Read Color Your World :: Chapter 8 - Kieran

The problem of colors was manifold. Kieran had been squinting at them for such a long time and with such imagination that seeing them was akin to being blinded. Like staring at a dormant light bulb when somebody flipped the switch. When she saw the filling of her boysenbery tart turn from a medium-deep pinkish-grey to a sumptuous aubergine (Hex code #40080A; an over-ripe cherry before the bite), she had to close her eyes. The same as bleeding--as the body knows its own blood, the soul knows its own colors and Kieran had got them in her eyes.

God, help me.

She was in way over her head.

She had just gotten the hang of not being a colossal disaster, what was she meant to do with somebody else’s heart? She stared at the bustling Manhattan street outside the cafe. So many people, each a combination of colors and patterns, all so alive. One of them was for her. She still found it hard to believe. I have a life a million lesbians would kill for. Her lonely, cautiously optimistic heart throbbed. How do I make a stranger love me? Can I? What if she never does?

Sonny brought her an extra sweet green tea frappe, chilled, just before Kieran’s head came near to flying off from anxiety. She had her face in her hands until Sonny’s hand came to rest on her shoulder. They’d been friends since Kieran had come to New York and she was never more grateful to have held on to her than she was today.

“How goes the grind, girly?”

“Shit,” she replied succinctly. “How goes the lunch hour?”

“Shit as well. I’ll bring you an egg and dill sandwich.”

Kieran really didn’t need another bite. She’d been mainlining sumptuous desserts all morning to sate her sweet tooth and distract her from Googling cheap flights to Knoxville, Tennessee. Mature women did not drop everything to fly across the country on the off chance a random woman they’d never had a full-length conversation with might not mind being her soulmate. Soul bonds were so much more complicated than bringing each other’s colors to life. Romantic comedies made it seem simple. You touch someone, you talk to them in the elevator, share a cab, collide on the sidewalk and here’s the rest of your life begun. Life wasn’t that way. Sometimes you met a hundred people better suited to you than the one who makes the sun yellow in your sky; it was down to every person to choose to let that bond guide them or to throw it away. Kieran didn’t know what she was going to do. So she did her usual: she drank her frappe like it was the last in existence. Marvelous as expected.

“Have I told you lately that I love you? Because I really, really do.”

Sonny snorted. She got a hundred declarations of love a day; her deserts and frosty beverages were that good. “Don’t let the missus hear you say that. You know she likes to scrap.” Esme was from Queens and took no shit--unless it was coming from Sonny. She had a soft spot for her soulmate you could see from space.

“I could take her.”

Kieran would be dead in minutes.

“In your dreams.”

“And only there!” She slurped deep of mint green tea frappuccino (Hex #98ff98; like pea soup but less depressing). It was chilly, smooth, and sweet as she liked. “Thanks, Sonny. You’re a star.”

“The brightest of them and all, don’t you forget it.”

Kieran successfully put the future out of her mind to focus on revisions. Draft two was coming much clearer than the first. She was making more room for advice and anecdotes compared to her previous efforts, which were largely picture-oriented how-tos. She could do more than that nowadays.

She was just fiddling around with the introduction to her chapter on mending your own clothes when an untimely shadow blocked the ray of sunshine that had been warming her since she arrived. Not another fan. She got a few of them just about every time she left home. She didn’t mind usually, but she usually wasn’t on a deadline. They pay you, spoke her better angels. Just smile and sign their book.

Kieran pasted a genial look on her face and looked up, and right into the face of the girl she’d been thinking of for hours.

BumblebeeLovely waved at her from three feet away. “Uh, hey.”

Now that the reality of color was staring her in the face, Kieran decided that yellow was her favorite. Lemon yellow and freckle umber. Green and blue were plummeting down the list too quick to catch. She was liable to never notice them again.

“Hey.”

And so Kieran Dillahunt met Jamie Lovely face to face for the first time. They’d spent years playing internet touch tag and here they were, soulmates. In retrospect, how could they have been anything else?

Kieran saw Jamie off at the airport the next day with a kiss that made a couple of idiots dressed like overpaid, underfucked bankers catcall them from across the terminal. The two women had thrown up middle fingers and continued to kiss until the final boarding call for Jamie’s flight back to Tennessee. However Kieran might need her soulmate, the Bookstop needed its owner.

“Call me?”

Jamie smiled, slow and gorgeous and a little shyer than she seemed online. “As soon as I land.” She gave Kieran a peck on the lips that smeared what was left of her hastily-applied lip color. So be it. Kieran would go on with no lippie at all if she was assured there’d be endless kisses from freckled women with ridiculously curly hair in her future.

The boarding agent cleared his throat loudly at the gate when Kieran went in for a last kiss. Yeah, all right, we hear you. She kissed Jamie on the tip of the nose.

“Catch your flight, love. It won’t do having you stranded here with me. I might not give you back.”

Jamie gave her the tightest warmest hug Kieran had gotten since she last visited home. She smelled of boysenberry and almond oil. Kieran committed her scent to memory and vowed never to forget this day. Jamie pulled back to stare at her. Jamie couldn’t seem to stop looking at her, like she was the one who was stunned to have Kieran want her back instead of it being the other way ’round.

