Joan had known Vanessa for over two years by then, had kissed her for the first time almost a year ago, had waded further and further into this intimacy.

Joan had given in to Vanessa in a way that still surprised her. Joan had not lost herself to Vanessa, but found herself in her. She had not cut off parts of herself to fit so much as learned to make room for someone other than herself.

Joan would so happily, even if she were a vegetarian, make Vanessa a meatloaf.

This surrender had not always been easy—it had shocked Joan just how much physical pain there was in loving someone like this.

It hurt Joan’s hands not to touch her in front of people the way Donna could touch Hank.

There was a fire in her—a burning through her belly and chest—when they fought.

And they did fight. There was the time Joan lost her temper just before Donna and Hank’s wedding, when Vanessa didn’t want to go in the same car. And when Joan started crying after Vanessa introduced Joan to a woman she had dated once, without giving Joan a heads-up first. And the deadly silent treatments Vanessa would levy against Joan when Joan canceled on her one too many times. The fights they’d gotten into when Joan defended Barbara’s questionable behavior.

They both had said awful things to each other. It was the first time in Joan’s life that she’d said something untrue just to upset someone else—just to try to make her own sting go away. She’d been horrified by what could come out of her mouth. “Of course you’re not as important to me as my niece!” “You don’t know how to stand by anyone! You always have one foot out the door!”

And the things Vanessa had said: things that, no matter how many times Vanessa apologized, Joan knew in her heart she would never really let go of. “You’re a doormat to your sister!” “You are childish, Joan. It’s not your fault, because you’re inexperienced, but sometimes you are as mature as a teenager about this.”

How was it, exactly, that two people could scar each other like that and keep going? In fact, go deeper? How was it that Joan could know that Vanessa did mean some of those things—that Joan could admit to herself in quiet moments that she meant some of what she’d said, too—but somehow the effect was to be tied together even more tightly?

Why was it that when you let someone that far in, you learned to be okay with all the ways they saw you, even if they weren’t flattering? Why, right now, talking to Vanessa, did Joan feel the most perfect sense of safety?