The Sheridan Stop

It started with a text message.

She was sitting in her living room, having just lurched forth from bed to offer the world what was not quite an embrace, but a sincere effort at one, and her phone beeped. All it said was "Your U-pass is at the Sheridan stop." The content of the message itself did not startle her; on the contrary, it was actually quite helpful. Her public transit pass had been the victim of her most recent foray into the realm of public drunkenness, three nights prior. She had awoken with a splitting headache, approximately 45 minutes of missing time, and bereft of her ticket around the city.

It wasn't what the message said, it was who had sent it. She hadn't seen Edith's name come up on her phone in a year. No, longer than a year, by a few months. Her mind hadn't registered the additional time, careful to compact anything involving Edith into the most simplified and streamlined thought process, as if to make somehow comprehensible something which had never been and would never be.

"Your U-pass is at the Sheridan stop."

She read it again.

The pit in her stomach, dormant since the break-up, inflated itself to the size of a softball.

She set the phone down after the third reading, hurriedly, as if she'd been caught with something that wasn't hers. Had she been? Edith used to be hers, in a manner of speaking, a manner Edith would have called patriarchal and antiquated when sober and fucked up when drunk, but a manner of speaking nonetheless. Did Edith belong to someone else now? Was this text, the tiniest bit of Edith in her life, contraband? She thought if she touched the phone it might burn her or cause an alarm, a trap set by Edith's new girlfriend, the girl who may or may not exist, but in Paige's mind was taller than she, almost as tall as Edith, who was nearly six feet, and this girlfriend was funnier than Paige and the kind of woman who would set a trap like this.

The pit in her stomach had turned into a knot, basket-balled sized, and twisting back into itself. She pictured Edith, not with the equally tall girlfriend, but Edith alone, as well as she could remember her. Edith had not called or texted in over a year, but Paige had seen her twice. Once at a Thai restaurant in Lakeview and another time on the bus, the #74, headed west down Fullerton. Edith's best friend lived at Fullerton and Monticello and Paige worked at Fullerton and Western for about six months as a waitress. It was amazing they didn't see each other more often. But they didn't. They didn't, so she was left to picture Edith outside of buses and noodle shops and in her living room, with auburn hair that she cut herself, in flannel or a sweater and always wearing a blue down winter vest. Edith was somehow urbanely rural. She was sophisticated and polished, but with a frontier feel, like she had settled the West or wrestled grizzly bears. She was John Muir, but after he had returned to society.

She wanted to reply with something, just a cursory sign of gratitude, to make sure Edith knew the effort was appreciated. But would her heart break again, if after minutes (hours?) of pounding, all she got back was "you're welcome" or nothing at all? Instead of gratitude, she switched to cruelty, which was always more likely to provoke a reply.

"Who is this?" she entered quickly, although she knew exactly who it was, and set the phone back down. She walked away from it. She made a cup of coffee. Was it a lie to ask someone who they were when you knew? She had never deleted Edith's number from her phonebook because doing so would signal a permanent end. Not to the relationship; Paige knew that was over, but to the possibility of Edith in her life. The second, less complicated and ultimately more salient reason was that if Edith ever did call, Paige would want warning, would want to know that it would be Edith's voice awaiting her. It was a lie to pretend she didn't know. It was a lie and it was a malicious one to imply she'd moved on so completely that she wouldn't even know it was Edith if ever she did call. The knot penetrated her limbs, turning her arms heavy, changing them to stone.

In the other room, the phone beeped.

"This is Edith." Edith always texted in full sentences and with proper punctuation.

"Oh. Thank you," she texted back quickly, so that she didn't think about it. It was curt, but not abrupt. Or so she thought. Could Edith still read her tone in a text? It had been over a year. She lit a cigarette. She smoked cigarettes not to calm her nerves but to busy her hands. She wasn't a nervous person but she was fidgety and the ability to put something in her hands in social situations or when bored made her seem less neurotic to the outside world. Cancer was a fair price to pay, she figured. Her mother, best friend, and Edith all disagreed. So did the State of Illinois, at least in restaurants and public places. She stubbed the cigarette out halfway through. It hadn't occupied her fingers well enough that they'd forgotten the text they wanted to send.

Her fingers flew across the keys as she typed "I miss you" to Edith.

The phone beeped almost instantly. It was in response to her first message. "You're welcome." It carried the polite finality Paige knew would come of any detached gratitude. The phone beeped again.

"How are your flaxen locks? I saw someone downtown with your hair last week and wondered."

