'Cause without you I just can't, without you I've been wasting away, it's been 42 days, I need you 'cause without you I just can't breathe

42 days.

That’s how long Dani was enrolled in art school.

Just 42 days.

She rounded it down to a month for simplicity’s sake, but the truth was, it felt more like a lifetime.

Dani had been a track star at her high school. Everyone adored her. Guys asked her out a lot, and she said yes, even though she didn’t really feel anything special for them. She always took it as a matter of course that she was straight, even though she never had those urges for boys, and figured that eventually, the feeling would come.

But they never did.

Her first time having sex was miserable, but then, it was supposed to be, right? That’s what everybody always said, the first time is awful.

But then, so was the second time, and the third time. Dani just didn’t find herself getting into it. And her boyfriend could kind of tell, too. He began to sulk after they did it, and Dani could feel that he wasn’t happy in the relationship. She did all sorts of things to try and make it feel good, but… it just never did.

Eventually, they broke up, and even though the guy was decent enough not to say it out loud, Dani knew it was because of her.

That really fucked her up a bit, even though she didn’t have any strong feelings for the guy. After all, they’d been friends for some time, and she obviously cared about him, and it stung to know that she wasn’t a good girlfriend to him.

But maybe it was because they just weren’t compatible that way. Surely with the next guy to ask her out, things would be different, right?

Long story short, no, they were not.

Over the course of her three years in high school, Dani had three boyfriends. And not one of them ever made her feel all the things that those cringy romance movies and anime said she was supposed to feel. No butterflies in the stomach, no racing heartbeat, her palms didn’t get sweaty when they held hands. Kissing just felt weird, like mashing two pairs of worms against each other while tasting the some guy’s breath.

Nothing seemed to fit right for her.

For most girls, being a dead lay might have been social suicide. But Dani was popular in her own right, and those rumors never really spread about her. She eventually decided to forget about dating and boys, and focus on her career. Running became the target of her desires, and she graduated from high school with a sports scholarship that would get her into practically any university, except for the one she actually enrolled in. An art college with no sports program, specifically for students who wanted to build up their skills and make a go of it in the professional world.

Running may have been one of Dani’s great loves, but her other was art.

Dani had never been a great student. She tried, she really did, unlike a lot of other jocks who blew off book learning as being a waste of time. Dani really did her best, she just couldn’t keep up with the lessons all the time.

And when she zoned out during lectures, she would doodle in her notebook. That’s how it started. Then, one day in middle school, after finishing a test where she knew at least half her answers were probably wrong, she used the back of her sheet to draw a sketch of the teacher. Just because she had time.

She’d bombed the test, obviously. But that wasn’t the reason the teacher had called her into her office.

“Dani,” she’d said, “I can tell you tried your hardest on this. I know you’re always trying, you just have a bit of trouble focusing. Does the drawing help?”

Dani’s eyes were wide.

“I… teacher…”

“This is amazing for a girl your age,” her teacher had said, turning the test over to look at Dani’s picture. “I think you have real talent. Do you mind if I keep it? I can give you a photocopy of your test instead. I just think that this would look nice on my wall.”

Then she’d winked at the tomboy. “And that way, when you become famous one day, I can brag that you were my student!”

Dani had been absolutely flabbergasted. All she remembered after that was biking home in a daze, without her test in her backpack.

After that meeting, Dani started working on improving her skills. Cultivating her drawing ability with art courses at her high school, she reached a level where being a professional artist wasn’t just a pipe dream- or at least, closer in reach than a large number of people who wanted to work professionally in that field.

So getting accepted into the school was the happiest moment of Dani’s life. And the weeks that followed were just as magnificent.

And it all came crashing down when she met Joan.

It had been at a party her second week there. Dani was used to being the life of the party back at school, but those had been jock parties. Here, things were a little different. For one, there were a lot more girls than there were boys. And they came from all walks of life. Some were gorgeous, some were more homely, and some were nice while others were pretentious and stuck-up.

And some looked at Dani, and saw all the jocks that had ever looked down on them for being “weirdos” and “freaks” back in high school.

Joan wasn’t like that, though.

