Dinner is at a low-lit Italian place two days later. The kind with wide windows and chequered tablecloths. It’s not fancy, and Hazel already feels overdressed in her loose button-up and jeans. She pauses at the glass door, inhales, and counts to ten.

Violet’s hair is tied back. Curled strands frame her face, bouncing when she meets Hazel’s gaze. And Hazel’s stomach contorts in all the wrong ways.

It’s a bit shameful, how the pendulum swings from resentment to regret.

Sometimes, she pretends it’s like the first time. Or the second. When everything trembled with newness and feelings bloomed like wild things, when she researched dozens of internet approved questions before realising she didn’t need any of them. When Violet finally laughed, unguarded, without covering her mouth, and held on to Hazel’s arm as they walked aimlessly, steps loose and slow and wordlessly in sync.

It’s been years since then. And as much as she would like to forget, her mind won’t let her. And it reminds Hazel, routinely, that she most likely never will.

She blinks, ambles, and then she’s at Violet’s table. There is a generous pile of breadsticks in front of Violet, obnoxiously placed, and guilt stretches across Violet’s heart-shaped face.

“Sorry! They offered and I thought it would come with the meal.”

Violet gestures and her hand shakes, a little. A hint of a polite smile pinches at her cheeks and Hazel doesn’t feel at all comfortable. Still, she sits and tugs her chair in. A silver necklace rests against Violet’s clavicle, catching the glow of the string lights — yet another item Hazel does not recognise.

It’s one of the saddest facts: every time they see each other, there is something new. Something unfamiliar, a reminder that growing apart isn’t sudden. It happens in the details, in the distance, in the drift of different directions.

“I think it’s a starter?” Violet tries.

“It’s complimentary,” says Hazel. “But you do have to pay.”

“Oh,” Violet says. And it’s really awkward. Hazel presses her fingertips together, realising a little too late she’d said you with more animosity than she intended. She goes to compensate for this by offering something, anything normal to say. Suddenly, the rehearsed questions she used to memorise don’t seem like such a bad idea.

Violet beats her to it, though. She makes a soft sound, and then asks, cordially, “So, what’s going on with you?”

She tilts her chin up to meet Hazel’s eyes. Hazel looks away. Small talk drives her crazy. Violet knows this. It’s like pulling teeth with you, she snapped at Hazel one time. Because Hazel promised she would be better, and that somehow made everything worse.

But that's not what this conversation is about.

“Nothing, honestly,” Hazel says. 

Silence drapes itself across the table, between the untouched breadsticks. Laden. Hazel knows she should return the question, ask Violet how she’s doing. Why she phoned first, when they agreed that last time should have been the last.

They’re saved when the waitress sees them at their table and takes their drink orders. Water for Hazel, a mixed fruit concoction for Violet. Neither of them have ever been day drinkers.

When the waitress disappears, Hazel turns to look back at Violet. Their eyes meet, a second longer than what might be considered appropriate.

Violet looks away first.

The drinks arrive quickly, a shared water tumbler between them. Hazel pours herself a glass and takes a sip. Violet waits, pointedly.

“So,” Hazel finally starts, “What’s really going on?”

Violet’s eyes widen. Momentarily. Then her face falls back into this controlled, neutral expression. 

“What? Nothing.”

Hazel doesn’t say anything to that. She can sort of gauge where this is going. There’s going to be a confession. A real one. It’s aching. She wants to reach out and tell Violet to just come right out with it, say what she wants to say. Violet holds back so much, too much, and Hazel has never been one to pull more than she needs to.

Violet clears her throat.

“I saw Mum yesterday, you know. Helped her clean out the tank. She says hi.” A pause. “She asked how you were doing.”

“I’m getting by,” Hazel says. Then she stops. “Something happen with her?”

“No! Actually, no. She’s fine,” Violet says. “But I’mー”

Hazel feels her world stop, then. Violet is hesitant. She laughs half-heartedly and her tone when she next speaks is brimming with self-contempt.

“I should tell you.”

Just do it, Hazel thinks. She gets it. Violet’s mother, never unkind, called Hazel daughter-in-law before the topic ever came up between them. Hazel misses that more than she will admit, the belonging, the affection. Nothing she was familiar with before Violet quite literally tumbled into her arms.

“Violet.”

