Chapter 6

The chai is too hot. I burn my tongue on the first sip and make a small, undignified sound—a squeak that's pure Chloe, high and breathy and slightly annoyed. The kitchen is still cold, the heat not yet kicked in, and I wrap my plum cardigan tighter around my shoulders. Through the wall, I can hear Ava's keyboard clicking. She's been editing since six.

My phone buzzes on the counter.

Ava: how's the paper

I look at the mess on the kitchen table. My notebook is open to a page covered in Chloe's handwriting—slanted left, the i's dotted with little circles—and half of it is crossed out. There's a stack of library books: Middlemarch, a critical anthology on Victorian domesticity, a biography of George Eliot that I've been using for context. The chai is the only thing keeping me awake.

Chloe: it's a disaster. i've written three paragraphs and i hate all of them

Ava: oh totally. want me to look at it later?

Chloe: maybe. how's the show stuff

Ava: i have 47 prints and i need to pick 12. i've been staring at them so long i can't tell which ones are good anymore

Chloe: let me think about that

Ava: ha ha

I grin and set down my phone. Two bodies, two sets of problems, both mine. The gallery show is in two months—Ava's first real exhibition, the thing she's been working toward since she dropped out of college. The term paper is due in six weeks, a major assignment for Victorian Literature. Both of us are behind. Both of us are stressed. And somewhere underneath the stress is that quiet, steady thrill: this is my life now. These are my problems. I'm her.

The library is quiet in the way libraries are quiet—not silent, but hushed, a low hum of fluorescent lights and turning pages and the occasional cough from the stacks. I've claimed a table by the window, my books spread out around me, my laptop open to a blank document that's been blank for twenty minutes. The January light is pale and thin, slanting through the glass and pooling on the scratched wood.

I'm stuck on the third paragraph. The paper is about Middlemarch and the tension between individual desire and social obligation—Chloe's idea, something she's been turning over in her head for weeks. I have the thesis. I have the evidence. I just can't figure out how to start the damn thing.

The memory surfaces without warning.

It's the book that triggers it—the biography of George Eliot, open to a page showing a portrait of the author, her heavy-lidded eyes and severe bun. Suddenly I'm sixteen again, not me but Chloe, sitting in her high school English class. The teacher, Mrs. Callahan, is reading aloud from the end of Middlemarch—"the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts"—and Chloe is crying. Not sobbing, just tears running down her face, and she's mortified, hunched over her desk, hoping no one notices. But Mrs. Callahan notices. After class, she stops Chloe at the door and says, "That's the sign of a real reader, you know. Crying at the good parts." And Chloe thinks: I want to do this forever. I want to read books and talk about books and write things that make people feel the way that passage made me feel.

The memory fades, and I'm in the library, my fingers resting on the page, my eyes stinging slightly. The George Eliot biography has a crack in the spine, and the smell of old paper rises from it, musty and sweet. I blink a few times and go back to my outline.

"Chloe?"

I look up. Maya is standing at the edge of my table, her canvas bag over one shoulder, her dark auburn hair loose around her face. She's wearing a rust sweater and an olive corduroy skirt—her favorite outfit, the one she always wears when she wants to feel put-together. Her silver rings catch the light as she sets down her bag.

"There's a poem about that," she says, nodding at my expression. "The one about the writer who can't write. 'I have nothing to say, and I am saying it, and that is poetry.' John Cage."

"That's—that's not helpful," I say, but I'm smiling. My voice comes out in Chloe's sweet, high-pitched rhythm, stumbling slightly over the words. "Also I think that's about music."

"Everything's about music if you try hard enough." She slides into the chair across from me and pulls out her laptop. Her thesis draft is due in a month, and the stress shows in the faint shadows under her eyes, the way she's been twisting her rings around her fingers. "How's the paper?"

"Terrible," I say. "I have three paragraphs and I hate them."

"Oh my god, okay," she says, and I laugh, because that's my line—Chloe's line—and hearing Maya echo it back is a small, warm pleasure. "Let me see."