Dani was surprised when she first saw her. Their eyes met from across the room, and there was something there, some sort of spark. Maybe it was because of some shared masculine energy between the two of them. In spite of turning her focus to art, Dani hadn’t let her body run fallow. She was still toned and tight, with sculpted muscles that looked like she’d walked out of a sports magazine. Comparatively, Joan was slender and wirey, features that seemed to walk the line between handsome and pretty, with a flat chest, a strong jawline, and slightly-broader shoulders than most girls Dani had known.

When she spotted Dani, she was like a woman on a mission. She weaved through the crowd of gossiping party-goers like a woman on a mission, taking advantage of her slender frame to reach the tomboy in a flash.

Dani was surprised. She was used to being the tallest girl around, but Joan was almost at eye-level with her.

“Hello there,” Joan greeted her with a charming smile, and for Dani it was like she’d been hit by a truck.

All those things she’d never felt with those other boys? They came crashing down on her the second she saw that smile. And in an instant the cool, popular girl she’d been in high school was nowhere to be found, and she turned into a blathering fool.

“Ya-yuh-you’re really pretty,” she stammered out. Her tongue was waging a rebellion against her brain, betraying the 18 year connection the two of them had shared. She was lucky it didn’t decide to leap from her mouth and leave her drooling like a fool!

“Thanks,” Joan laughed, tucking a lock of her short hair behind her ear. “You’re really pretty yourself.”

Dani grinned like a fool.

Lots of people had called her handsome. Boyfriends, friends, even her own parents. It was something she even said about herself, that she was handsome, not pretty.

Dani didn’t want to be handsome anymore after she heard that, she wanted to be pretty.

“I, I like your skirt!” Dani said, pointing at the girl’s outfit.

“Thanks!” Joan smiled. “I like your top!”

She took Dani’s hand. Her clammy, sweaty-palmed hand. “I’m Joan!” She shouted over the music. “Want to dance?”

Dani nodded so fast her head nearly fell off.

That night, the two left the party laughing like a couple of old friends.

“I had no idea you’re in Mr. Frobisher’s class!” Dani exclaimed.

“That’s because you’re always sitting in the front,” Joan laughed. “You spend so much time focusing on the lecture, I don’t think you ever take your eyes off him!”

Dani blushed. “It’s a habit I picked up,” she admitted. “I always used to zone out back in high school, so I’ve been trying to avoid that by forcing myself to focus 100% of my concentration on the lecture, instead of just doodling in my notebook.”

Joan shook her head. “Oof, imagine not doodling in your notebook in art school! And here I thought you were a good student…”

Dani laughed like that was the funniest thing in the world. Everything Joan said was the best thing Dani had ever heard. That rough voice of hers had the perfect amount of boyish charm, it reminded Dani of the tomboy childhood friends from the anime she watched.

Dani’d had best friends before, but something about Joan felt so special. And they’d only met tonight!

“…Okay, I have a confession to make,” Joan admitted. “I actually, um, I’ve actually been watching you for a few days now.”

Dani blinked. “Huh?”

“In Mr. Frobisher’s class?” Joan said. “I, uh… I’ve been watching you out of the corner of my eye. Your hair, I mean…”

“What, this?” Dani suddenly got defensive. “I-I tried dyeing it before I came here, do… do you not like it? A lot of other girls have blue hair, so I just thought-”

“No, it’s not that!” Joan gasped, shaking her head. “It’s really nice! I mean… um… okay, this is going to sound really weird, but… promise you won’t be creeped out?”

Dani would never make a promise like that, without knowing what it was about. She’d get suspicious immediately.

Under normal circumstances, anyway.

“Okay, promise,” she nodded.

Joan took a deep breath, and then exhaled.

“I, uh… I’ve seen you work out a few times,” she admitted. “At the Ludmeier’s Gym? I got a job working at the desk to help pay for my tuition, and…”

Dani’s eyes widened. “Oh my gosh! I’m an idiot! I didn’t even notice you!”

“No, no, you wouldn’t,” Joan said, and a shadow crossed her face. “And look, I know, it’s kind of weird, to watch a girl while she’s working out, but… I just couldn’t help it. You’re really cool, and like I said, you’re pretty. Sorry.”

“Ah, uh, it’s fine!” Dani didn’t mind in the least that this girl watched her work out. In fact, she was happy about it! “Look, tell you what, I’m going there tomorrow morning, are you working then?”

