinking about…about our last name, you know, because it needs to be something great.”  He taps his finger, hard, on the table.  “Debella – it’s something like from beauty.”  His brows raise.  “It’s good, right?”

“Your initials would be Deedee,” Claire quips, “and that’s a really bad translation.”  She leans back against her chair, folds her arms against her chest, and considers before a soft smile lights her lips.  “But I like it.”

“You just want everyone to call you beautiful all the time.”

“It was your idea!”

But Devon is already laughing – guffawing – slapping his thigh like an old man. When he finally quiets, he says, “Maybe I just want to call you beautiful all the time.”  He reaches across, grips her chin gentle.  “Maybe I want you to remember that you are.”

Claire kisses him as easily as she has been for as long as they have been together.  Easier, maybe.

This could work.  This will work.