Vanessa tasted like salt. And she smelled the way she always smelled, but richer, the scent thicker. Joan pulled her closer, as hard as she could. For a moment, she worried that she was hurting her, pulling her that tight. But Vanessa sighed. And Joan’s arms went loose as she let go of her weight against the door and sank into her legs in a way she never had before.

Vanessa pulled away then, but Joan pulled her back. And it was partially because Joan was afraid to look at her, to face what she was finally letting herself do. But it was more that she had to have Vanessa’s body against hers, had to feel the weight of her. She wanted to be trapped between Vanessa and the door. To be asked to surrender to her.

Joan let her go, finally. And Vanessa pulled back slightly but did not go far. She looked at Joan, and Joan felt herself blush. Vanessa took her thumb and grazed it across Joan’s jaw. Joan’s muscles melted, and she felt like she could dissolve.

Joan knew then that Donna was not an idiot. And the Beatles were not nonsense. And that there had always been a place for her in this world. She had just been walking past it over and over again, never noticing that there was an unmarked door, waiting for her to discover it.

Oh, but what now?

Joan did not know what she was doing!

She did not know when it was okay to smile at Vanessa at work and when she should hide her feelings. She did not know if she was standing too close to her when everyone was out together at a bar.

And so, instead, Joan spent over a week with her pulse racing, desperate to find herself alone with Vanessa as if by accident. Which was not an easy feat.

“We should go away,” Vanessa said in a low whisper, one afternoon when the two of them finally ran into each other alone on campus. Vanessa moved so effortlessly, appeared to know where to look with such ease.

“Okay,” Joan said, aware that her tone sounded eager but unable to hide it. “Where?”

—

They drove down to Rockport separately, so that they would not drum up suspicion. That had been Vanessa’s suggestion. And Joan was starting to get a sense of how this would work.

Joan got to the hotel early, and so she sat in the grand lobby having an iced tea, watching the brass revolving doors. Families and couples walked in, a few businessmen. When a girl Frances’s age walked in the door, Joan felt the pang of missing her. She’d called Barbara to make plans so she could be sure to see her the following weekend, but it still felt uneasy, choosing to go away.