“Uh…” Suddenly, the comfortable smile on Joan’s face slid off, and she looked a little uncertain. “I… I am, but…”

“Then come over and say hey!” Dani urged her. “It’s cool, I won’t mind. As long as you don’t care about the smell of sweat!”

Dani just wanted more time with her, to be honest. She didn’t even register that Joan had stopped being so comfortable with the conversation.

“…Okay,” Joan finally said, and her smile returned. “That sounds like a plan.”

“Good!” Dani sighed in relief. “Well, uh… this is my dorm, so…”

The two shared a hot gaze at each other, one that Dani didn’t know the full meaning of, but knew felt intimate.

Then they parted ways, and she went to bed that night with a big smile on her face.

The next morning, Dani arrived at the gym practically the second it opened. She slow-rolled her workout routine, stretching it out as long as possible, since she didn’t know when Joan would actually show up. She didn’t have any classes since it was Saturday, so she could camp out the place all day if she wanted to.

“Um… hey.”

Dani looked up from her dumbbells to see a boy staring at her. He looked really uncomfortable, and his cheeks were red. He was obviously checking her out, while trying not to look obvious about it.

This really wasn’t what she needed right now. She’d had plenty of dudes try to hit on her when she was working out, and this was just the latest in a long line of them.

She sighed. “Listen, buddy, I’m busy right now, so could you-”

“Dani, it… it’s me.”

Dani blinked, and squinted at the guy in front of her. She knew she’d heard his voice somewhere and his face looked kind of familiar, but…

“…It’s Joan.”

And just like that, everything fell into place.

“Oh my gosh!” She gasped, her jaw dropping. “Joan?”

“Shh!” Joan hissed, eyes wide. “I’m John here!”

Dani stared at her. Him. The person she’d met last night. “Huh?”

The person named John who she knew as Joan turned red with shame.

“I’m… I’m a boy.”

They met up again when “John” finished “his” shift at the gym. Dani had returned home, taken a shower that had left her VERY confused, and went to the coffee shop they’d agreed to meet at for lunch.

When she got there, she saw Joan again, looking just as lovely as she had last night. But now, Dani could see things a little clearer. She could see the way her new acquaintance had carefully contoured their face, to make the masculine features as feminine as possible. Lipstick, mascara, eyelash extensions, and a pair of contact lenses had turned John into Joan so completely most people wouldn’t be able to tell they were one in the same.

“…I’m sorry,” Joan apologized, her face filled with guilt. “I should have told you last night, but I didn’t know how to say it.”

“Say what?” Dani asked. Her heart was very confused.

“I’m… I’m going through some stuff right now,” Joan admitted, keeping her voice down. They’d gotten a table way far in the back of the café, where it was unlikely they’d be overheard.

“Is that why you’re dressed like a girl?” Dani was thoroughly confused. Her own choice of clothing definitely trended towards the “boy’s large” section of the clothing store, but she’d never transformed herself the way Joan had.

“I am a girl,” Joan insisted. “I just… wasn’t born that way.”

“I-I see.” Dani tried to understand, she really did. But this was something she was very unfamiliar with.

“My folks are really hard on me,” Joan continued. “My brothers always made fun of me for being a ‘sissy’ and my sister was even worse. Once, my dad caught me trying on my mom’s lipstick, and he gave me a bruise that lasted for months.”

Dani gasped in horror. “Joan, that’s-!”

Joan held up her hand. “I’m not done. The truth is, I’ve always known I’m not really a boy. I’ve always wanted to be a girl, ever since I was a little kid. And just like you dyeing your hair blue, coming here… it was the perfect opportunity. I could finally be the person I’ve always wanted to be. Except… well, when I go to work, then I have to be ‘John’ again. Meanwhile, I’ve been ‘out’ to my friends ever since my first year. Most of the people at school don’t even know that I’m not really a girl.”

Her voice cracked when she said that.

Dani frowned. “What do you mean you’re not really a girl?” She asked, confused. “What, because you have a-”

“Dani!” Joan hissed, turning red. But she was smiling a little, too.

“Look, Joan, I don’t really understand this,” Dani admitted. “I mean, I barely know you! I just met you last night! But I do know you seemed so much happier last night than you did this morning.”