Paige had naturally blonde hair, the exact shade of which a hairdresser named Jennifer told her was "flaxen" and went on about how it was amazing she still had it, because only 2% of people kept their blonde hair into adulthood, it was rarer than red hair for it to not have gone brown. She had never verified Jennifer's statements or asked her for citations, but ever since, she was deeply worried that her hair would go dark eventually and had confessed this fear, at varying levels of hysteria to Edith, who always laughed, even when Paige wasn't joking, and reminded her that her hair only seemed to get lighter.

Paige relit the cigarette. Her locks were still flaxen. Had she been the person Edith had seen? She was downtown last week, at the art museum, writing a paper for a class she was going to drop because otherwise she was going to fail, not because art history didn't interest her but because she wasn't good at memorizing dates and names. It probably wasn't her, but would it be a sign if it had been? It would be a sign if Edith had seen her at the museum one day and then seen her U-pass taped in the ticketing window at the Sheridan stop, waiting for its owner. The picture on her U-Pass, the student ID picture, was terrible. Her hair didn't look blond at all in that picture, it looked brunette, shining from the camera's flash, but brown nonetheless. She wanted to ask the woman taking the pictures to take another one, but there was a long line of incoming freshman behind her, and Paige had never wanted to be a bother to anyone.

"They're fine," she texted back. "Maybe it was me you saw last week."

It was stupid that she hadn't spoken to Edith in a year, she decided. If Edith still liked her well enough to report the status of her lost transit pass, then that meant that Edith did not hate her. She cheated on Edith. That's why they broke up. She thought briefly there was someone else she could love as much as Edith and it wasn't true and it didn't work out and she was sort of over Edith, but she hadn't met anyone else she loved as much. Being over someone meant it was dormant, not that it was gone. Her knotted stomach and lead arms reminded her.

"It wasn't, I would have known. I saw you once on the #8 bus, back in March," Edith wrote back. There were plenty of reasons to be on the Halsted bus. She didn't remember ever seeing Edith on that bus. She wondered how often Edith saw her without Paige seeing Edith.

"You should have said hello," Paige texted back. It was silly, to be texting like this. She had already wasted half an hour sitting and waiting for replies. It was a foolish text to send too, she decided. She was the cheater; she should be the one to take on the risk of contact. But she hid behind a menu at the noodle shop and faced the window on the bus.

"I don't think so." Edith's response was unreadable.

Paige replied, "Why? Are you in love? Never mind. There are some things I hope I never know." She felt cagey and melodramatic. She wanted to see Edith and touch her and tell her all these foolish things, things she had no right to say because she and Edith were no longer together and that meant Edith didn't have to suffer her tantrums and breakdowns.

"You know who I'm in love with." Edith only hung prepositions when she was upset.

Paige's heart didn't break, not like it had over Edith before, but it was suddenly in more pain than it had ever been in its earlier stages of destruction. Her heart wrenched and heaved in her chest, as if it was trying to put itself back together but knew that it could never happen, because some pieces had gone missing. She was overwhelmed and realized how alone she had been and still was. Desperate to escape the wave of loneliness, she asked the only person to whom she had access to cure her.

"Come over." She wondered if her message sounded pleading as she felt.

Edith didn't reply. Paige knew then that the desperation had been evident; that she had fucked everything up by making it too intense. Edith hadn't hated her so much that she wouldn't do her the favor of reporting her lost pass and she'd repaid that goodwill with more angst and drama and asked things of her that were painful and foolish and unfair.

She lit another cigarette and finished her coffee. She was upstairs brushing her teeth when she heard her phone beep in the living room. She didn't want to leave the safety of the bathroom to read it. She was embarrassed for asking her ex-girlfriend to come over in a moment of weakness. It was awful to be the one who asked and worse to be rejected.

The phone rang.

She raced down the loft stairs to the phone. It was Edith. She silenced it, terrified, but then answered hesitantly. "Hello?"

"I'm downstairs." Edith spoke like the sea, in long, crashing tides, which retreated quickly but built and came back.

"I'll come let you in." She hung up without a reply.

Edith was standing in the entryway, wearing the blue winter vest over a plain brown sweater. The vest matched the blue carpet of the stairs, though the carpet was dirtier. Her hands were in her pocket and her elbows jutted out awkwardly. Edith looked up and saw her. Paige stopped on the third step from the bottom and for a long moment they just stood there, staring.

Paige wanted to touch Edith but she didn't. She understood she should not, that she was the one who had cheated and, even worse, it was her idea to break up. She understood that she had no right to Edith, that she should not flirt with her or obligate her in anyway. She did not have the right to touch her. She did not have the right to speak first or make demands. The only right she still had was to still love Edith and she did. She did.

"I talked the ticketing woman into giving me your pass," Edith said awkwardly and she thrust the white ID card out in front of her, like a knife.