I turn my laptop toward her, and she leans in, her eyes moving down the screen. While she reads, I watch her—the tiny furrow between her brows, the way her lips move slightly as she processes the words. Maya reads the way Chloe does: with her whole body, like the text is something physical she's trying to inhabit.

"Your thesis is good," she says finally. "The first paragraph is strong. The second one is—I think you're trying to do too much at once. Break it up. One idea at a time."

"That's what Ava said." I pull the laptop back and stare at the screen. "I just—I don't know. I know what I want to say, but every time I try to write it, it sounds wrong."

"There's a poem about that too." Maya's voice is low and melodic, her calm, unhurried cadence a steady counterpoint to my scattered energy. "Actually, there's about a hundred poems about that. The struggle is universal. You're not special."

"Thanks."

"You're welcome." She pulls a book from her bag—a collection of Christina Rossetti, the same one she showed me at our first book club meeting—and opens it to a marked page. "Here. 'I wish I could remember that first day, first hour, first moment of your meeting me.' She's talking about something else, but the feeling is the same. The thing you want to say is there. You just have to trust it."

I write down the quote in my notebook, my handwriting slanting left, and something loosens in my chest. This is what Maya does for Chloe. Grounds her. Reminds her that she's not alone in her struggles. And doing it from the inside—being the one she's comforting—is a different kind of warmth.

"Your thesis," I say. "How's it going?"

Maya groans and drops her head onto her arms. "Don't ask."

"That bad?"

"I have eighty pages and I need to cut it to forty, and every time I try to cut something, I convince myself it's essential. Ben says I'm overthinking it. He's right, but I don't want to admit he's right, because then I'll have to actually do the cutting."

"Ben sounds smart."

"He's insufferable." But she's smiling, a soft, private smile that's only partly about the joke. I know that smile. I've seen it from the outside, and now I'm seeing it from the inside, and the affection in it—the deep, steady love Maya feels for Ben—is not mine, but I can feel it anyway.

We work in silence for a while, the library humming around us. A student at the next table is highlighting something in a textbook, the marker squeaking faintly with each stroke. The librarian wheels a cart of returns past our table, the books thumping softly as they settle. Outside the window, the quad is gray and cold, students hurrying between buildings with their heads down against the wind.

By the time Maya packs up to leave for her shift at the bookstore, I've written two more paragraphs. They're not perfect, but they're better. I close my laptop and gather my books, and the quote from Rossetti stays with me: the thing you want to say is there. You just have to trust it.

The coffee shop is warm and loud, the espresso machine hissing, the register dinging, the low murmur of a dozen conversations overlapping. I'm behind the counter in my apron, my chestnut hair in its usual messy bun, a smudge of coffee grounds on my wrist that I keep forgetting to wash off. The morning rush is over, and the shop has settled into its mid-morning lull.

"Miss? Excuse me, miss?"

The woman at the counter is holding a cup with a look of deep suspicion. "This is a latte," she says. "I ordered a cappuccino."

I look at the cup. It's a cappuccino. I made it myself three minutes ago, the foam still settling into that perfect dome I've finally learned to get right. "That's—let me think about that." Ava's voice, warm and slightly raspy, trailing off as I check the order slip. "Okay, so this is definitely a cappuccino. See the foam? The—the weight of it?"

The woman squints at the cup. "It doesn't look like a cappuccino."

"I promise it is. If you want, I can remake it with—oh, totally, I can just do a new one. Extra dry?"

She hesitates, then pushes the cup back. "Extra dry. Please."

I make the new cappuccino while she watches, my hands moving with Ava's practiced ease. The machine hisses. The milk froths. I tap the pitcher on the counter to break the bubbles, the way Ava learned from the head barista when she first started. The woman takes the new cup, takes a sip, and nods grudgingly. "That's better."

"Glad to help," I say, and my voice is calm and pleasant, but inside I'm thinking: it's the same drink. It's the exact same drink you just watched me make.

The irritation is mine, not Ava's. Ava would let it roll off her. She's patient with difficult customers in a way that's always impressed Chloe. But I'm not Ava—not exactly. I'm me, wearing her face, and sometimes the pettiness slips through. I let it. It's human.