Violet bristles. Her shoulders are tense. You’re better at this than me, Hazel said, once. The context never really mattered.

“It’s…I’mー seeing someone. Now.”

An embarrassing secret? Hazel believes in fairytales. Still. She didn’t fall in love over a day, and contrary to popular belief, she can’t fall out of love in a single day. And even though it’s been more than a day — more than a day — she still can’t fall out of love. And she most likely never will.

What makes Hazel’s stomach churn is the way Violet says it. Her mouth offers a tentative smile, guilt threading through her voice like something caught and fraying. Violet is swift as she catches it, her expression faltering. Not soon enough, Hazel thinks. Never soon enough.

“It’sー not a new thing. I know it seems random, but I wanted to tell youー myself. I thinkー I owe you that.”

Hazel inhales, keeps her mouth firm. There’s no anger – there can’t be. Just deflation, a weight in her sternum. Merciful, Hazel thinks.

Violet’s posture is perfect and poised. Her usual elegance feels performative, here. A practiced grace pulled taut. Hazel wonders, not for the first time, how long the words have been waiting on Violet’s tongue. How many times she’s rehearsed this conversation – and when, exactly, she decided to break her ex-girlfriend’s heart all over again.

“That’s…nice to hear.” Hazel’s voice does not waver — neither does her gaze. She lets her shoulders relax, shoulders Violet used to kiss and clutch and murmur into. Shoulders that have memorised every promise and every apology.

Violet looks like she wants to say more. Like she's waiting for Hazel to ask. How long has it been and how did they meet and does she offer her arm when Violet wears heels. Does she watch Violet wash off her makeup after a long day, does she squeeze Violet’s hand twice for I’m here and you’re okay. The questions settle behind Hazel’s teeth, unbidden. Questions she is no longer allowed to ask, answers she will never be allowed to know.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Hazel nods. It’s the slow erosion of knowing each other that undoes her, the persistent ache of forgetting in real time. That, and never knowing when the conversation becomes the final conversation. The ending.

Hazel should probably step back from the situation. But she’s here now. 

Maybe she is a masochist.

“What’s her name?”

Violet blinks, eyes widening slightly. She is uncomfortable. Hazel is making this uncomfortable. This isn’t fair, but Violet brought it up first.

Violet says, “Lucille.” Then pauses, as if she wants to add more but thinks better of it. There is a lilt in Violet’s voice when she says it, the name of the woman who texts Violet good morning and kisses her goodnight. The name Violet says like a secret she is halfway in love with.

The name, that name, settles between them, foreign and final, a bruise blooming beneath battered skin.

Hazel wonders, not for the first time, if Violet still carries the weight of her. If ghosts of their relationship bleed into Violet’s new one. If Violet sees parts of Hazel in Lucille, if Violet ever thinks to herself, Hazel would love this.

Hazel nods again; because there is nothing else to do. Nothing appropriate to say. 

And then, Hazel wonders, whether Violet still thinks about her at all.

Yes would haunt her. No would gut her. And the silence, already doing both, sits heavy in her chest.

So, this is it. This is the confession. Not the kind she was hoping for; not an apology, no let’s try again. Not the happy ending, but an ending all the same. There’s a strange relief in it, like setting down something heavy after carrying it too long. 

And maybe it’s a good thing, the better thing. The truth, a name layered with adoration, spoken in a tone that once belonged to Hazel and Hazel alone.

Maybe it’ll give Hazel a reason to crawl out of the gutter of expired feelings and text one of the girls Joy keeps trying to set her up with. Learn a new name, a new favourite colour, have a new set of nails pressed into her back like punctuation.

There is cruel irony in being the one who walked away first. The one who said maybe this isn’t it, the one who rationalises with learned logic that only ends up hurting the two people it was meant to spare.

But it’s Violet who moved on. First. And it’s Hazel who remains, lodged between memory and consequence, pinned beneath the ache of what ifs and maybe we couldー

It’s Violet who stopped searching for Hazel in every room. And Hazel — by choice — never left the room at all.

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Heather Emmanuel is a writer of contemporary lesbian literary fiction and prose poetry. Her work is forthcoming in The Offing. You can find her at heather-emmanuel.comor at @heather.emmanuel8

ART BY:
Belinda Subraman
Wild Things
ink and acrylic paint