Paige lifted the lead legs down the last three stairs and took the card from her. As she did, their fingers brushed and then they moved to each other and Edith hugged her tightly and Paige ran her hands up and down her back and all over her shoulders and Edith kissed her. She tasted like salt and then nothingness and her always warm hands came up to Paige's hair and they both shivered.

Suddenly, as if teleported, they were in Paige's apartment. They kissed again, three times in the doorway, before finding themselves, sitting, staring at one another on Paige's sofa. Suddenly, Paige felt embarrassed and weak and, from the looks of Edith, she shared this sheepishness.

Edith played with a thread on the ripped knee of her jeans, avoiding Paige for a moment. "Why did you ask me over?"

"I really missed you. I have all year and I thought, well, I didn't think." Paige's voice choked up. "I just wanted. I wanted to see you."

"That's why I came. I've missed you too." Still looking away from each other, their hands found each other's on the couch and squeezed. They were not touching necessarily to touch one another but because touching was important for the sake touching, to give witness to interconnectedness and the human complex. They were touching to retain their humanity in the most awkward and vulnerable situation.

"It's dumb, both of us sitting around missing each other." Paige frowned and tried to sound braver than she felt. "You should have sat by me on the bus. And I should have said hi in Penny's Noodle Shop."

"I saw you that day too." Paige wondered for a moment if Edith was better at spotting her than she was at spotting Edith. What would that mean? That Edith watched for her more closely, that she still loved her? Or simply that Edith was more observant, blessed with better eyesight, keener senses all around. This type of conjecture was not helpful. It made Paige feel overwhelmed, like her mind and heart would simultaneously burst apart.

"Oh, Edie," she exclaimed, knowing she sounded desperate and sad. "Can we skip the part where we talk about what we should have done? Can we just get to the part where I don't have to miss you anymore?" The vulnerability was palpable in Paige's tone, surrounding them both like thick fog.

"I have a girlfriend," Edith said, equally timid. Paige's jealousy flashed back instantly, her feelings about Edith temporarily displaced by an overwhelming dislike of the woman Paige had known must exist, the tall, clever girl who set traps and had the most beautiful laugh. Had she sent Edith? Of course not. Paige tried to push down her bitterness, crumpling her angst like a sheet of paper. It was a noble, if unsuccessful, effort.

"You kissed me downstairs," Paige noted, her tone strangely matter-of-fact. She didn't know why she said it, but it seemed important to establish not only that the kiss had happened, that she had not imagined it, but also that in the sequence of events, it had been Edith who initiated the kiss.

"I did," Edith admitted. She still did not really look at Paige. "I did it because I wanted to kiss you. I still want to kiss you."

"Tell me about your girlfriend."

"No," Edith said. "She's not part of this. If I tell you about her, it'll feel like this is a trick I'm playing on her. This is about you and me."

Edith squeezed Paige's hand. Paige was suddenly overwhelmed with guilt. She wanted Edith, but she didn't want to play a trick on Edith's girlfriend either, no matter how she loathed the woman she'd made up. Maybe it was less that she didn't want the girlfriend to be hurt and more that she knew this upset Edith. She had upset Edith enough. The pit in her stomach and the lead legs returned. They had vanished upon kissing Edith but now they were twice as heavy as before.

"Would you like a cup of coffee?" Paige asked, to change the subject from the girlfriend. "I just made a pot."

"No, thank you," Edith declined politely. "But some water would be wonderful." Paige remembered, irritated with herself, that Edith had stopped drinking caffeinated products during their relationship.

Instead of acknowledging that she had not forgotten after all, that she did remember Edith and her idiosyncrasies, Paige fled to the kitchen, Edith following her. Her kitchen was painted a bright, almost obnoxious shade of orange. Paige had not chosen the color, but she had picked the apartment precisely because of the color. Paige liked the electric shade because everything seemed to pop out against it. Edith was no exception and for a second, Paige was breathless to see Edith—her Edie—actually standing there in her kitchen, so striking and poised.

Paige recovered and went to get a cup from a cabinet. When she turned towards the sink, Edith was standing very close to her, closer than Edith intended. They had both forgotten how to coordinate their body language, to flow in the same space, moving around each other effortlessly. Now Edith clunked near her, too close, but not unwelcome. Paige set the glass on the counter and led Edith pin her in. Their eyes locked.

"I'm glad you still have your vest," Paige remarked, and she reached out to smooth the fabric. "I always picture you in it." Paige's hands did not leave Edith's body, resting palms down on her stomach.