“You have the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen,” Jamie said. Kieran gaped.

“I was just about to say that to you.”

“Small world.”

They shared a last kiss and Jamie backed away slowly, waving, until she disappeared into the breezeway leading to her plane.

Kieran missed her immediately. I used to be fine on my own. She smiled a little at her ensuing melancholy. I was never fine, but I was okay. I can be okay again. It won’t be long.

She lingered exactly long enough to see Jamie’s plane take off safely, and then she hot-footed it to the nearest exit. It had taken a little greasing of the wheels to get her this far without a boarding pass and she didn’t feel like spending another ten hours in the care of Homeland Security explaining her unauthorized presence here.

It took some doing and another $50, but she made it out of the airport as easily as she’d gotten in.

Ziggy was already at her place when she arrived bearing snacks and cappuccinos made to order.

“I’ve been thinking,” Ziggy began after spending an inordinate amount of time staring out Kieran’s picture windows. “I think I wanna find her again.”

“Who her? Rude ex her or cutie at Whole Foods her?”

Ziggy swiped a bit of whipped cream off at the top of her cappuccino and flicked it at Kieran’s face. She stuck out her tongue in retaliation.

“Anyway, you know who I mean: practically perfect in every way. Took my number and never called.”

Kieran pulled a face like she’d sucked on a lemon.

“Don’t look like that. I know it’s stupid. She was mine and all, but maybe I wasn’t hers.”

“Stop making excuses, Z. You know you were. Or, hell, at least there’s a good chance.” She sighed, words failing her. “Maybe you were. Would you wanna try again if you could?”

“She was sweeter than heaven and hotter than hell. God, yes, I’d love to see her again, even from a distance.”

“We’re not even getting into you quoting song lyrics about your soulmate. That’s just...beyond, babes. Thirsty much?”

Ziggy flapped a hand at her. “Leave me alone. She gave me reds and oranges and pinks. Do you know what sunset was like for me before that? Nothing but a blank sky filled with clouds. She’s special.” Ziggy still swooned in memory of the girl who’d taught her the value of a fancy colored diamond and then fucked off to Nowheresville after a kiss. Soulmates who bolted--runners they called them--just didn’t want to be in love. You couldn’t blame them, love was scary, but you could hate them just a little on your best friend’s behalf.

“On that sweet-” She wrinkled her nose. “-note, I’m knocking off to Tennessee for a bit. Gotta meet some beautiful people and sign some books.”

Ziggy shuttered her misery to consult Google Calendar. Kieran thought that app might actually be her friend’s soulmate, not that she’d ever say that to her.

“I didn’t arrange a stop there,” she said once she’d checked Kieran’s appearance schedule for the coming month.

“It’s a personal favour.”

Ziggy powered off her screen. “Don’t tell me, there’s a girl involved.”

How does she sound like my mother when she says that? Am I not allowed to look at a girl? Once her mother had accepted that Kieran was all about girls in year 7, she started treating Kieran the same as she treated Kieran’s brothers dating the local beauties: ‘Don’t go getting yourself in any trouble, ye hear me?’ Never mind that Kieran at least wouldn’t be getting anybody pregnant. Mama Dillahunt didn’t want a lick of bedlam in her house. What would the neighbors think?

“You don’t get to be smug about it because you happen to be right.”

“Oh ho ho, you are the last girl to talk smug. I want her name, her number, and the URL to her LinkedIn profile.”

Kieran’s dark brows arched. “LinkedIn? Do you want to do a background check on her or ask her to endorse your PowerPoint skills?”

“If you get married, definitely both.”

“Who said anything about marriage?”

“I’m your best friend. Assume I know the ‘Kieran in Love’ look at 100 yards. You were going out of your head yesterday. You’re perfect today.” Ziggy narrowed her eyes at Kieran’s elated grin. “She found you, didn’t she?”

“She found me.”

“Right, that’s it, I’m coming with you.” She plucked her iPhone from the end table to book a flight.

“You have work to do.”

“Lucky break, babe. You’re my work.”

“You have other clients.”

“Email exists. There are these things called phones.” She waved her red Otterbox-encased mobile for Kieran’s perusal. “I’m going with you. Stop trying to talk me out of it.”

“I just don’t want you to waste your time.”

“You just don’t want me giving your new Girl Friday the third degree. Too bad. I assume she isn’t a convicted felon.”

Kieran blanched. She honestly didn’t know. She didn’t think Jamie seemed the type. “Probably not.”

“Reassuring. I’ll take that under advisement. She’s legal, right?”

“Yes.”

“You’re of compatible sexualities?”

Kieran caught her tongue between her teeth. She was just remembering that Jamie had looked gorgeous asleep in Kieran’s bed wearing Kieran’s volleyball jersey last night. “Oh, yeah.”

Ziggy grunted, “I don’t want to know.”

“You do.”

Ziggy continued tapping at her mobile wearing a quarrelsome expression. “I do a bit.”

“Let’s say we’ve got nothing to worry about on that score.”

“My kingdom for a friend who kisses and tells.”

“Too tacky.”

“But brown brows and blonde hair were in fashion for four years?”

“Ouch.”

“I’m just saying.”

“I may not recover from that one.”

“The purple hair is working for you.”

“Now you’re telling fairy tales.”