As White as Snow (7 page)

But Lumikki didn’t actually think there was anything supernatural about their connection. It was simply that, when they’d first met, they’d sensed an intense sameness in each other that drew them together. They had been able to read things in each other’s expressions, gestures, and postures that they couldn’t necessarily have put into words, but which burned into their consciousness as part of their deeper knowledge of one another. Everything they had experienced, seen, heard, felt, read, tasted, and smelled in their lives had left its mark on them.

Everything they’d experienced had accumulated in layers of deep knowledge, which allowed them to intuit their similarity. That was their connection. And when something like that came along, there was no holding back. You just had to trust it.

That was how Lumikki felt. And she didn’t even try to protect herself. She opened herself to Blaze. She let him come to her, to wrap her in his heat. Lumikki sensed that she might get burned, but she took that risk without a moment’s hesitation.

Before Blaze, Lumikki had thought that physical intimacy would cause her the most problems in dating. Years of bullying had left her fearful of being touched, even repulsed by it. She couldn’t stand having strangers violate her personal space. Or even really people she knew. She wanted to be able to choose when people touched her and how. Only very rarely did she feel any desire to touch anyone else. Lumikki had once thought that she might not ever be able to date or love anyone because the thought of letting someone get close enough even to kiss her was so unpleasant.

But when the emotional distance between her and Blaze vanished so swiftly, physical distance became unbearable. Her powerful need for closeness, to have her skin pressed against his, astonished Lumikki. On their third date, they were at Lumikki’s apartment, drinking coffee again, as they would so often during their relationship, sitting at her kitchen table talking and laughing. Their drinks always ended up cold long before either of them could finish.

Lumikki squeezed her coffee cup with both hands to keep herself from reaching out and touching Blaze’s arm, stroking his cheek, running her fingers through his short blond hair. She pressed her lips hard against the rim of the mug even though what she wanted was to press them against his lips. She had never experienced anything like this before. Her pulse raced like crazy. She trembled inside from her head to her toes, trying not to let the trembling show.

Lumikki tried to continue their banter as if nothing was happening. At some point, she no longer had any clue what Blaze was saying. All she could think about was kissing him. About how she would take his face gently but firmly in her hands, look deep into his glittering, icy eyes, and kiss him. Lumikki had never kissed anyone, but now the desire was so strong that she didn’t even consider things like whether she would know how or what technique she should use.

Feelings had nothing to do with technique. This feeling was pure burning and fire.

Suddenly, Blaze blushed. He mussed his hair and smiled in his boyish way. Then Lumikki couldn’t stand it anymore. She set her mug down so hard that the coffee sloshed onto
the table. A second later, they were wrapped in each other’s arms, awkwardly perched on his chair, then standing in the kitchen, the chair clattering to the floor. Lumikki pressed herself against Blaze with every part of her body she could. Their mouths were one. They burned with each other’s heat. Their hands searched for new places to caress.

Everything just happened. Lumikki was simultaneously inside what was happening and somehow outside too. She had no control over her own actions or desires. She couldn’t make herself step back. She couldn’t have stopped kissing him even if the world were exploding around her. It didn’t explode around her, though. It exploded inside of her.

They were rushed, but they also had all the time in the world. By unspoken agreement, they knew how far they should go. Even though they were greedy for each other, they also knew how to hold back. They could leave part of the experience for next time. And part for the time after that. They were on an expedition without a map or a compass, and neither wanted the discoveries to end too soon. Everything in time.

When they were lying side by side on Lumikki’s mattress, waiting for their breathing to steady, Lumikki thought that the journey was just beginning. And she loved that she didn’t know where it would end.

And in retrospect, that felt so unfair to her. That her journey with Blaze had gone unfinished. Lumikki knew that they’d had so much more to show each other, so much more to teach each other, so much to experience together.

Of course Lumikki had known. From the beginning. At their first meeting, when her gaze locked on Blaze’s light blue eyes for a few seconds too long. Afterward, she could never name any single detail that had given it away. Was it the arc of his jaw? His shoulders, which weren’t terribly broad despite being so muscular? Was it his voice, which was pleasant and deep, and yet not as deep as it might have been? His fingers, which were so slender and beautiful? The way he walked, which might have been just a little too assured, a little too masculine?

It wasn’t any single characteristic. Blaze really did look like a boy. He was a boy.

But not completely. Not yet. His physical self was on a journey toward oneness with his inner self. Lumikki had understood immediately. And it didn’t matter to her at all. To her, Blaze was Blaze from the first moment she saw him, not
a boy or someone on the way to being a boy. Not something transitional. He was whole, a perfect individual.

That’s why it felt strange when Blaze explained it so haltingly. When it was so difficult for him. Lumikki just wanted to ask him to be quiet because there wasn’t anything to tell. He didn’t have to be brave to reveal his secret. For Lumikki, words like “transgender” and “reassignment surgery” felt totally foreign. Not because she was afraid of them. It wasn’t that. It was because they came from somewhere outside, from people’s desire to define and categorize and diagnose, to set boundaries and compartmentalize other people’s lives.

For Lumikki, Blaze was Blaze. And at the same time, he was also Laura, the seven-year-old girl smiling her unabashed smile in the photographs Lumikki found at his parents’ cabin when they spent an entire week there that summer, just the two of them.

Seeing the pictures irritated him.

“Can you put those away? I hated my hair like that. How anyone ever got me to wear pigtails I don’t know.”

“But you look adorable.”

“I look about as natural as a pet poodle with a bow on its head. It’s humiliating.”

Lumikki put the pictures away. But the images stayed with her, and that was why Blaze was also Laura with those wide smiles and pigtails.

