A THING OF BEAUTY
Brindle Davis ducked her head and shut her eyes, feeling far too large for the café booth. She did not want to be doing this right now. There was nothing more humiliating than having an intimately awkward argument with her girlfriend in public.
“Well?” Bloom Fairfield scooted forward on the pleather seat to press against the table, expectantly. “Talk to me.”
Brindle shrugged, her hulking shoulders tense. “I don’t know what to say.” Bloom was dumping their most personal and private issues out on the lacquered table for everyone to see; frankly, what Brindle wanted to tell her was to stop.
At least they were at Faere Trade, a magical café that was used to seeing far stranger things than a couple bickering. Not that that made it much easier for Brindle.
Bloom huffed. “Could you please look at me, while we talk?”
Brindle couldn’t. She wished she could. But she struggled to lift her head, when she swore she could feel the weight of other people’s stares. She tried to tell herself that no one was looking at them, but it felt as if everyone was. Bloom’s gaze alone made Brindle’s shoulders slump in a useless effort to make her massive body small. As someone who did not like to be stared at, Brindle wanted to shrink and disappear into the booth’s creaking cushions.
“Brin?”
Shaking her head in a silent shush, Brindle coughed and sat up straighter when she saw the waitress approach with their drinks. Part of her was grateful for the small reprieve. But, as the waitress set their drinks in front of them, Brindle’s gaze caught on the café’s window and her own reflection haunting like a specter there. Not her reflection. Her glamour. The magically applied face she presented to the world. Leaning back, she sat on her large, awkward hands and stared at the strange, petite woman in the window.
Most women — most people — she knew hated their reflections, wishing they could change this and that about their appearance. Brindle wanted nothing more than to look like the rather ordinary-looking brunette she saw staring back at her.
But, staring down at her large, fur-covered body, Brindle knew no amount of magic could do that.
———
Bloom looked at Brindle, who sat across from her in the booth, fiddling awkwardly with the straw in her large, mostly undrunk root beer float. “Well, let’s start with, what do you mean, I’m too beautiful?”
Brindle shook her head. “You know exactly what I mean.” Bloom tried to meet Brindle’s gaze but, no matter how she tried, the other woman wouldn’t. “Look at you.” Brindle shrugged. “Then look at me. You want to know why I don’t really take our relationship seriously?” Brindle pushed back in the booth, the pleather squeaking under her sliding weight. “Well, that’s why.”
Bloom was beautiful.
She’d grown up knowing this. Often — especially in that awkward transition between girl and woman — had cursed it, knowing she had this odd and seemingly irrational power but had no idea how to use it, much less to have it not used against her.
She remembered a boy her age in town who’d professed his love for her every day for a year. He would go on and on about the brilliance of her eyes and the silk of her hair. He’d tell her that her skin was like cream touched by the sweetest honey and her mouth like the lush petals of a rose.
At first, it’d been flattering to go from the knock-kneed girl the boys teased to a woman adored. It’d even been a little bit fun. She’d asked him for favors and gifts, which he would eagerly give. He would do anything she asked, except accept that she didn’t return his affection.
It’d quickly become less fun, when he began to demand her attention and to jealously snap at anyone who threatened to take it from him. Without warning, it’d felt less like he appreciated her beauty and more like he’d assumed he possessed it. Not even her, he hadn’t wanted the whole of her. Just it. That beauty. Even now, she couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment his attention had stopped being flattering and began frightening her, all she knew was that it had.
In the end, it’d taken a pretty ugly act involving his best friend, a kiss, and a black eye to convince him that she wasn’t the girl for him after all. It was a lesson Bloom would never forget. For all the many gifts and privileges having a pretty face provided, there were always drawbacks.
She just never thought this would be one of them.
Bloom shook her head. She was so sick of this argument. “I don’t care what you look like!” She looked at her partner.
No, not her partner, not the real, non-glamoured, no-spells Brindle.
Bloom’s lips thinned at the pretty, but not-too-pretty brunette sitting across from her. She stared into her brown eyes, hating that those weren’t Brindle’s real eyes. Wasn’t even where her face was. She stared at the small woman’s frame sitting across from her, knowing that her girlfriend’s body looked nothing like her glamour’s. Bloom shook her head.
It was all a lie. And Bloom hated it. She didn’t get what the big deal was.
Okay, well, that was a lie.
She did know.
Without her glamour, even among the magical community, Brindle always attracted stares. Bloom knew that the startled gasps and instinctive recoils that were most people’s first reaction tolled on Brindle’s soul. Brindle was well-aware that people took one look at her and saw the embodiment of every monster, every nightmare, every demon, they feared.
Bloom watched the avatar’s head shake. “Do you have any idea how much magic it takes to glamour myself every morning, just so I can walk down the street without being stared at? Which is still better than when I was young and we couldn’t afford to pay for the spells, making it so I couldn’t leave the house at all. I’ve lived my entire life terrified that someone might touch me and discover my secret, since glamours might change how I look but not what I am.”
Bloom knew all that already. They’d talked about it. But damnit! “I just want to be able to hold my partner’s hand!”
Brindle’s eyes rolled. “That’s not all you want.”
Bloom sighed. She wasn’t wrong. “So I want to be able to kiss you and hold you and, yes, make love to you.” Bloom already knew what Brindle really looked like — though getting her to drop the glamour had taken months of building trust too — how could touching change anything? Bloom already knew Brindle’s secret; she longed for a different kind of discovery. “Is that so wrong?”
Arms crossed, Brindle made a disgruntled sound. “We talked about this, when we first started dating. I told you that touch is hard for me.”
Bloom sighed and reached out her hand to Brindle. “I really like you, so hard I can handle.” But they’d been dating for seven months now with nearly no physical contact. “But impossible… I don’t know if I can do that.”
Brindle’s eyes widened, even through her glamour, hurt shone clear in the brown depths. She stared at Bloom’s outstretched hand with distrust. “Are you breaking up with me?”
Bloom’s jaw tightened. “No.” That wasn’t what she wanted. But… “Even if we go slowly — as slowly as you want — I just need to know that it’s possible.” That, together, they’d get there. Someday. “I just need to know that there’s reason to hope.”
Brow furrowed and gaze lowered, Brindle nodded. “I’m good with hope.” The sounds of the café, the hum of tens of different conversations and the buzz of the espresso machine and the clink of cups and plates, filled the space between them. Brindle sighed. “But I don’t know if I can guarantee anything.”
Bloom hated the despondent tone in Brindle’s voice. To the point where she almost wanted to just laugh and tell her to forget the whole thing. To assure her partner that what they had was enough for her.
But it wasn’t.
She wished it was.
But she knew that, if she put her own needs aside for Brindle’s sake, she’d start resenting it. Bloom looked around, seeing the other couples there, some cuddling in booths or kissing over coffees. She wanted that. For herself. For Brindle.
She knew that Brindle couldn’t understand — couldn’t even imagine — why anyone would want to touch, to love, her body.
But, when Bloom closed her eyes at night, that was all she thought about. How would their bodies fit together? What would Brindle’s mouth on hers feel like, taste like? What would it be like to make love? Could they even do that? She wanted to know. However long it took, she could wait.
But, if she could never know, if it ultimately wasn’t something Brindle ever wanted, Bloom knew it would be better for her to walk away now. Before she fell too deep. Felt too much.
Before it would break her heart to leave.
If it wouldn’t already.
Bloom instinctively touched her chest as if anticipating that pain.
She shook her head. Maybe this would end and she’d be left with nothing but regret and loneliness. Nothing was guaranteed in life, not even in magical ones. But they weren’t done yet.
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