Chapter 6 – The Names of Things

The morning after the ice rink, Liz woke before her alarm.

That was not normal.

Usually, morning arrived like an administrative punishment: an alarm too sharp, light too grey, the weight of the day already settled on her chest before she had even opened her eyes. But that morning, something pulled her out of sleep gently.

A memory.

Lelliana’s hand.

Her fingers brought to her lips.

The message sent before sleep.

Mine too.

Liz lay still, staring at the ceiling.

She had written that.

She had.

Elizabeth Hartwell, cautious librarian, specialist in social avoidance, professional survivor of awkward conversations, had written to a girl she had known for barely a few weeks that her heart felt strangely optimistic.

It was catastrophic.

It was ridiculous.

It was true.

She turned her head towards the phone on her bedside table. No new message. It was still early. Lelliana was probably asleep after her shift, or perhaps already at war with impossible patients and unworthy coffee machines.

Liz reached for her phone, opened their conversation, and reread the last messages.

Lelliana: I am home. My legs hate me, but my heart seems strangely optimistic. This is worrying.

Liz: Mine too.

She stared at her own reply as though it had been written by someone braver than her.

Then she got up.

In the bathroom, the mirror was waiting for her.

For a long time, Liz had felt as though mirrors were traps. They never gave back only her face. They opened a door onto everything she had lost. Onto Victoria. Onto their resemblance. Onto the violent unfairness of growing older with a face her sister would never have the chance to age into.

That morning, she looked at herself for a long while.

Her brown hair was tangled. Her face was still soft with sleep. Nothing especially poetic.

“Well?” she murmured.

The reflection did not answer.

No Victoria.

No accusation.

No ghost smile.

Only Liz.

Only a nineteen-year-old girl who was afraid of falling in love with another girl and who, in spite of everything, did not want to step back.

She placed both hands on the sink.

“I don’t know how to do this.”

Again, the mirror remained silent.

But for once, the silence did not feel like punishment.

At the library, Margaret understood everything before Liz had even taken off her coat.

It was her most unbearable talent.

“Oh,” she said simply.

Liz froze beside the counter.

“What?”

Margaret looked up from her computer. Her red glasses were perched near the tip of her nose.

“Nothing.”

“You said oh.”

“I am allowed to produce sounds.”

“Not that kind of sound.”

“What kind?”

“The kind that means you know something.”

Margaret smiled.

“Did you sleep?”

Liz hung her coat behind the counter.

“Yes.”

“You lie badly.”

“I am not lying. I slept.”

“How much?”

“That is not the question.”

“So, not much.”

Liz sighed and sat down.

Margaret watched her for a few seconds without speaking. Sometimes she knew how to let silences work in her place, which was worse than questions.

Liz tried to concentrate on the returned books.

A historical novel. Two crime thrillers. A travel guide to Italy with a forgotten bookmark. A poetry collection stained with coffee.

She lasted exactly four minutes.

“I think I like someone,” she blurted.

Margaret did not look surprised.

She only wore that soft expression Liz found dangerous, because it made a person want to continue.

“Lelliana?” she asked.

Liz looked down.

“You have never even met her.”

“No. But your face does, every time you read her messages.”

Liz felt her cheeks grow warm.

“I hate my face.”

“Apparently, it does not hate that girl.”

Liz set a book down on the counter a little too hard.

“I have never been in love with a woman.”

Margaret did not answer immediately. She rose to put away a few papers, then came back to Liz with the calm of someone who had learned long ago that big confidences did not always need big gestures.

“And that frightens you?”

“Yes.”

“Because she is a woman?”

Liz hesitated.

“Yes. No. I don’t know.”

She ran a hand through her hair.

“Because I don’t understand what it says about me. Because I don’t want her to think I am playing with her. Because I don’t want this to be curiosity. Because I don’t want to hurt her.”

“And is it curiosity?”

The question was simple.

Liz wanted to answer quickly.