"You look exactly as I remember you," Edith murmured and then she put her hands—those sturdy hands—on Paige's hips and pulled her near. When Paige went to kiss her, Edith moved her head away lazily and instead Paige nuzzled her neck.

"We shouldn't do this," Edith declared softly, shutting her eyes. "Not now, anyway."

"Does it matter?" Paige asked, and then pulled back to look at Edith. "I'm always going to have this 'yes' ready somewhere inside me, even if you don't ask me to be with you right now."

That was enough to dissuade Edith and she kissed Paige, dashing in her urgency. Edith's firmly planted hands began to move, sliding up and down Paige's hips. Paige put her hand on the back of her ex-lover's neck, gripping as if she was afraid Edith would disappear suddenly, as if Edith might not really be there at all.

"Maybe everyone cheats with you, Paige," Edith whispered, resting her forehead on Paige's.

"Maybe that's all I'm good for," Paige replied, in a voice that was filled with surprising self-loathing.

"No," Edith gasped. "That's not what I meant at all."

She kissed Paige again, aware once more that touching was easier, trying to pack into her kiss all her knowledge of Paige's worthiness, all her adoration, to show her she loved her in spite of her complaints. She tried to use the kiss as a conduit by which she could infuse Paige with her own self-confidence. Kisses can do quite a lot, but they are often insufficient for things that need to be shown, spoken aloud, taught, and learned over a period of time. As it was, the kiss only assured Paige that Edith had loved her once and probably still did.

Wordless, they found themselves on Paige's bed, kissing with the same urgency, the same messages that needed to spoken but wouldn't be. Edith's hands were everywhere all at once and Paige was surprisingly still, having decided to allow Edith to control the situation, to arbitrate what was right and wrong. It was a change for them; in the past, it had been Paige, predominantly, who would move the relationship forward. When they would "talk," it would be Paige speaking and Edith listening. Edith was a subpar communicator. She had small faith in words and often felt inarticulate, almost scared, in moments of intimacy. Edith opted for gestures, grand gestures. Surprise parties, unique gifts for which she scoured the city to find, remembering all the important parts of Paige, and showing up, over a year later, bidden by only a text message. What more is there to offer?

As they breathed together, hands still moving, Edith heaved to a stop, steeling her body, wishing to be made of metal. "We shouldn't do this," Edith said, echoing her earlier comment.

Paige started to roll away, but Edith grabbed her and they resumed, as if Edith had never objected. Paige didn't want it to happen this way, but she did want it to happen. She didn't want Edith to be cheating, but she wanted Edith in her bed. She knew this was the only way it could happen; that each touch was asking her to understand that. Each touch was telling her all the things that were inchoate as words. They were showing her who Edith was now, how far they had both traveled in the time apart. They were showing her how she and Edith still fit together, in a way she would never fit with anyone else, showing that, yes, she could fit with another person, but not in this same way. They were asking her to accept this as what it was, to assume nothing more, to simply receive Edith and understand.

Afterward, Paige was so overwhelmed with emotions she could hardly name and feel any of them. Edith was dozing, and if Paige forced every emotion out of her, she could have transported herself in time, back to before. Before she had hurt Edith, before she had let a year fall between them, before Edith had met someone else, before she had lost her U-Pass. She could return to when she and Edith seemed like a perfect inevitability, rather than insurmountable immensity.

Finally, it was Edith, still tired from that area between sleep and waking, who spoke. "I never knew I'd ever be so sad."

Paige turned and nodded. Edith did not need to contextualize the comment. Paige knew. She understood. "Believe me, I'd take it back. I'd take it all back if I could."

What Paige might take back was undefined. To Paige, she supposed it was anything which had ever hurt Edith, anything at all. It wasn't that she would take back this moment or all which had left up to it, but that she wanted to absorb Edith's hurt into her own body, to feel it for her, to spare Edith. She knew she had been its origin and she wished that harshness was still inside her, that it had never left her in favor of Edith.

Slowly, Paige turned to get out of bed and began to gather her clothing, dressing quietly. Wordlessly, Edith did the same. Paige wanted to say more, to find words so compelling they could fix all of this and bring Edith back to her permanently. There were no such words.

"Are you going to tell your girlfriend about this?" Paige wanted to know, sitting on the edge of her bed. Edith joined her. They did not touch but it made no difference, the intimacy such tactile sensations would spark was already present.

"I don't know," Edith admitted, but then she nodded. "Probably." There was a pause and then Edith continued. "If I don't want to lose her, I guess I have to. Secrets always become too much."

"Will she be angry?" Paige's voice was at once kind and bitter. "Will she leave you?" Paige wanted to add 'like you left me' but she did not. They were both cheaters now. It should have made things more equal, closing the gap in their flaws, but it did not.

