Page 2 of Make Room for Love

“That’s my girlfriend,” Dylan said. This woman was nearly as tall as he was, and he was clearly trying to puff himself up despite being built like a twig. “We were having a conversation.” He looked at Mira, and Mira flinched.

“Doesn’t seem like she wants to talk,” the woman said. Unlike Dylan, she didn’t need to yell to make her presence felt.

“Who the fuck are you?”

The woman’s stance shifted subtly. She wasn’t flinching. She was steeling herself. “Leave her alone.”

They faced each other down. The air thickened with tension. Dylan’s friends hovered behind him, casting long shadows.

Mira’s heart pounded. Was this stranger actually intending to physically defend her? Dylan had never been in a fight more serious than sniping at other literary figures online, but he had backup, and maybe he and his friends were stupid enough to trysomething. What if—oh, god—what if this woman got hurt for Mira’s sake?

Then Dylan deflated, apparently realizing that he’d picked the wrong person to fuck with. “All right.”

He shrugged, clearly trying to seem less embarrassed than he was. After one last hostile glare at Mira, he turned and walked away. One of his friends followed. The other one, the one who had been ogling Mira, stared in confusion for a second before scurrying off.

As their backs receded, Mira’s terror drained. Exhaustion came flooding in. She wanted to go home.

But she didn’t have a home. She only had the couch in Vivian’s living room.

The woman turned around. Mira had been standing far too close, and she scrambled to step back. The woman’s well-worn leather jacket and black hair gleamed in the streetlights. There was a carabiner of keys clipped to one of her belt loops. Confronted with this butch who knew exactly how she wanted to move through the world, Mira felt insubstantial, like a leaf swept up by the wind.

“You okay?” the woman asked.

Mira was still stiff with fear. That had been ugly, and it could have been even worse. “Um, yeah, I’m okay.” Her own words were distant, as though they weren’t coming from her. “Thank you,” she remembered to add.

The woman shrugged. She didn’t smile. “You need anything?”

Although she had softened from earlier, the woman’s gaze was still intense. She had dark, serious eyes and strong features that were striking without a trace of makeup. Being on the receiving end of her attention, and having to look up to make eye contact, made goosebumps prickle all over Mira’s skin. “I think I’m okay,” she said automatically. This woman had already donetoo much, and Mira didn’t want to be further indebted to her. “Um, areyouokay?”

“I’m fine.” She seemed surprised, maybe irritated, that Mira had asked. “Are you here by yourself?”

“No, I’m, uh, I’m with my friends. They’re inside.”

“You going back in?”

Mira shook her head. She needed to go home—to Vivian’s living room—and get under the blankets and cry. She was supposed to be enjoying her freedom from Dylan. Instead, she had crumpled at the sight of him and hid behind this stranger, who had probably never been scared of an awful man even once in her life.

“You need someone to walk you to the subway?” The woman asked.

Mira didn’t want to say yes. But Dylan and his friends had gone in that direction, and she didn’t want to run into them, not alone. And she couldn’t ask Vivian and Frankie. They deserved to have a good time without Mira’s drama, and she couldn’t face going back into the club to find them. She grimaced. “Well, I don’t want to make you go out of your way.”

The woman shrugged again. “I’m heading out, too. You want to go?”

“I— Yeah.”

“Are you cold?”

Mirawascold. She had been hugging herself all this time, she realized. Even more than that, she hated being so exposed in this tight dress now that Dylan and his cronies had seen her. She could still feel their gazes clinging to her body.

“A little,” she said.

The woman took off her leather jacket and held it out, offering it to Mira. She was wearing a white T-shirt, tight around her wide shoulders and her generous breasts. Her biceps and forearms were thick and tanned. This woman’s work pants weretorn and faded from actual work, most likely. And she probably could have snapped Dylan in half.

She was still holding out her jacket. Mira had been staring. She flushed. She wasn’t into women; it wasn’t like that. But this woman was tough and brave, everything Mira wasn’t and wished she were, and it was hard to tear her eyes away.

She could refuse, but this woman was clearly not interested in a back-and-forth of social niceties. She was being kind to Mira. It would be easiest to go along with it.

“Thank you,” she said, and took the jacket.

---