But she could not.

She thought of the ice rink. Of Lelliana’s hand in hers. Of her laughter when they had fallen on the ice. Of her face under the streetlamp. Of that urge to kiss her, moving through her entire body like a truth too bright to look at directly.

She shook her head.

“No.”

Margaret smiled gently.

“Then start with that.”

“That is not enough.”

“It is often how important things begin.”

Liz looked towards the tall windows of the library. The sky was a pale grey, almost white. Passers-by hurried along the pavement, wrapped in their coats.

“And what if it changes everything?”

“It will change something, of course.”

“Thank you. Very reassuring.”

“But not everything deserves to stay the same, Liz.”

The sentence sank in slowly.

Liz lowered her eyes to her hands.

“Victoria will never know who she would have become.”

Margaret fell silent.

Her sister’s name had the power to slow the air around them.

“Sometimes,” Liz continued, “when something changes in my life, I feel as if I am moving away from her. As if I am taking a road where she cannot follow me.”

Margaret placed a hand on the counter near hers, without touching it.

“Maybe loving someone does not take you away from her. Maybe it only proves you are still here.”

Liz closed her eyes briefly.

She did not want to cry at work.

She had enough dignity to rebuild after the ice rink incident.

Her phone vibrated.

She almost jumped.

Margaret smiled.

“I am going to shelve books at the other end of the room with great discretion.”

“You are going to listen.”

“Obviously.”

She walked away.

Liz picked up her phone.

Lelliana: Morning medical report: my legs are officially in mourning. I hold you responsible.

Liz smiled before she had even decided to reply.

Liz: You chose the ice rink. Shared responsibility.

Lelliana: False. I chose a romantically dangerous experience. The skates chose violence.

Liz went still over one word.

Romantically.

Her heart performed a ridiculous movement.

A second later:

Lelliana: Did I write romantically? My hand slipped. Let us blame fall-related trauma.

Liz looked at the message, then answered slowly.

Liz: I had not yet reported it to the rules committee.

Lelliana: The committee can forget.

Liz took a breath.

She was afraid.

Of course she was afraid.

But she was tired of letting fear choose for her every time.

Liz: Or it can examine the matter tonight over tea.

The answer took longer to come.

One minute.

Two.

Liz had time to imagine everything that could go wrong.

Then the screen lit up.

Lelliana: Your place, or neutral territory to avoid any major diplomatic decision?

Liz felt her stomach tighten.

At her place, there were mirrors.

At her place, there was Victoria.

At her place, there was too much silence.

But maybe there was also room for something else.

Liz: My place. But I don’t have whipped cream.

Lelliana: That is nearly a breakup before the beginning. I will bring biscuits.

Liz reread the sentence.

Before the beginning.

She put the phone down against the table.

Margaret reappeared between two shelves, a book in her hand.

“Well?”

Liz looked up at her.

“She is coming tonight.”

Margaret smiled.

“I will pretend not to be delighted.”

“Pretend better.”

“Impossible.”

For her part, Lelliana spent half the day pretending she was not nervous.

Which, for her, meant talking more.

She talked to patients, colleagues, the coffee machine, a badly filled-out file, and, at one point, to a potted plant in the hospital corridor.

Nadia finally cornered her in the break room.

“You are unbearable today.”

“I am always unbearable. It is my charm.”

“No. Today you are unbearable with built-in panic.”

Lelliana opened a yoghurt.

“Diagnosis not recognised.”

“You are seeing Liz tonight?”

The spoon stopped halfway to her mouth.

“Maybe.”

“So yes.”

“You are worse than Margaret, and you have never even met her.”

Nadia sat down opposite her.

“Are you afraid?”

Lelliana wanted to say no.

She wanted to smile, talk about her aching legs, the ice rink, the weather. She wanted to be light, bright, hard to catch.

But she thought of Liz.

Liz, who did not force.

Liz, who had said, I see her.