"I don't know," Edith replied and then she turned and kissed Paige again, suddenly, an impulse. "I hope you lose yourself to someone Paige, but not to me."

Paige wanted to say she had already been lost to Edith so it was too late to make this request, there was no way she pull herself out of Edith and restore her autonomy and availability such that she could will it again to be taken into another. But she could. She knew. She had. Before today, she had been over Edith, in that she no longer felt the daily pangs of emotion and desire for her. Although it was true she still longed and wanted for Edith, there had been other people who had satisfied those deficits temporarily. There would be other people again and inevitably one of them would do so sufficiently and permanently.

Paige kissed Edith in reply, because there was nothing to say about that. She could tell Edith she was replaceable but even if Edith wanted to be, no one wants to hear that. She could tell Edith she would never love anyone else but that wouldn't be true or helpful. The kiss was long and deep and Edith tangled her hands in those flaxen locks and Paige wondered if they would have sex again. They would not, at least, not again that afternoon. The future would bring what the future would bring.

Both knew they were at a precipice, that the words spoken now would define them, perhaps only in the immediate sense but possibly much longer. Possibly forever. They could become friends or they might not speak again. Paige stood and they walked to her kitchen. Grabbing the cup from where it had been abandoned on the counter, Paige finally retrieved Edith that class of water and lit herself a cigarette.

"I wish you didn't smoke," Edith scolded gently, sipping the water.

"Don't talk to me like I'm your girlfriend." The phraseology was harsh but Paige did not mean to be.

"I still wish you didn't smoke," Edith repeated. Paige stared at her for a moment, trying to photograph her. Fully dressed, in her winter vest, Edith seemed invincible again, good-natured in everything, hunched slightly, as if to offset her height in the most congenial way. One hand held the water glass, long fingers wrapped entirely around it, the other hand was shoved in her pocket. Paige wished she would always be there, exactly she was, when she came into this room.

Edith set the glass down and moved to Paige, leaning to kiss her again. Paige turned her head at the last second, allowing Edith to kiss her cheek and brush the furthest side of her mouth. "Will I see you again?" Paige inquired carefully.

"Maybe in the noodle shop," Edith offered.

"I'll always look for you on the #8." They shared a sad smile and moved to the living room, needing to movement to propel their conversation, unable to find inertia in words alone.

"Thank you for this," Paige said and then, as if that were too awkward, grabbed the U-Pass off the table. "For bringing this back to me, I mean."

"Of course," Edith replied graciously. "Thank you for the water."

Inwardly, Paige listed all the things for which she grateful to Edith, all the characteristics she had brought in her, the way she had treated her, the love she had shown. It was no longer the time to say these things. If there had been a moment in which words had been sufficient, it was no longer. What touched now was Edith's hand taking her hand.

Paige considered all things a person could say in a moment life this. She could tell Edith she loved her, deeply, but while that would be true and perhaps very sweet, it was oddly unimportant. Edith knew, Paige supposed, that she loved her. That wouldn't fix anything.

Paige returned from her thoughts to see Edith was crying, suddenly and unexpectedly. She wasn't sobbing, by any means, but tears had gathered at the edges of her eyes and she was swallowing hard.

"I will see you again," Edith promised, her voice choked and ragged.

"I know," Paige affirmed and she did. The future would bring what the future would bring.

With a final kiss, Paige felt Edith's hand slip from her own and then Edith was gone. Paige sunk into her couch and her heart poured out all she knew her heart could pour. Tears found their way down her cheeks. She wasn't sad, necessarily, just… cathartic. She was okay. She would be okay. She flexed the U-pass in her hand. It was now more than a ticket around the city provided by student fees but a contract, one by which she could bind Edith to her, in whatever way that could be.

It was a token Edith had inadvertently brought her, a symbol of forgiveness. It was a reminder that even if Edith belonged to this tall, mythical woman, Edith was still, in some way, hers. It was fucked up for reasons that weren't patriarchal, just human and confusing.

Paige rose from the couch as she had rose from her bed earlier—half-hearted but sincere—and took stock of the events of her morning. She had her U-pass back. Her stomach and limbs had returned to normal, no longer heavy and lead. Her phone was not beeping. Edith belonged to someone else now but she still had her winter vest and was still tall and good-natured. Paige's flaxen locks were still intact and she felt as fickle and passionate as she had ever been.

It seemed bewildering fantastic that, despite all that had transpired, they continued to exist unchanged, exactly as they had before.

A/N: Previously posted under a former profile, moved over here in an attempt to consolidate my more recent writing, with revisions. Reviews are desperately craved.