Feel It Out

I woke up in a panic to my alarm and the weight of an arm draped over me. After a moment of stunned terror, I burst into tears and scrambled upright, my vision too blurry to bother finding my phone to turn the alarm off. I pulled every blanket in the vicinity into a protective cocoon around myself and squeezed my eyes shut, trying to block out the flood of memories.

But it wasn’t him. It was Kye. Her voice brought the rational part of my brain back to reality. “Aqui? Aqui, what’s going on?” she sounded confused. I wanted to reassure her, but I couldn’t shut off the part of my brain that kept playing memories on repeat. Memories of the time I woke up to him sliding off my pajama pants. Memories of the time he wouldn’t let me go home and sleep in my own bed.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I fell asleep. I should have gone home,” Kye rattled off helplessly, fumbling around for my phone and turning off the alarm, “What do you want me to do?”

With the ringing of the alarm gone, I was able to gradually calm my breathing and pry my eyes open. Kye looked like a puppy that had been struck with a newspaper. Her short hair was practically one big cowlick, and her bushy eyebrows were raised in baffled concern.

“Please don’t be mad at me,” Kye said, beginning to reach a hand out to me but then flinching it back and looking ashamed, “I promise nothing weird happened last night. We just fell asleep. I’m really sorry.”

“Not your fault,” I whispered hoarsely, “I have to get Zee ready for school. Can we talk after? Do you have anywhere to be, today?”

She looked somewhat relieved, “Yeah, I have my backpack with me. I can just pull out my computer and work on my engineering stuff here while I wait.”

“Thanks,” I croaked as I crawled out of my blanket cocoon.

I played the previous night’s events over and over in my head as I got Zee ready for school. Part of me was trying to interpret what had happened, and the rest was trying to cover up the ancient flashbacks with something else. I was so distracted that I almost forgot Zee’s lunch box. Luckily, he caught my mistake and wailed like a siren until we went back for it.

I was shaky by the time I returned to my bedroom and Kye, who set down her laptop as soon as I entered. She had replaced both her hijab and her glasses and looked much more composed. I sat down beside her on my twin-size bed, leaving about a foot between us.

“I promise when I said I needed platonic cuddles last night, that’s exactly what I meant,” she explained, making eye contact with the floor, “I wasn’t trying to pull one over on you.”

“I know,” I said, quietly. I meant to say more, but I couldn’t come up with the words.

“I’m really sorry,” she repeated.

I took a shaky breath, “I panicked because I wasn’t expecting you there when I woke up. It reminded me of… something else. You’ve got nothing to apologize about. We just fell asleep cuddling.”

“Thanks,” she said.

I gave her a reassuring smile.

She shifted uncomfortably, “I have a confession to make.”

“Oh?”

“I don’t think those cuddles stayed as platonic as I expected them too,” she said, her voice cautious.

“Oh, I know,” I murmured, placing a shaky hand on her knee.

The room was so quiet that I could hear her breath catch in her throat, “Wait, are we on the same page?”

“I honestly don’t know what page I’m on, anymore,” I admitted. 

“Me neither,” she shrugged, “I was just… frustrated that Brae’s gonna be in Scotland for the rest of the year. I needed some company. I have no idea how that turned into this.”

“Feelings don’t always do what you expect them to,” I said.

“So do you wanna just… pretend this never happened and go back to business as usual?” Kye asked.

I thought about it for a minute. I couldn’t afford to make a rash decision, now that Zee was in the picture. Finally, I said, “I kind of want to feel this out and see where it goes.”

“Seriously?” said Kye, clearly trying to hold down her enthusiasm.

“I mean… why not?”

Kye was silent for a moment, then asked quietly, “Can I hold your hand?”

I nodded and lifted my hand from her knee so she could intertwine her fingers with mine. We stayed that way, almost motionless, for a few minutes before I scooted closer and rested my head on her muscular shoulder.

~*~

We agreed right away that the first person we would tell would be Zee, assuming things worked out. That was a big step to take, though. Until then, most of our interactions were while Zee was at school. I always had dinner shifts at the restaurant a couple days a week, which left me free to spend time with Kye during the school day. Since Kye had a car and I still relied on the bus route, she usually came to my house for lunch.

“How do we want this to work, exactly?” I asked one day early on. We had finished lunch and retreated to the living room. I was laid out on the couch with my legs draped over Kye’s, my skirt cascading over her knees like a pink and blue waterfall.

“What do you mean?” she asked, looking up from her computer.

“Well, I’ve never dated�"are we dating? Is that what we’re calling this?�"a lady, much less a Muslim lady. Actually, I guess I’ve never really dated anyone at all. I don’t think the mess that resulted in Zee counts�"Zee was the only good thing that came out of that.”

Kye closed her laptop and set it aside, shifting her full attention to me, “Wanna know a secret?”

“Sure,” I replied.

“I have no idea what I’m doing, either,” she said with a smile.

“That’s not helpful at all!” I giggled.