Liz, who had admitted keeping her coat because it still smelled like her perfume.

So Lelliana set down her spoon.

“Yes.”

Nadia softened.

“Of what?”

Lelliana looked at her hands.

Her nails were painted a dark red, chipped slightly at the tips. She had always liked visible details. Colours. Jewellery. Clothes people noticed before they asked questions.

“That she will realise I am not as fun up close,” she said.

Nadia did not laugh.

“Lelli…”

“People like the idea of me. The funny girl. The sexy girl. The girl who dares. The girl you invite when you want noise at a party. But when it becomes real, when someone has to deal with my silences, my bad memories, my stupid reactions to certain sentences, the nights when I cannot bear to be touched…”

She stopped.

Her throat had tightened.

“I don’t want to become an experiment for her. A parenthesis. Her what if I liked women? before she goes back to a simpler life.”

Nadia gently set her cup on the table.

“Do you think she would do that?”

Lelliana shook her head.

“No.”

That was exactly the problem.

She did not believe Liz was capable of cruelty.

But she knew people could hurt without meaning to. Out of fear. Confusion. Lack of courage. The desire to return to what they understood.

“She has never been with a woman,” she added.

“Neither have you.”

“For me, it is different.”

“Why?”

Lelliana opened her mouth.

Closed it again.

Nadia waited.

At last Lelliana breathed:

“Because people already expect my life to be complicated.”

Nadia looked at her sadly.

“That is not a reason to accept being loved less well.”

The words struck Lelliana harder than she wanted them to.

“I don’t know if she loves me.”

“Maybe not yet.”

“Thank you. What support.”

“But she chooses you, doesn’t she?”

Lelliana thought of the messages. The restaurant. The coat. The hand held out in the alley after the ice rink. Liz saying she did not want to lose her when she had barely even found her.

“Yes,” she murmured.

Nadia smiled.

“Then give her the chance to keep doing that.”

Lelliana looked down at her yoghurt.

“You make it sound almost simple.”

“No. I make it possible. That is not the same thing.”

At half past seven, Lelliana stood outside Liz’s building with a packet of biscuits, a bottle of apple juice, and a very strong desire to take a bus in the opposite direction.

The building was old, wedged between a launderette and a small closed flower shop. The second-floor windows glowed softly in the night. Lelliana checked her phone.

Liz: Second floor, door on the left. The intercom works once in three attempts. Insult it if necessary.

Lelliana smiled despite her nerves.

She pressed the button.

Nothing.

She pressed again.

A crackle.

“Elizabeth?” she asked.

A metallic noise answered.

Then Liz’s voice, distorted:

“Yes?”

“Your intercom deserves excommunication.”

“I warned you.”

The door opened.

Lelliana climbed the stairs slowly, as if each step required a decision. She checked her hair in the black screen of her phone, found herself ridiculous, put the phone away, and knocked.

Liz opened almost at once.

She was wearing an oversized black sweater, dark jeans, her hair loose. No visible makeup. No effort to appear like anyone other than herself.

It disarmed Lelliana.

“Hi,” Liz said.

“Hi.”

The silence that followed was tiny, but full.

Liz looked at the packet in her hands.

“You brought biscuits.”

“As announced. I respect treaties.”

“Come in.”

Liz’s flat was small, but warm in its own way. Books everywhere, obviously. On shelves, on the coffee table, beside the sofa, on a chair that had visibly given up on its original function. A lamp gave the living room a soft glow. A grey blanket was folded over the sofa. There were few decorations, but every object seemed chosen to stay for a long time.

Lelliana noticed the mirror near the entrance.

Old, simple, hung on the wall.

She said nothing.

Liz followed her gaze.

“It has been there since I moved in.”

“Do you want me to insult it as well?”

Liz gave a small smile.

“Not yet.”

They made tea in a narrow kitchen. Or rather, Liz made tea while Lelliana commented on everything.

“Do you organise your mugs by size?”

