Outdrawn

by Deanna Grey

My angsty, lesbian mermaids helped me afford to move out on my own for the first time since graduating.

Our time did more than overlap—it tangled. I held my tongue about the tangling, because it's too weird to explain how we had gotten close enough to draw in each other's sketchbooks but never exchanged phone numbers. It's too weird for even me to fully comprehend.

Noah's work helped get me through my fog a few months ago. At rock bottom, I'd turned to her comic, and it'd been the best thing about my day. My obsession with her characters was embarrassing to admit, especially after I'd spent years putting distance between us. The art world liked to compare our work because our styles were similar, but something deep inside me knew she had the potential to be better. My growing love for her story proved that.

How could you be one of the best when you didn’t know what it looked like?

The softness of her outfits mirrored the feeling one would get from watercolor paintings.

Lots of things made me happy: art, perfectly seasoned rice, bike rides downtown, and now, apparently, making Sage smile because of something silly.

I'd always had a good relationship with loneliness. Lonely had been my safe place. In silence, no one expected anything from me. That lack of expectation meant I could be myself. Of course, it got hard, but that was a trade-off I'd been willing to make. Or, at least, I thought it was.

The chasm that would widen between us would make me sick to my stomach, but the relief of not having to come up with some life-saving plan made me relaxed enough to register the midnight black shade of my bike. I could see the vibrancy in my favorite color again. That alone made this worth it.

"Because I know I want to be with you," she said firmly. "I know I want to see your smile and hear your voice every day. I know I want to help you feel seen and heard. I know not a day goes by when I won't work hard to give you everything you deserve. I know that you want me to have everything I deserve. You're never going to make things easy. You'll never sugar coat things. I know when we're together, we are petty assholes, but we're also something beautiful, something far bigger than the art. I can't believe I'm saying this, but Noah, we can be bigger than the art. I know that."

“I did need you,” I said. “I didn’t know how to ask. A part of me thought if I did, you guys would be disappointed in me. You'd look at me and finally see that I wasn't strong enough to hold us. Most days, I'm barely strong enough to hold myself up, so I pushed you all away because I didn't think I was brave enough to not be strong, but I’m done pushing.”