At ten, my shift ends. I hang up my apron and clock out, and the cold air outside is a shock after the warmth of the shop. My beat-up white sneakers are slightly damp from a puddle I didn't see, and I can feel the cold seeping through. The walk to the café where I'm meeting Madison takes fifteen minutes, and I spend it thinking about the prints I need to choose.

The gallery show. Two months. Twelve prints.

Ava's corkboard wall is covered in possibilities—Polaroids and proofs and test prints, forty-seven images that represent three years of work. Landscapes. Portraits. Street photography from the gap year in Austin. The shot of Chloe reading on the couch, golden hour light catching the dust motes in the air. The black-and-white series from the farmers' market. The experimental double exposures that Ava's not sure are genius or garbage.

I need to choose twelve. And I can't tell anymore which ones are good.

Madison is already at the café when I arrive, sitting at our usual table by the window. Her sleek blonde hair is in a high ponytail, and she's wearing a blush wrap dress with nude heels—Madison's version of casual. Her gold bangle catches the light as she waves me over.

"You look stressed," she says.

"I am stressed." I slide into the chair across from her and signal the barista for my usual black coffee. "I have forty-seven prints and I need to pick twelve, and every time I look at them I just—" I trail off, laughing at myself. "Let me think about that."

Madison smiles, but it doesn't reach her eyes. "Join the club. The luxury listing is still stagnant. My mother called this morning to ask if I'd considered 'aggressive staging.' Which means orchids. She wants me to put orchids in the master bath."

"Did you tell her—"

"I told her I'd handle it." She takes a sip of her matcha latte and sets it down with more **** than necessary. "Jordan says I need to set boundaries with her. Jordan's right, but also Jordan's family does Thanksgiving without a single passive-aggressive comment, so what does she know."

"I like Jordan."

"Everyone likes Jordan. It's very annoying." But the tension in her shoulders eases slightly, and her voice softens. "She's been good about it, actually. The Diane stuff. She doesn't push. She just—listens."

There it is. That unguarded affection, the way Madison's whole demeanor changes when she talks about Jordan. Ava's memories tell me this is new—Madison used to be more guarded, more polished, even with her. But the relationship with Jordan has softened something in her, opened a door she didn't know was there.

"Show me the prints," Madison says. "The ones you're considering."

I pull out my phone and scroll to the album. Forty-seven images, each one a piece of Ava's life. I start swiping through them, and Madison leans in, her sharp blue eyes moving across each frame with the same intensity she brings to everything.

"That one," she says, stopping me on the black-and-white of the farmers' market. "The light is incredible. And that one—" the portrait of Chloe on the couch—"that's the best thing you've ever done. If you don't include it, I'll disown you."

"You can't disown me. We're not related."

"I'll find a way."

The memory rises without effort—triggered by the photograph still on my screen, the one of Chloe reading, the golden light, the dust motes, the particular quality of the afternoon that Ava captured three years ago. Ava was twenty, still figuring out her camera, still learning how to see. She'd been photographing the apartment all afternoon, frustrated because nothing looked right, and then she turned around and Chloe was there on the couch, completely absorbed in Middlemarch, her glasses sliding down her nose, her hair a dark halo against the cushion. And Ava thought: this. This is what I want to do. I want to capture moments that feel like this. She took the picture without thinking, and it was the first photograph she ever took that made her feel like a real photographer.

The memory fades, and I'm back in the café, staring at the image on my phone. My eyes sting slightly. Ava's emotion—that quiet pride, that certainty—lingers in my chest like warmth.

"That one," I say. "Definitely that one."

Madison looks at me for a moment, her expression unreadable. Then she reaches across the table and squeezes my hand. "You're going to kill this show," she says. "You know that, right?"

I nod. I do know that. Or at least, Ava's confidence is there, buried under the anxiety but present, steady, waiting to be believed.

That evening, the apartment smells like garlic and olive oil.

I'm at the stove, stirring a pot of pasta, my hair escaping its messy bun, a dish towel thrown over one shoulder. Chloe is at the kitchen table, her laptop open, her term paper finally starting to take shape. She's wearing her plum cardigan over a cream blouse, her glasses slightly askew, and she's muttering to herself as she types.

