Vanessa laughed. “I knew you knew. I knew you knew it even better than me. For so long, almost no one understood how I’ve felt. Why I wanted to do this. I mean, they were impressed, don’t get me wrong. But trying to explain that fire I feel to leave the planet, the one you’re talking about? It is like trying to describe the color blue to someone who has never seen it. And then you come along and it’s like you are describing the color blue to me and I feel such…relief. I’d have followed you anywhere just for that.”

What was happening?

Joan’s chest grew hot, and she did not know what to say back. And so she did not say, “I love hearing everything you have to say” or “I think I’ve been pulled toward you since the moment I saw you.” She said, “I want to show you the way my mother serves bread.”

“Oh,” Vanessa said. “Okay.”

Joan took a slice of bread from the basket and covered every millimeter of it in a very thin layer of butter. She sprinkled it with salt first and then pepper. Evenly, lightly. And then she handed it to Vanessa.

Vanessa took it and bit into it. And her eyes went just the littlest bit wild.

“See?” Joan said.

“How is it so much better with just a little bit of salt and pepper on it?”

“I don’t know but I…I want to show you every good thing I’ve ever found,” Joan said.

The way Vanessa’s eyes crinkled at the sides…Joan knew that she would not need to find a way to tell Vanessa how she felt. Vanessa would understand it. Which meant Joan would not need to learn how to be anything other than who she already was.

Later, after Joan paid the bill and the waiter had left the table, Vanessa looked Joan square in the eye. “I love your dress,” she said. And then, in a low whisper: “And I want to take it off you.”

A heaviness took hold in Joan’s hips.

Joan rushed them toward the car. They did not make it back to the hotel. They pulled over on the side of a dark road and, urgently, recklessly, Joan let Vanessa cure what ached her.

—

At three in the morning, they were still awake. Joan’s head was on Vanessa’s chest as they lay in bed. It was hot, the blankets were off, the sheets barely pulled up to their waists. Joan was shocked at herself, how quickly she had learned to shed decades of inhibitions.

“…and then when I saw those drawings you did,” Vanessa said, laughing.

“The sketches were not of you!” Joan said. “They were of the stripper. What was her name? Raven!”

“Oh, I know. I could see that. They were of Raven…”

“Thank you.”