She placed her hand over the other girl’s.

“I like you like Joan,” she said. “When you’re John, it just doesn’t feel like you.”

Joan’s eyes started to water. “Oh, Dani… it means so much to hear you say that.”

“Can I ask you something, though?” Dani asked. “Why… why agree to come this morning? Why even tell me all this? We just met yesterday.”

Joan wiped her eyes with a napkin, taking care not to smudge her makeup.

“Because… I like you, Dani,” she confessed. “I wanted you to know the real me. And I wanted to show you the fake me, too. You’re so cool, I just… I couldn’t help it.” She blushed like a fool. “It doesn’t have to be serious or anything like that, but… do you want to go out sometime?”

Dani had no idea what to say to that. But the somersaults in her stomach sure did.

After that, Dani and Joan started going out. Kind of. They didn’t put any labels on their relationship, they weren’t “girlfriend and girlfriend” but dating a girl who happened to have a penis sure did make Dani learn some things about her sexuality.

Kissing Joan wasn’t like kissing a boy. It made her feel like every love song she’d ever heard was playing in her head at once. Fireworks burst in the air around them and she didn’t mind when the other girl’s tongue slipped between her lips.

She drew Joan constantly. The blonde became her permanent muse. She even painted her portrait once, a painting that she gave to the other girl as a gift on their two week anniversary. For obvious reasons, though, Joan wouldn’t pose nude.

Dani was willing to pose nude for her, though. That’s how deeply she’d fallen for the girl who made her heart pound, who made her palms sweaty.

By the time she’d been at art school for a month, she was almost-certain that she was a lesbian. Dating Joan had opened her up to a whole new way of looking at the world, and all the things she found sexy and attractive about her partner, she began to notice in other girls, too.

Joan picked up on that, and began to get insecure.

“Do you hate the fact I don’t have breasts?” She’d asked one day, out of nowhere.

“What? No, I don’t care about that!” Dani exclaimed.

Joan sure did, though.

“Do you wish I didn’t have a penis?” Joan brought up one night, after they finished kissing.

Dani had literally never even thought about it.

“Joan, I don’t care about your body,” Dani promised, wiping a tear from the gorgeous girl’s eye. “I like you because of who you are. You’re the most beautiful girl in the world to me.”

And Joan gave her one of those smiles that hung up the stars in the sky, a smile full of relief and joy. She embraced Dani, and cried into her shoulder.

The next night, however, everything reached a turning point.

Dani had agreed that they would have sex. They’d been dating for almost three weeks at this point. It was time.

Both girls had their own reasons for being terrified.

Joan was afraid that Dani, in her newly-blossoming sexuality, would find her male body unappealing. Normally, she could hide her physical features with makeup and feminine clothes, she could tuck her penis away, but in the bedroom, naked and exposed in front of the girl she loved, she couldn’t change things.

And Dani was scared that this would be like all the other times. Even though she’d never been kissed like when Joan kissed her, even though she’d never been touched as good as when Joan touched her, she still had that nagging fear in the pit of her stomach that, when they were together in that way, it would all go to wrong. That she wouldn’t respond the way she wanted to, that she’d be a dead lay like she always was.

She was afraid that if things weren’t perfect tonight, it would hurt Joan like she’d never been hurt before.

Dani needed tonight to be perfect. She couldn’t let Joan think she was rejecting her, just because she had a penis.

And when the two girls slipped their clothes off and were together in Joan’s bed… when they finally passed that barrier and made love…

It was the most magical night of Dani’s life.

Joan’s touch made her body come alive. When Joan was with her, it wasn’t like sleeping with a boy. She didn’t need to do anything to make her partner feel good, just being together was enough. Her body responded to Joan the way Joan’s body responded to hers, and before either of them knew what was happening or had time to let their insecurities and fears set in, they had arrived at that glorious moment together, and held each other close.

That night was the last time Dani remembered being truly happy

Joan may have been “out” around campus, but that was certainly not the case in the rest of the city.

That was the hardest part about dating her sometimes. They could “date” but they couldn’t actually go out on too many dates. Joan was always afraid of someone seeing her, and recognizing her from her job. Dani tried to understand, and never pushed her for anything more than she was comfortable with. But inside, it kept eating away at her.