By the same token, Blaze was also Lauri, the legal name he’d have once the physical transition was complete. For Lumikki, all three could be one and the same person without any contradiction. Laura, Lauri, Blaze. For her, there wasn’t
anything difficult or problematic about it. For Blaze himself, though, it wasn’t so easy.

“Since I was a kid, I always felt like there was something wrong with me. That I had the wrong name and the wrong clothes and that I looked all wrong. That I acted all wrong. Or that people looked at me and assumed something, but then I didn’t actually feel like I was what they assumed at all.”

“You shouldn’t have to worry about what other people think.”

“News flash, Lumikki: The world happens to be full of other people. And we all have to get along with them somehow. Work. Hobbies. Life. And not everyone is as open-minded as you. I would think you’d know that by now. You of all people.”

Blaze looked past Lumikki. Lumikki saw from the tension in his jaw that he was gritting his teeth. Bringing up her school bullying was a little uncalled-for. And besides, that was never about open-mindedness or tolerance. Nothing Lumikki could have been or done or said ever would have been right in the minds of her tormentors. Being selected as their victim had been pure, cruel chance. The violence had simply been violence. They had wanted to hurt her and break her spirit, and that was that.

Blaze and Lumikki’s conversations grew into arguments, and their arguments grew into fights.

The fights always fell into the same trap.

Blaze thought Lumikki didn’t understand or was being too cavalier about what he was dealing with. Lumikki promised over and over to support Blaze no matter what happened,
but Blaze thought she could never understand the pain and agony and emptiness he felt.

“For you, your body has always just been your own. You haven’t ever had to think about it,” Blaze argued.

Lumikki admitted that might be true. But why would that stop her from standing by his side?

“I’m probably going to be pretty pissy company during the next stages of the transition. Honestly, I don’t know if I’ll even be able to stand myself. What I do know is that I can’t be responsible for anyone else’s happiness. It’s better if I’m alone. Otherwise, I’ll just end up hurting you for no reason.”

Lumikki soon realized her objections were futile. Blaze had made his decision. He had made his choice, and that choice didn’t include Lumikki.

Lumikki rolled over onto her stomach on the hostel bed and punched her pillow, which had long since lost its shape. Dark thoughts were burrowing out of the corners of her mind again where Lumikki thought she had swept them away for good.

Where was Blaze right now? Who was he with? Did he already have a new girlfriend who could lie with him on the dock of their cabin, protected from the eyes of prying neighbors? Was he stealing to her side and placing his soft yet strong hand lightly on her stomach, watching as first she’d smile with her eyes closed and then gradually bite her lower lip as her breath quickened—even though Blaze was still doing nothing more than resting his hand on her smooth skin.

Was someone else making Blaze laugh right now? After lighting in his icy eyes that fire that was like joy condensed
into light? The thought was too much for Lumikki to bear. It tore her up inside and left a bad taste in her mouth. She knew how irrational her feelings were, but she couldn’t help it.

That was what Lumikki hated the most. That she was possessive of a person who had chosen to exile her from his life. She was blindingly jealous even though she didn’t know if Blaze even had someone in his life or not. Maybe the uncertainty was the worst thing. If she’d known, she could have been angry or bitter or even sad, but now all she could do was toss and turn in bed and hit her pillow and wonder if maybe, just maybe . . .

Lumikki could always imagine the worst. She could imagine the most beautiful girl in the world with the best-reasoned opinions and the funniest stories and the most elegant manners. Who could make Blaze so giddy with joy and desire and love that he wouldn’t even remember being with Lumikki.

Lumikki knew she was torturing herself for nothing. In the morning, everything black would look gray, colorless, trivial, and embarrassing again. She would wonder why she’d spent her time obsessing over something so stupid. She would decide never again to be jealous of someone who wasn’t even in her life anymore.

But Lumikki also knew that, sometime soon, the nights would come again when nothing could hold back the dark thoughts, and they would wash over her, drown her.

The last time they saw each other was at a city park overlooking the lake. The wind was blowing, foreshadowing the approaching autumn as it tugged at the leaves of the trees.
Some were already yellow. On the peninsula below, where the amusement park stood, whitecaps slapped the shore.

It’s a windy summer we’re having.

Birk’s words from
Ronia, the Robber’s Daughter
sparkled in Lumikki’s mind. But it wasn’t a windy summer. Summer was nearly past. It was ending. The wind also grabbed Blaze’s hair, whipping it around. Lumikki knew with painful clarity that she could no longer extend her hand and smooth that hair. The right to touch was denied her now. A distance had grown between them that was colder than the rock on which they sat and wider than the lake spread out before them. Lumikki couldn’t do anything about it. She couldn’t bridge the distance. She couldn’t replace it with the warmth that still burned within her. Blaze had shut her out. He wouldn’t even meet Lumikki’s gaze anymore.

They exchanged a few words that last afternoon, but Lumikki remembered the silence best. It wasn’t their old kind of silence—a good, peaceful silence in which they could both be safe. This kind of silence was hollow, chilling, squeezing the air from your lungs. It screamed, demanding words to fill the emptiness, but neither of them had those words.

They had used them up. Eaten them. The promises they had never actually spoken, but which had bound them together, had been broken.

Suddenly, Blaze extended his hand and took Lumikki’s. Involuntarily, Lumikki flinched as his touch sent millions of jolts of electricity running from her hand along her arm to every part of her body. Especially her pelvis.
Damn it.
Why did Blaze have to have such power over her? Lumikki
automatically closed her eyes, hoping Blaze would do what he used to. That he would lift her hand and turn her inner wrist toward him, pressing his lips to her skin gently but insistently. Nothing made Lumikki go crazy quite as quickly as that did.