“Yes.”

“That is alarming.”

“It is rational.”

“Both can be true.”

“You are stealing my lines.”

“I am integrating into your environment.”

Liz smiled as she poured the hot water.

Lelliana leaned against the counter, arms crossed.

The quiet of the flat made her nervous. Here, there was no crowd to entertain, no table to make laugh, no music loud enough to hide the silences. Only Liz. Her precise gestures. Her focused profile. The way she set the spoon down without a sound.

“You are different at home,” Lelliana said.

Liz turned her head slightly.

“How?”

“Less guarded.”

She thought about it.

“Or maybe you hide it better.”

Liz handed her a cup.

“Maybe both.”

They sat on the sofa at a reasonable distance.

Too reasonable.

The packet of biscuits between them looked like a diplomatic border.

For a while, they talked normally. About work. Nadia. Margaret. The ice rink, which, according to Lelliana, deserved an official complaint for crimes against human dignity. Liz laughed more easily than usual. Lelliana noticed each time, the way you notice a light turning on in a house you thought was empty.

Then the silence arrived.

Not brutally.

Inevitably.

Liz put her cup on the coffee table.

“We should talk about the thing we are not naming.”

Lelliana swallowed her tea the wrong way.

“I preferred it when you threatened readers.”

“So did I.”

“Can we go back to the biscuits?”

“Lelliana.”

She closed her eyes.

“When you say my name like that, I feel as if I have been summoned by a very elegant court.”

“I am nervous too.”

Lelliana opened her eyes.

Liz was looking at her without a mask.

Perhaps that was what made her so hard to flee.

“All right,” Lelliana said. “Let’s talk.”

Liz took a breath.

“I have never felt this for a woman before.”

Lelliana lowered her eyes to her hands.

There it was.

The sentence she had been expecting.

The sentence she had feared.

Liz continued quickly, as if afraid of being misunderstood.

“But I don’t think it is curiosity. I don’t think it is only because you were there during difficult moments. I know I don’t understand everything. I don’t know what word to use. I don’t know if it makes me… something different from what I thought I was.”

She gave a short, joyless laugh.

“But I know I want to see you. That I think about you. That I am afraid of hurting you, and that frightens me even more because it means you already matter so much.”

Lelliana did not move.

Her heart was beating in her throat.

“I don’t want to be your experiment,” she said softly.

Liz went pale.

“You are not.”

“I know you would not want to hurt me.”

“But?”

Lelliana looked up.

“But sometimes people discover something through you and leave you with the consequences.”

Liz received the sentence without defending herself.

That mattered.

Lelliana saw it.

She would have hated it if Liz had protested too fast, promised too loudly. Instead, Liz stayed silent and let the words exist.

Then she said:

“I cannot promise I will never be afraid.”

Lelliana felt her stomach knot.

Liz continued:

“But I can promise that I will not treat you like a detour. And that if I am lost, I will tell you instead of disappearing.”

It was smaller than a declaration.

Less beautiful than an eternal promise.

But it was solid.

Lelliana felt her eyes sting.

“Did you prepare that sentence?”

“A little.”

“That is very you.”

“Is that criticism?”

“No.”

A smile trembled on Lelliana’s lips.

“It is reassuring.”

Liz relaxed only slightly.

“And you?”

“Me?”

“What are you afraid of?”

Lelliana looked at the mirror near the entrance.

Her own reflection appeared there at an angle: red hair, tense shoulders, absent smile.

“That you will really see me and leave.”

Liz shook her head gently.

“I already see you a little.”

“Exactly.”

Liz did not answer at once.

Then she stood.

Lelliana watched her, surprised, as she went to the entrance. Liz stopped in front of the mirror.

“Come here.”

Lelliana hesitated.

Then she set down her cup and joined her.

They stood side by side in front of the mirror.

Two reflections.

The brunette in a black sweater, pale, serious, her eyes full of ghosts.