She wanted Joan to be happy. She wanted to see the woman she loved smile that smile that told the sun it could take the day off.

But whenever she went to the gym, she saw Joan dressed as John, and she looked miserable.

“I just want you to be happy,” Dani said, hugging her lover. “You’re not happy like that.”

“I can’t be Joan there,” she said firmly. “They’d fire me in a second. Maybe even try to get me arrested.”

“Just for being who you are!?” Dani felt sick to her stomach.

Joan’s red lips made a thin line and she shook her head. “It’s not that kind of world, Dani.”

It all came to a head a few days after they made love for the first time.

Dani had gone to Joan’s room bright and early to show her her latest drawings. She could have scanned them and sent them over, but she wanted to show them off in person.

Later, she would choose to recall that decision as the second-biggest mistake of her life.

When Joan’s door opened, it wasn’t Joan who greeted her. It was John.

“Dani… you, uh… you didn’t tell me you were coming over…” Joan stammered, adjusting her glasses. Dani stared at her lover in shock.

“Joan? What-”

“Shh!” Joan hissed. “It’s John! Come in, I’ll explain everything!”

She pulled Dani into her room before Dani could ask for an explanation. When she stepped inside, she was even more confused.

Joan had always hung the pictures Dani had drawn of her on the walls. Her painting sat front and center in a gallery. She’d referred to it as her “shrine of love” and it had made Dani feel giddy with glee that her sort-of girlfriend liked her work so much.

The walls were bare now. The drawings were replaced with football posters. A team pennant hung where the portrait Dani had spent hours painstakingly painting had been.

“What’s going on?” Dani asked, turning to Joan, her voice aching with pain and confusion.

Joan looked more miserable than she’d ever seen her. Guilt blossomed across her bare, masculine face.

“…My family is coming up for a visit,” she muttered. “I was going to tell you about it, but… they suddenly moved their plans up a week, and so…”

“O-oh,” Dani mumbled. “I see…”

Joan had told Dani very little about her family. She didn’t like talking about her past much at all, in fact. But Dani knew enough to hate them.

“I have to dress like this,” the older girl insisted. “If they saw me as Joan, then…”

“I… I get it,” Dani said, feeling a little sick to her stomach. “I’ll get out of your hair…”

“W-wait!” Joan reached out and grabbed her wrist. Her eyes blazed with wild desperation. “Dani, I just thought of something! Okay, this is a huge favor, but, um… could you… could you pretend to be my girlfriend?”

Dani felt like Joan had slapped her across the face. “…Pretend?” She asked, feeling smaller and more insignificant than she ever had before.

“No, that… that came out wrong,” Joan said, her cheeks flushing. She shook her head quickly. “Look, just… you know I love you, right? So just come have lunch with us, and pretend to be dating me as a guy. That way, my family will see that I’m in a relationship with a pretty girl like you, and they’ll lighten up on me a little bit.”

Dani didn’t know what to say to that. But Joan had called her pretty, and that nearly swayed her right there.

“Please?” Joan begged. “My brothers are always giving me crap about going to art school, this would finally shut them up! Please, Dani? I swear, I won’t ask you for anything else, ever again!”

She was lying, and they both knew it. Dani could already see where this was going. It would start out as just a lunch. But if she and Joan became serious, as Dani desperately hoped they would, these lunches would become more and more commonplace.

But Dani loved her, and wanted to make her smile like starlight again.

“Okay,” she finally agreed. “I’ll do it.”

Joan smiled with beaming relief. But it wasn’t the smile Dani had fallen in love with.

“Great! Okay, now, let me do your makeup. If this is going to work, we need to make you look really girly, okay? I’ll loan you a skirt, and a long-sleeved shirt to hide your muscles… we’re about the same height, and if I use one of my baggier tops…”

And just like that, Dani was remade into some feminine, blue-haired Barbie doll as part of her sort-of girlfriend’s “cover story”.

When she saw her reflection in the mirror she wanted to throw up.

Dani didn’t remember much from that lunch. Just flashes. She remembered Joan laughing along with her family’s scornful jokes, and she remembered wanting to punch everyone at the table multiple times, including herself.

