Make Room for Love

by Darcy Liao

What was it like to move through the world knowing it was your right to take up space?

None of them had set Isabel on fire like this grad student in a cute little sweater talking about labor organizing in Isabel’s living room.

“He never let me get away with talking about the union like it’s a third party. I am the union, and I’m responsible for the union and for my sisters and brothers, and they’re responsible for me. And I hope that you all know that you are your union, and you’re going to keep fighting for yourselves and for each other. And if you keep doing that, you’re going to win.”

She forced herself to look at Mira’s eyes. Those dark eyes that were so easy to get lost in. Isabel was in trouble.

Sometimes you had to step up simply because you were there, no matter how inadequate and unprepared you were.

“Some things just wear you down, and it never gets easier. The point is, you’re not a coward just because you’re scared.”

She was so lovely that it hurt to look at her. But Isabel looked, anyway.

Isabel wanted to. She was tired of shutting herself away. She wanted to get closer to Mira’s world, and she wanted to see what Mira wanted her to see.

Mira put more hairline cracks in her composure every day. Now, with this offering, Mira had almost split her open. What if she allowed herself to crack?

She felt lighter. Telling Mira about the shame that’d been festering in her for months had helped ease it a little. She’d told Mira, and Mira hadn’t run away.

“I have feelings for you. And I know that’s my responsibility. I don’t want to cause you any problems.”

Mira listened. It was so simple, and it meant everything. She didn’t pretend things were fine or ever would be. She didn’t try to tame Isabel’s uncontrollable, unbearable grief. She just listened.

Imagining herself with a woman, not suffocating in a man-shaped prison but as herself. Being forced to confront that she might want something different, something more.

Maybe she could just have what she wanted. It sounded like the easiest and the hardest thing in the world.

“I guess I do like women,” she said. It was so obvious, in retrospect, that it hardly felt new at all. This precious part of her had been there all along.

But she knew now that she was a woman who loved other women, and it felt good and right—like coming home to her apartment at the end of a long day.

many beautiful women at the club, yet the only one Isabel truly saw was Mira.

“I’m not saying this to discourage you. You know the only way this is going to happen is if we put in the work ourselves.” Mira couldn’t argue with that. We are the union, Isabel had once said, and Mira had learned over the last few months what this really meant. There was no one but them to do the work of organizing thousands of grad students and winning the election. If Mira didn’t do her rounds every week, talking to people at every opportunity, the work wouldn’t get done. Last semester, week by week, she’d helped add to the ever-increasing count of union cards. And now she had to do whatever it took to win.

It was a refuge from the world telling her that she was too feminine in all the wrong ways or not feminine enough. With Isabel, she could let herself blossom.

The thing was, she’d meant it. She wanted a reminder that Isabel cared for her and believed in her. She wanted to feel precious and brave and a little bit sexy as she took on the world outside this apartment.

This was a cautious hope after her last two years of despair. She wanted to cook for her own family, if she ever got to have one.

If this was going to work, they were going to have to truly be equals, to truly be partners.

“When something good happens in your life, you know you can just let it happen, right? That’s what I’ve been learning over the last two years. Life is hard enough already without you looking for more reasons.”

“Isabel, I want to stay with you. I want to keep coming home to you, and I want to keep falling asleep next to you and waking up next to you. I want to build a life with you. Not the version of you that’s tough all the time. The real you.”

“I got this tea for you to remind you that I’ll always be here to take care of you. And that if you tell me how you’re feeling, I’m not going to run away. Just make yourself a cup if you ever get worried. I think you can manage that with one arm.”