She reached over and touched my nose with her calloused fingertip, “See, I’ve never dated someone with a kid, before. Or a Jewish lady.” She didn’t say it, but I could tell she was thinking “or someone with PTSD.”

“We’ll figure it out,” I said with a smile.

“Yeah,” she said, “We got this.”

On that note, Kye picked her computer back up and returned to what she was doing. I tried to return to the book I was reading, but the conversation didn’t seem finished. Finally, after a few unsuccessful attempts at reading the same paragraph, I spoke up again, “Kye, can I ask you a question?”

“Sure,” she said, closing her laptop again. I could tell she was nervous. I knew talking about feelings was far from Kye’s favorite activity.

“Usually when you visit me, you take your scarf off,” I asked, “Could you tell me about the… rules, I guess, for when you wear it and when you don’t?”

“Oh, that?” she said, “Every Muslim you talk to will give you a different answer on that. The rules I follow pretty much say to wear it around adult men who aren’t my family members. Which you aren’t.”

“Isn’t it supposed to keep people from looking at you in an impure way, though?” I asked, “So does that mean you should also wear it around girls who like girls? Wow, that feels weird to say. I never really thought about myself as someone who likes girls.”

“Well, are you looking at me impurely?” she asked with a cheeky smile.

“Well, that cowlick on the side of your head is pretty cute. Does that count?”

She laughed, “Islamic scholars haven’t really released any statements about whether lesbian trans women should wear the hijab around their girlfriends. And when they do, they’ll probably release like three different opinions. For me, the hijab is something between me and Allah. I don’t wear it when I’m in private with other women. Even if they like girls.”

“That makes sense,” I said, taking her hand in mine and playing idly with her fingers.

~*~

It was almost three months before we finally decided it was time to talk to Zee. We had carefully orchestrated a plan: I would pick Zee up from the school bus, Kye would meet us in the living room, and we would all play some games and have dinner together. Of course, like all well-orchestrated plans, ours required some adjusting along the way.

Zee was clearly exhausted when I picked him up from the bus. As soon as he walked off the bus, he dropped his backpack and grabbed at the air, silently begging me to pick him up. I put his backpack over my shoulder and hefted him into my arms. “You’re almost too big for me to keep doing this, little guy!”

I set Zee down when we reached the front door, explaining to him that I needed my hands to open the doors. He made a disgruntled noise but complied with my request, and we walked up the stairs to our apartment with his tiny hand in mine.

When we reached the living room, Zee spotted Kye and shrieked in alarm, burying his face in my skirt. I stroked his wispy, blond hair and mouthed “put your scarf on” to Kye.

Kye looked confused, “But…”

“He doesn’t recognize you,” I explained gently.

Kye nodded in understanding and replaced her hijab, and I tapped Zee’s shoulder and stooped down to his level to talk to him. “Zee, sweetie, do you remember Mommy’s friend Kye?” I asked. As usual, I attempted to sign along as I talked, but I had to improvise a lot to make up for my very limited knowledge of ASL.

Zee turned around and looked at Kye with wide eyes, as if the stranger on the couch had magically been teleported away and been replaced by a familiar face.

“Do you remember Kye?” I asked again.

Zee nodded, his mouth hanging open.

“Are we a little tired, today?” I asked.

He nodded.

I looked up to Kye, “I think we might need an impromptu nap before dinner. Sometimes school is just too much sensory stuff for Zee. It’s his first year of full-day school!”

I turned my attention back to Zee and asked, “Is it nap time?”

He shook his head vehemently and then signed, “Cuddle!”

I chuckled, “Cuddle nap?”

“No!” Zee signed, “Cuddle!”

“What’s he saying?” asked Kye.

“He wants to cuddle instead of nap,” I translated, then turned back to Zee, “Is it okay if Mommy’s friend Kye cuddles with us, too?”

Zee started blankly at me, his hands dropping to his sides.

“You can say no,” I assured him.

His expression remained blank.

“Are you stuck?” I asked. I emphasized the sign for stuck.

It worked. Zee nodded and signed “stuck” back at me.

“Can Kye give you a hug, or no?” I asked.

He thought about his response for so long that I thought he might be stuck again, but finally he responded with a nod.

“Okay, let’s go to the couch to go see Kye!” I smiled and took his hand to lead him over to the couch. When we reached our destination, Zee immediately climbed up on the couch beside Kye and wrapped his arms around her midsection. She looked to me for instructions, and I responded by sitting down on the other side of Zee and pulling a throw blanket over the three of us. I felt Kye’s muscles relax as she snuggled into Zee’s embrace.

“This isn’t exactly what I expected,” she whispered, reaching up tenderly to brush a piece of my curly hair out of my face.

“Just roll with it,” I whispered back, “That’s our motto around here.”

“I like that,” she replied.

I smiled, draping an arm over Kye and Zee both and nuzzling my face into Kye’s shoulder. We were asleep in a matter of minutes.