“Really, son? A girl with short, blue hair? Talk about a stereotype! Are you sure she even likes men?”

That was something she distinctly remembered Joan’s father saying about her practically the second he laid eyes on her. It was seared into her brain like a brand.

More teasing. More mockery. More of the most casually-offensive things that Dani had ever heard in her life, spoken about the woman she loved without any attempt to even understand how beautiful and wonderful Joan really was.

And Joan just let it happen.

“I’ve gotta say, sweetheart, I’m so relieved to see you dating a woman,” Joan’s mother said. “When you enrolled in that school, I was terrified that someday you’d tell me you were one of those fags.”

“Schools like that one are a breeding ground for queers,” one of her brothers agreed. “Good thing you found a woman who actually likes men! Even a girly-man like you.”

“I’m sorry for my brother,” the other brother said. Somehow, Dani just knew he wasn’t talking about his twin when he said that. “You’re his first girlfriend, you know, even though he always hung out with girls back home! Just give it time, he’ll figure out what he’s doing.”

Dani sat rooted in her seat, as the worst hell imaginable laughed in her ears. And all through the meal she kept her eyes firmly aimed at Joan, watching the woman she loved die a little more inside with every minute that passed.

When the lunch had finished, and she’d had to say through gritted teeth how lovely it was to meet all of these horrible people that ruined the woman she loved just by existing, she was ready to die.

Then, finally, they were alone together.

“I’m so sorry, Dani,” Joan apologized, looking like everything she cared about had died. “They’re awful, I can’t stand them!”

“Then why do you still keep them around?!” Dani demanded. “You can’t stand them?! They’re the ones who can’t stand you! Did you hear the things they said about you? About trans people?! They talked about ‘boys wearing skirts’ as if it was a sex crime!”

“I know!” Joan wailed. “They’re horrible! But… they’re supporting me. What am I supposed to do?”

“Tell them the truth,” Dani insisted. “Tell them who you really are! Tell them that you’re not their son John, you’re their daughter, Joan!”

Joan gasped in horror. “I can’t do that! They’d throw me out! If they didn’t beat me half to ****, first!”

Dani winced. There was real fear in Joan’s eyes. And it wasn’t like Dani could blame her. Those people were horrible.

“I’m not like you, Dani,” Joan muttered, looking down at the floor. “I don’t have your talent. You’re an amazing artist! Your paintings could be up in museums! Your doodles and sketches are better than the pieces in half the student body’s portfolios! But… I could never sustain myself with my drawings.”

“So what?” Dani demanded. “I love your work! Your abstracts are amazing, Joan! The way you capture emotion with every brush, you’re phenomenal! I don’t even look like me when you paint me, and I still know it’s me!”

Joan shook her head. “That doesn’t matter!” She cried. “Look, I know what I can do, and what I can’t. I love painting, I do! But going professional… it just can’t happen!”

Dani didn’t know what to say to that. “…So what, when you’re done with art school, then what? You’re just going to move back home?”

The look on her lover’s face said it all.

“…You are, aren’t you?” Dani gasped, dropping her hands to her sides. “You’re going to go back to those people!”

“I-I… look, I know what you’re thinking…”

“You’re living a lie!” Dani exclaimed. “Look at you!”

She grabbed Joan by the shoulders and turned her towards the mirror, so she could see her reflection. See how little she looked like herself.

“Dani, stop!” Joan shouted.

“That isn’t you!” Dani shouted, tears streaming down her cheeks and ruining the makeup she despised. “You’re Joan! You’re a beautiful, wonderful girl who deserves to be loved for who she is!”

She **** her lips against Joan’s, trying to get her to see. Trying to feel that spark. But it all felt wrong, kissing her like this. It made her feel sick to her stomach.

But she had to make it work. She had to! She had to get her to see…

“I know who I am!” Joan pulled away from her and stumbled over to the bed, the bed they’d shared their first time on. “But that doesn’t matter, don’t you get it?! If I’m myself, in front of my family, then…”

“I can be your family!” Dani exclaimed. “You don’t have to go back with them! You can just be with me! We can get married, run away together…”

Even as she said that, she knew how ridiculous it sounded. That wasn’t any solution.

Joan just stared at her with a pitiful look in her eyes.

