Page 51 of Like First Love, Again

“Shit, sorry.” Mia leaned away to look at her, face flushed and eyes wide. “Did I do it wrong?”

Tori caught her hand and guided it back. “Just a little less pressure,” she said, kissing Mia’s jaw, then her throat. “You were kind of checking for ripeness. Like a cantaloupe. One with implants.”

Mia furrowed her brow. “You got your boobs done?” Her laugh was a nervous release of energy. “I thought you were just a late bloomer.”

Tori raised an eyebrow. “Technically, I did go toaDr. Bloom.”

“Shut up! Did you?”

Tori grinned, running her fingers through Mia’s hair. “No. But that would’ve been poetic, right?”

“I hate you,” Mia joked, confident again when she rested her arms on Tori’s shoulders.

Smiling through the gentler kiss, Tori said, “The surgery made my nipples really sensitive, and they never went back to normal.”

Mia bit down on Tori’s bottom lip. “Fuck, that’s hot.” Her nails scraped the back of Tori’s neck a moment before she muttered, “I know I’m making you wait too long.”

“I want to move exactly as fast as you do, Mia,” she promised, kissing her again before straightening. “This is a lot of change.”

Mia gazed up at her for a moment and then shook her head like she’d considered and discarded a hundred responses before she opened her mouth. “In some ways, I guess there’s change,” she conceded. “But I don’t know. In so many other ways… It’s like… It’s like breathing. Effortless and instinctive.” One corner of her mouth twitched into a smile. “Being with you like this…The last week has made me feel the most myself I’ve ever felt in my life.”

Chest expanding, Tori didn’t know how to respond to such a profound compliment before storm clouds rolled in to dim Mia’s expression. “I just want it to be good and I don’t mean to make you wait, but I don’t know?—”

Tori interrupted her by cradling Mia’s jaw. She hoped Mia could really hear her when she said, “We’ll know when it’s right, okay? Don’t overthink it.”

The tension in Mia’s shoulders didn’t drop. Tori could feel all the things she wasn’t saying in the pit tearing open in her stomach. There was no sense in holding back. If Mia was having doubts, it was better to know now. “Is something else bothering you?”

“Why?” Mia volleyed instead of responding.

Tori tilted her head and leaned back against the counter. “It seems after yesterday you’re preoccupied today. And if it’s not that you feel weird about what we?—”

“I don’t feel weird,” she said so fast as if there’d be consequences if she let Tori finish her question. “It’s not that.”

“But it’s something?” Tori wanted to be patient. Wanted to wait for Mia to open up when she was ready. But her gut was telling her to prod, gently and just enough for Mia to understand that she was safe with her. “There’s nothing you can’t tell me, you know?” She ran her thumb over the ridge of Mia’s cheek.

“Maybe we should sit.” Mia was already moving to Tori’s living room.

By the time they sat together on the couch, an energy had materialized out of the ether and wrapped itself around Mia. Dark and heavy and settling in Tori’s own chest like the most vile congestion. Even before Mia spoke, Tori’s aching heart was in her throat.

“There’s, um,” The crack in Mia’s voice ripped Tori’s heart out of her throat and drop-kicked it out the window. “Something that’s starting to feel like a secret.”

Tori held her breath and balled her useless hands into fists. She wanted to peer into Mia’s mind. To know everything without Mia having to utter a single word. All she wanted was to go back in time and choose to have stayed in Mia’s life so that she never needed to be told anything.

“I’ve had,” she pressed her hand to her belly and Tori watched an unspeakable grief crest in her eyes a moment before she closed them, “losses.”

“Oh, Mia,” Tori breathed. She reached out, taking Mia’s clammy hand in hers. She tried to say she was sorry, but Mia spoke first and she didn’t want to interrupt her.

“They both happened early,” she explained, trying and failing to console herself.

She gripped Tori’s hand tighter, blunt nails leaving divots in Tori’s skin. There was nothing Tori wouldn’t give to absorb the pain emanating from Mia in choking waves.

“I don’t know why people say that like it’s less of a loss. Even in the support groups. There’s this hierarchy of grief and somehow just because they were only a few weeks along, I should be able to get over it faster. Or at all. Or, I mean—I don’t even know what I mean.” She shook her head, eyes glistening when she looked at Tori again. “Honestly, I hate thinking about it. And I hate talking about it even more than that.”

Tori watched in abject heartbreak as Mia clenched her jaw. Watched in helpless silence while Mia visibly wrestled down her pain. Watched her stuff it back into the hole it had escaped from.

“It seems only fair that you know that about me, so you can hightail it the fuck out of this mess,” she managed before her voice cracked again.

Tori didn’t flinch. Didn’t blink. Just squeezed Mia’s hand hoping to anchor her. “I’m not going anywhere.” Her voice was soft, but didn’t waver. “You could give me every painful thing you’ve ever carried, and I’d still be standing right here, Mia. If this works out between us or not, I’ll never leave?—”

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