"How's the paper?" I ask.

"Better," she says without looking up. "Maya helped. Also I read a thing about George Eliot that made me cry in the library."

"What thing?"

"There's a quote—'the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts.' Mrs. Callahan read it to us in high school, and I—" She stops and looks up, her dark eyes slightly distant. "It's weird. Having these memories. They're mine, but they're also not mine. They feel like mine."

"I know what you mean." I drain the pasta, and steam billows up around my face. "I was looking at that photograph of you—the one on the couch—and I remembered taking it. Being twenty and frustrated and then seeing you there and just—knowing. Knowing this was what I wanted to do. That memory is Ava's, but I felt it. I was there."

Chloe leans back in her chair, her dimples showing. "We've come a long way from that alley."

"The alley," I say, and I laugh—Ava's laugh, warm and trailing off. "Oh, totally. The alley behind the bookstore. Do you remember how terrified I was? I thought I was going to get arrested."

"I remember the chai. I spilled it everywhere."

"And you still made chai when you got home. That was the first thing you did."

"Priorities."

I dish the pasta into two bowls and set one in front of her. We eat at the kitchen table, the radio playing something soft and jazzy, the winter dark pressing against the windows. This is what I wanted. Not just the bodies, not just the clothes. This. Two sisters having dinner on a Tuesday night, talking about their days, helping each other with their problems. The ordinary texture of a life. Two lives.

"I've been thinking," Chloe says, twirling pasta around her fork. "About—Him. The guy I was. The one who wanted this for years."

"What about him?"

"I don't think about him much anymore. I used to. The first few days, every time I caught my reflection, I'd remember. Now it's just—my face. My reflection." She pauses. "I don't miss him. I don't miss being him."

"Neither do I." I take a sip of water, my fingers long and elegant around the glass, the silver cuff bracelet glinting at my wrist. "Sometimes I wonder if he's still in there. The male body. Dormant. Waiting."

"It's just a shell," Chloe says. "He's not in there. He's here." She taps her chest. "And here." She points at me. "We're him. All the parts that mattered."

We eat in silence for a moment. The refrigerator hums. Through the wall, I can hear someone's music from the apartment next door, bass turned too high, the same as every night.

"I'm going to stay," Chloe says quietly. "I'm not going back. Not to the male body. Not ever."

"I know," I say. "Me neither."

And the certainty of it—the quiet, bone-deep confidence that this is my life now, these bodies, these identities, these sisters—settles over me like the quilt on Chloe's bed. Warm. Familiar. Home.

Later, I lie in Ava's bed, the pale grey duvet pulled up to my chin, my hair loose on the pillow. The room smells like coffee and vanilla. My camera is on the nightstand, the lens cap finally on. The corkboard wall is covered in prints, and twelve of them now have small red stickers in the corner—the ones I've chosen. The ones that will go in the show.

Through the wall, I can hear Chloe settling into her bed—the creak of the mattress, the soft click of her lamp. I don't shift into her awareness. I don't need to. I know she's there, a second warmth in the dark, a second heartbeat.

Two months until the gallery show. Six weeks until the term paper. A whole life stretching out beyond that—classes and shifts and open mics and coffee with Madison and study sessions with Maya. Ordinary days. Ordinary problems. All of them mine.

I close my eyes. My chest rises and falls. The weight of my breasts shifts with each breath, a comfort now, so familiar I don't notice it unless I think about it. The voice in my head—my internal monologue—has absorbed Ava's cadence, her measured rhythm, her dry humor. But underneath it, the same me. The same hunger. Quiet now. Satisfied.

Tomorrow I'll wake up and make coffee and go to work. I'll text Madison about the show. I'll help Chloe with her paper. I'll live this life the way I've been living it—fully, completely, as her.

And somewhere in the back of my mind, barely acknowledged, the knowledge that there are other girls out there. Other lives. Other bodies. The hunger will wake again. It always does.

But tonight, I'm Ava. And Chloe. And that's enough.