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"Emmeline?" I said, hesitant. She didn't look at me.
It had only been a few months since we started figuring out how to… do this. Us. Testing the limits of our bond, finding the lines between what we each, separately, feel and what is the bond—what was the vinculum before it. Still, as entwined as we were, a few months was enough for Emmeline to know when I was about to ask something silly—where did I leave my headscarf that was on my head at the time—and when a question had been eating away at me. She only tilted her head, cocked an eyebrow, and took another bite of her toast and marmalade while she waited for me to spit it out.
"When I first came to the island, the first party I went to was Bea's. I met a woman there. Well. Met is a—strong word for it." I recalled the moment so clearly my cheeks burned. Emmeline was halfway between intrigued and concerned, and I felt both wash over me. I swallowed.
"I imagine you met a great deal many women there." Emmeline replied, something like amusement in her eyes. "Tell me about this one."
"Her—her name was Joey. I—there was a scene downstairs, with Bea and him, and my magic—though of course I didn't know that at the time—anyway, I needed to get away. Ran to a bathroom to refresh myself and—"
"And?" Emmeline prompted, her toast entirely forgotten now.
"And I walked in on her with another woman." I finally said, breathless, like I had been that night. "They'd been—only kissing, I think." Emmeline smiled; that sharp, wicked smile that twisted low in my gut.
"Oh? And why are you thinking about her now?" Her voice was low, teasing, and I felt a shiver down my spine. Emmeline felt it too, and it only sparked more heat between us. Truthfully, the three months we'd been here together had been… intense, because of the way desire bled and built between us like the sea during a storm. I tried to tamp down on the pull, on my racing heart beat, and focus on the original point of my bringing it up.
"Because—how many women are like us?" I asked, bluntly. Emmeline blinked.
"On the island?"
"In the world."
Emmeline laughed. She laughed, loud and wild, the way her laugh always sounded in her freedom. "Oh, my dearest Annie," she said, wiping her face, still grinning. "I haven't the slightest idea. Hundreds? Thousands? Far, far more than anyone would be willing to admit."
My jaw fell open. "Really?" It felt impossible. After tangling myself up over what I'd seen Joey do, and then all of the mess I'd gotten into with Em during what I thought about as the Bad Days, the idea that this—us—was normal felt like a joke.
"Really. You just have to know where to look." Emmeline's brow drew tight, and my chest hummed the way it often did when she got a spark of an idea. "And I think I know just the place. Fancy a little outing sometime this week, love?"
"Always." I replied eagerly. It was rare for the two of us to do anything beyond the house; we just preferred each other's company. So it felt a treat.
It was a treat.
Alright, it was dark, and rundown. The furniture was old, threadbare sofas and crates from the docks as tables, and chairs that could have belonged to a school, or a church hall. The wallpapered walls were peeling, decorated with the heavy red curtains from a theatre with no windows behind them. But the sconces on the walls glittered, and there was a stage and musicians playing a lively jazz number I didn't recognise. The room was a cellar underneath a gallery, with a door to the rear of the building. Emmeline had knocked and whispered a few words before we were allowed inside.
But the inside was worth it.
Dozens of women danced together, or hunched around the crates playing cards, or leaned against the walls smoking, or laughed at the bar in the back. I tasted kazam in the air, of course, heady and floral undercut with the salt and dirt of our magic, but it was nothing like the wildness of Emmeline's parties. There wasn't a man in the room, though I saw suits and smoking jackets everywhere.
Emmeline moved through the room like she'd been made for it—one hand on the curve of my back, the other carving space between the other couples—because they had to be partnered, women in high-waisted trousers and braces, open-collared shirts and hair slicked back or cut incredibly short, always with a woman in dresses similar—if more fashionable—to the one I wore. She led me to the bar and ordered two gins—ordinary booze, thank God. I didn't want to mix the sheer, overwhelming disbelief I felt with kazam tonight.
"Emmeline—" I said quietly, then stopped. I didn't have the words.
"I know love." She replied, passing me my glass. "But this—the island is… more lax than the mainland. About a lot of things. Including this."
"No one looks… everyone looks so… free." My eyes wandered the room, heart full and the sensation only grew when Emmeline took my hand in hers, entwining our fingers, standing close—too close, for anywhere but when we were alone.
"We are free." She murmured. "Most of the people here will leave this room and don frocks and headscarfs tomorrow morning, return to jobs and husbands and children. But here—here they can just be." She dropped her head close to mine and for one wild, terrifying moment, I thought she was going to kiss me. I hoped she would, in this full room where I was sure nobody would care. Instead she whispered, voice low. "Would you like to dance, Annie dearest?"
I huff a laugh at my silly hope, at her amusement tickling the back of my mind, and nodded. "I don't think I've seen you dance. Can you?" Emmeline merely grinned that wicked smile that did things to me unfit for polite company, and set our drinks on a small table unclaimed by anyone else. I felt a pinprick of pain when she bit her cheek, and the taste of salt and iron in my throat before the table was swallowed by a faint shimmer that I knew, instinctively, no one else would see. Then she led me out into the throng of bodies dancing near the stage.
When Emmeline's hands found my waist, when she pressed in close to me, my stomach flipped. My skin buzzed. Too much, in the smoke-haze and the dim lights, it all felt too much. I stiffened, an instinct of the old Annie, the scared Annie, that had been showing up less and less often.
"Look." Emmeline said, her words ghosting my face, and tightened her hands at my waist. "Over my shoulder. What do you see?"
My eyes drifted behind her, to a woman—I was sure she was a woman because everyone in here was—in trousers cuffed high on her calves. Flat, pointed shoes on her feet. Hair coiffed like mine might have been if I'd been in the habit, and pinnned in place. She wore a white shirt, buttoned so low I could see the swell of her breasts when she turned, and a waistcoat without a jacket. There was a smear of—oh God—lipstick on her neck, the same as the woman I'd seen Joey with months ago. On her arm was an auburn haired woman in a dress that came to her knees and a string of pearls around her neck.
My eyes wander, and I see more of the same. Women, dancing with women. Holding women. If I let my eyes focus on the darker corners of the room, I saw women kissing women. The way Emmeline was holding me. The way she kissed me, and I kissed her. "They're—really just like us." I breathed, eyes finding Emmeline's again. I put my hands on her shoulders, and let her lead me in a dance that left us both laughing.