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“I’m—” she says, but she doesn’t get to finish the sentence, because August has thrown her arms around her waist and crashed into her chest. Her arms close around August’s neck, tight and fierce, and August breathes in the smell of her, sweet and warm and faintly, under it all, something a little strange and singed.
All those months. All the trips up and down the line. All the songs on the radio. All of it, all the work, all the trying and scraping and tearing at the seams of what she can see, all for this. All for her arms wrapped around Jane in a diner on a Saturday afternoon.
Her girl. She came back.
17
Photo from the archives of New York Magazine, from a photo series on Brooklyn diners, dated August 2, 1976
[Photo depicts a plate of pancakes with a side of bacon in the hands of a waitress, illuminated by the blue and pink glow of the neon lights that wrap the underside of the bar at Pancake Billy’s House of Pancakes. Though the waitress’s face is out of frame, several tattoos are visible on her left arm: an anchor, Chinese characters, a red bird.]
August takes her home.
The sky splits open the second they step out of Billy’s, but Jane just turns to her under the onslaught of rain and smiles. Jane in the rain. That’s something new.
“Which way we goin’, angel?” she asks, raindrops sliding into her mouth.
August blinks water out of her eyes. “I don’t guess you wanna take the subway?”
“Fuck you,” she says, and she laughs.
August grabs her hand, and they throw themselves into the back of a cab.
As soon as the door slams shut, she’s in Jane’s lap, swinging a leg over to straddle her hips, and she can’t stop, not when she thought she was never going to see Jane again. Jane’s fingers dig into her waist, and hers twist into Jane’s hair, and they kiss hard enough that the days they missed all fold together like a map, like the pages of a notebook shut, like it was no time at all.
Jane’s mouth falls open, and August chases after it. She skims that soft bottom lip with her teeth and finds her tongue, and Jane makes a low, hurt sound and holds her tighter.
The first time Jane kissed her for real, it felt like a warning. This time, it’s a promise. It’s a sigh of relief in the back of her throat. It’s a string of fate August never thought she’d believe in, pulling tight.
“You wanna give me an address or what?” the driver says from the front seat, sounding absolutely bored.
Jane laughs, wide and bright, right up against August’s mouth, and August leans back to say, “Parkside and Flatbush.”
On the curb outside the Popeyes, August drops her keys, and a moving truck trundles through a deep puddle of sludge on the street and drenches them both.
“Fuck,” August says, taking her dirty glasses off and plucking her keys out of the gutter. “I pictured this a lot more cinematic.”
She turns to Jane, dripping and soaked through and slightly blurry, covered in mud and grinning, still there. Just continuing to be there, somehow, despite every goddamn law of the universe saying she shouldn’t be.
“I don’t know,” Jane says, reaching out to thumb at the mascara raccooning under August’s eyes. “I think you look great.”
August breathes out a delirious laugh, and at the top of the stairs, she pushes Jane through the front door of the apartment.
“Shower,” August says, “I’m covered in street juice.”
“So sexy,” Jane teases, but she doesn’t argue.
They stumble toward the bathroom, leaving a trail of shoes and wet clothes. August turns on the faucet—somehow, miraculously, for the first time since she moved in, the water is hot.
Jane pins her to the bathroom sink and kisses her, and when August is finally down to only her wet bra and underwear, she opens her eyes.
She keeps having these moments, where she has to stare at Jane, like if she looks away for too long, she’ll disappear. But here she is, standing in August’s bathroom, hair damp and sticking out in every direction from where August has been tugging at it, in a black bra and briefs. There are her hipbones, and her bare thighs, and the rest of her tattoos—the animals up and down her sides.
August reaches down and trails her fingers over the snake’s tongue just below Jane’s waist. Jane shivers.
“You’re here,” August says.
“I’m here,” Jane confirms.
