Free For Good by Karelia Stetz-Waters

of whiskey and go back to their respective beds. Or… Kristen hesitated. Then she pulled the blankets off her shoulders and spread them out so they covered her and Marydale together. Kristen glanced at Marydale. She looked even more beautiful in the new moonlight, and her beauty suddenly made her seem vulnerable. Kristen wondered how many people had looked at Marydale and seen only her extravagant hair.
    “You’re amazing,” Kristen said, and leaned in and touched her lips to Marydale’s for just a second, then pulled back. “Sorry.”
    Marydale drew in a breath. In the back of Kristen’s mind, a voice cautioned, You can’t do this to her. This is her real life. Some part of her pretended to listen. Driving back home, Kristen told Marydale about the philosophy student with his VHS movies. She meant it as a warning. I’m not going to fall for a woman, not for real, not for good. But the story came out all wrong. She couldn’t make her case. The facts didn’t support the findings.
      
    Back at the house, they bumped into each other in the hallway. Kristen thought Marydale would kiss her, but she didn’t. They climbed the stairs to their matching bedrooms.
    Kristen said, “I guess I should get some sleep.”
    Marydale nodded.
    In bed, the sheets tangled around Kristen’s legs. The sense of anticipation that had felt sweet and intimate under the blanket in the back of Marydale’s truck felt empty. The match had burned away, and neither of them had made a move, and that was the right choice, Kristen thought. They were roommates, and Marydale was a lesbian and Kristen hadn’t even thought about women until now, and maybe that was just because all the men in Tristess chewed tobacco and were missing teeth (and so was Marydale, but she wore it well, like the stylish rip in her rhinestone jeans).
    Finally, Kristen saw light appear around the edge of her doorframe as Marydale turned on the bathroom light. Kristen heard the toilet, then the faucet and the clink of a toothbrush in a cup. She listened, and she did not move. She thought of the undergraduate theater professor who had sometimes taught in the auditorium next to the room where Kristen had taught legal writing. She had often heard him beseeching his students to be the tiger. Be. The. Tiger! She had never been the tiger. She wasn’t going to stay in Tristess and marry a cowgirl. She wasn’t going to grow a fauxhawk or go vegan or buy a motorcycle or whatever incarnation lesbianism took out here. To open the bedroom door now wouldn’t be right, and it wouldn’t be fair, and it wouldn’t be the kind of thing diligent, responsible Kristen Brock did, and she rose as if in a dream.
    Marydale stood in the hallway.
    “I can’t sleep,” Kristen said.
    “I can get you a whiskey.”
    Marydale wore only a long T-shirt, and her thighs were thick and muscular, like the legs of some beautiful creature used for portage but meant to run.
    “No,” Kristen said. “That’s not what I want.” Marydale hesitated for a moment, looking back and forth between their two bedroom doors. Kristen nodded. Marydale took her hand.
    Marydale’s bedroom rested in moonlight. The bed lay in disarray, the covers almost on the floor.
    “Kristen,” Marydale whispered.
    Then Marydale bent down and kissed her, her hair falling around Kristen’s face. Kristen caressed Marydale’s back, not quite daring to slip beneath the fabric of her T-shirt. Questions jumbled among the sensations in Kristen’s body, disjointed and urgent. What would happen next? Should they stop? Would they kiss and fall asleep like chaste schoolgirls? What if Marydale touched her and Kristen felt nothing? Even as Kristen formed the question, the thought that the night might end without some kind of release made her clutch Marydale’s back and pull away from her kiss at the same time.
    “What is it?” Marydale asked.
    “I’ve never done this with a woman.”
    Kristen kept her arms around Marydale’s waist and