The redhead in a light coat, luminous in spite of herself, with cracks she could no longer entirely cover with makeup.

Liz looked at their reflections rather than at Lelliana directly.

“For years, she was the only thing I saw in there.”

Lelliana remained silent.

“Victoria. Or her absence. Or my fault. I don’t know. But tonight, I see both of us.”

Lelliana felt her breath catch.

At last, Liz turned her head towards her.

“I am not leaving because I see you,” she said. “I think that is why I am staying.”

Lelliana closed her eyes for a second.

That sentence, she did not know where to put it.

In her chest, perhaps.

Beside the things that frightened her and warmed her at the same time.

When she opened her eyes, Liz was still there.

Very close.

Not close enough to touch.

Close enough for the distance between them to become almost visible.

“Can I hold your hand?” Liz asked.

Lelliana gave a tiny smile.

“Yes.”

Liz took her hand.

The gesture had become familiar, but not ordinary. Never ordinary. Not with them. Each time, it carried the memory of everything no one had asked them before. Each time, it repaired a small thing without pretending to heal the rest.

Lelliana looked down at their linked fingers.

“Can I say something very frightening?”

“Yes.”

“I think I want you to kiss me.”

The silence seemed to swallow the whole room.

Liz stopped moving.

Lelliana panicked immediately.

“But not now if you don’t want to. Or ever. I mean, not ever if you do want to, but not under pressure. I am not officially asking. Well, I am a little, but in a non-binding way. I am going to throw myself out of the window.”

Liz blinked.

Then she laughed.

A soft, surprised, tender laugh.

“You talk a lot when you panic.”

“I talk a lot all the time. This is an advanced performance.”

Liz stepped closer.

Lelliana stopped talking.

“Me too,” Liz said.

“You want to throw yourself out of the window?”

“No.”

Her gaze dropped very briefly to Lelliana’s mouth.

“I want to kiss you.”

Lelliana felt her heart strike against her ribs.

“All right.”

Liz did not move at once.

“I want to be sure.”

“I am sure I want it.”

“And if it frightens you afterwards?”

Lelliana gave a sad smile.

“Maybe it will frighten me. But not because it is you.”

Liz nodded slowly.

“All right.”

She lifted one hand, very gently, and placed it against Lelliana’s cheek.

The contact was light.

A question.

Lelliana closed her eyes despite herself.

No one had ever touched her like that.

Or rather, yes. People had touched her. Too much. Badly. Without care. With desire, with impatience, with possessiveness, with that certainty that her body was an answer already available.

But Liz’s hand took nothing.

It waited.

Lelliana opened her eyes again.

“You can,” she whispered.

So Liz kissed her.

It was awkward.

Very soft.

Almost too brief.

Their lips met as if they were afraid of breaking something. Liz’s fingers trembled against her cheek. Lelliana was gripping her hand so tightly that she had to make herself loosen her hold.

They parted after a second.

Not because either of them wanted to stop.

Because they needed to breathe.

They looked at each other with an almost comic astonishment.

“Oh,” Lelliana breathed.

Liz let out a small nervous laugh.

“Is that all you have to say?”

“My brain has just left my body. Give it time to come back.”

Liz smiled.

That trembling smile gave Lelliana the courage to move closer in turn.

“Again?” she asked.

Liz answered without words.

She nodded.

The second kiss was less hesitant.

Not less tender.

Only a little more certain.

Lelliana placed a hand on Liz’s waist, very lightly, ready to remove it at the smallest sign. Liz stepped closer instead of pulling away. Their bodies brushed, cautious, astonished, as though they were learning a language whose music they already knew without ever having spoken it.

When they parted, Liz leaned her forehead against Lelliana’s.

They stayed like that, eyes closed.

“I am still here,” Liz whispered.

Lelliana felt her eyes fill with tears.

“Me too.”

The sentence sounded simple.

For them, it was not.