“Dani… I love you,” she whispered. “Look, I know it’s going to be hard…”

Dani’s heart rose in her chest and then dropped. Her it was. The thing she’d been dreading to hear, ever since that lunch.

“We can still be together,” Joan said. “My family really likes you! And if you grow your hair out a little, keep wearing makeup, dress up a bit-”

“Wait, wait, wait, now I’m the one who needs to change _my_self?” Dani couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “But you always said you liked me just the way I was! You said I was the prettiest girl you’d ever seen!”

“And you are!” Joan exclaimed. “You’re pretty, and charming, and special in a million ways, you’re like no one I’ve ever met before! But…”

“But I’m too much of a raging lesbian for your family to accept me?” Dani snarled.

Joan didn’t reply. She just stared down at the floor. Which was a reply in and of itself.

Dani shook her head incredulously. “That’s really how you think this is going to go, isn’t it? I don’t believe this. You really think that I’m just going to keep playing along with your little charade for the rest of my life? That I’ll just go back home to your redneck little town and live with those awful people who demean the woman I love, all while she’s dressing like a man and laughing right along with them?! Be little Suzie Homemaker while we live a life that neither of us want?!”

“But we’d be together!” Joan was really crying now. Snot rolled down her face, making her even uglier to Dani. “I love you, Dani! You’re everything to me! When I’m with you, I can be myself! I don’t have to lie, I don’t have to pretend, I can just be me!”

Dani wanted to love her so badly in that moment. She wanted to say yes. She wanted to say whatever it took to make the woman she treasured stop crying, and bring that sunlight back into her smile.

But how could she do that? It would mean betraying everything she was. Dani was just coming to terms with the fact that she was a lesbian, and now Joan was pleading with her to pretend like she wasn’t. Even if she was sleeping with a woman behind closed doors, to everyone in their lives she would be lying just as much as Joan.

“…Do you really mean that?” She asked quietly. “Am I really everything to you?”

“Dani?” Joan stared at her with wide eyes. She didn’t like the look on Dani’s face.

“Okay, then prove it,” Dani demanded.

“P-prove it?” Joan didn’t know what she meant. “How?”

“If you love me, then you would never ask something of this from me,” Dani said. “The Joan I love, the woman I love, she would never ask me to live a lie just to make her horrible family happy! So prove to me you wouldn’t do that.”

Her voice cracked. “Please, Joan… please, don’t pick them. Pick me. Please, please pick me.”

It was an ultimatum of the worst kind. If Joan wouldn’t throw aside her family for Dani, then she would lose Dani forever.

In that moment, Dani knew for a fact that she was the worst human being in the world, asking something like that of her.

Just like she knew what answer Joan would give. The only answer she would give.

“…Please, Dani…” Joan pleaded, throwing herself at the feet of the woman she loved. “Please don’t ask me to choose between you…”

Dani’s heart broke then and there. “…It sounds to me like you already have,” she muttered, and did the hardest thing she’d ever done.

She turned and walked away.

Dani dropped out of school a few days later. She couldn’t stay. Not at that place. She couldn’t sleep in the dorm room where she’d painted Joan. She couldn’t eat in the cafeteria where she’d shared meals with Joan. She couldn’t walk through the quad where she held hands with Joan. She couldn’t go to the classrooms where she’d studied with Joan.

Everywhere she went reminded her of the woman she loved. The woman she couldn’t love enough to change for, or to change.

Joan kept calling her. She sent dozens and dozens of text messages.

Dani never responded. But she couldn’t bring herself to delete them, either. Even now, they were still on her phone somewhere, along with a number she never blocked.

Joan had lit up Dani’s whole world. She had been Dani’s sunlight, her stars, her everything.

And when Dani took her pencil to paper, she realized just what she’d lost the day that she broke Joan’s heart.

All her talent, all her drawings, all those wonderful things Joan had praised her for, they escaped her now. She hadn’t just left her heart with the other girl, she’d left everything that brought life and passion to her work.

Seeing the horrible mess she’d created with hands that had once painted masterpieces, she let the part of herself that was an artist die for good.

And thus, the last reason she had to stay at the school that only reminded her of pain and heartbreak had disappeared.

A few months ago, she’d been an aspiring artist with unmatched potential.

All that had disappeared in 42 days.