They returned to the sofa and sat closer this time. Not tangled together, not rushing. Simply side by side, shoulder against shoulder, their hands still linked on the blanket.

The tea had gone cold.

The biscuits were half forgotten.

At last Lelliana laughed softly.

“So the rules committee needs to add an entire chapter.”

Liz turned her head towards her.

“About kisses?”

“About officially non-accidental kisses between unlikely allies.”

“The term is becoming complicated.”

“Our situation is complicated.”

Liz looked at their hands.

“What do you want us to call it?”

Lelliana’s smile faded a little.

“I don’t know.”

“Neither do I.”

“Do we have to know tonight?”

Liz thought about it.

She thought of the mirror.

Of Victoria.

Of fear.

Of Lelliana’s hand in hers.

“No.”

Lelliana relaxed.

“Then temporary rule: we do not force the names of things before the things themselves know what they are.”

Liz smiled.

“That is very long for a rule.”

“I am poetic under pressure.”

“Accepted.”

A soft silence settled.

Lelliana rested her head on Liz’s shoulder with careful slowness, giving the other girl time to refuse. Liz did not refuse. She went rigid at first from surprise, then softened. Her thumb brushed once over Lelliana’s fingers.

Only once.

Enough.

“Liz?”

“Yes?”

“I don’t want to go too fast.”

“Neither do I.”

“But I don’t want to pretend this is nothing.”

Liz turned her head slightly, her cheek brushing Lelliana’s red hair.

“Neither do I.”

Lelliana closed her eyes.

She was still afraid.

Of course.

But it was a different fear from the ones that made her run. It was not the fear of being trapped. It was the fear of opening a window in a room that had been closed for too long and not knowing what to do with the air.

Later, when Lelliana had to leave, they stood for a while at the door, unable to say goodbye.

Apparently, that had become a tradition.

“I work early tomorrow,” Lelliana said.

“I know.”

“So I have to go.”

“Yes.”

Neither of them moved.

Lelliana smiled.

“You could help me by being less pretty in your own flat.”

Liz blushed.

“Don’t talk nonsense.”

“I am very serious.”

“That is worrying.”

“Everything is worrying tonight.”

Liz lowered her eyes, then looked up again.

“Can I kiss you before you go?”

Lelliana felt her chest tighten.

The question.

Again.

Always that question, which made the gesture more beautiful than the gesture itself.

“Yes.”

The kiss was short.

A goodbye.

A discreet promise.

When Lelliana finally went down the stairs, Liz stayed on the threshold until she heard the building door close.

Then she went back into the flat.

The hallway mirror reflected her face.

Her lips a little reddened.

Her eyes bright.

Her incredulous smile.

For a second, her reflection seemed almost like a stranger. Not because it looked like Victoria. Because it looked like a version of Liz who had survived something and had just begun something else.

She moved closer.

“I kissed her,” she whispered.

The silence did not protest.

It did not accuse her.

It did not remind her of the bridge.

Liz placed her fingers on the cold glass.

“And I am still here.”

Outside, London murmured softly.

In her bag, on the table, her phone vibrated.

Liz almost rushed to it, then stopped herself to recover a minimum of dignity before picking it up.

Lelliana: I am downstairs. I have just realised I forgot the biscuits.

Liz smiled.

Liz: Do you want to come back up?

Three little dots appeared.

Disappeared.

Appeared again.

Lelliana: Dangerous temptation. Keep them hostage. That will give me an official excuse to come back.

Liz looked at the packet on the coffee table.

Then she replied:

Liz: Excuse accepted.

The answer arrived a few seconds later.

Lelliana: Good night, Elizabeth.

Liz placed a hand over her heart, as if she could calm the new thing beating there too hard.

Liz: Good night, Lelliana.

She remained in the living room for a long time after that, the lights low, the tea cold, the biscuits abandoned between two cups.

The names of things would come later.

For now, there had been a kiss.

There had been a question before it.

There had been an answer.

And that was enough to begin.