She slides the earrings on; one a papaya, the other a crescent moon. 

I like my girls just like I like my honey; sweet. A little selfish. I like my women like I like my

money; green. A little jealous. 'Cause I'm a beautiful wreck. A colorful mess, but I'm funny.

The eyebrow razor cuts through the hairs, until the slit is sharp and thin. 

Мальчик-гей (гей)! Мальчик-гей (гей)! Мальчик-гей (гей)! Мальчик-мальчик мальчик…

She cuffs the pants, rolls them up twice. 

Am I allowed to look at her like that? Could it be wrong when she's just so nice to look at?

And she smells like lemongrass and sleep. She tastes like apple juice and peach. Oh, you would find her in a polaroid picture. And she means everything to me. 

Eyeliner on eyelid, far from the lashes, sloping into an angle. 66 degrees. Lavender. 

I think we could do it if we tried If only to say you're mine Sofia, know that you and I

shouldn't feel like a crime.

Shoelaces on stiff Docs, tied with one hand. Orange into white into pink. 

Anastasia smiles in the mirror, snaps a shot, and sends it to the group chat. She’s ready. 

******

“Here you go,” Anastasia says, nodding to the patron. “Have a good one.”

The professor takes the book with a quick smile, and bolts out of the library. Her heels are

much too nice for a city that perpetually rains. Then Anastasia hears the scanner beep, high and flat. 

“Блин.” She forgot to desensitize the book. 

“You’re good,” she calls out to the professor. Judging from her sensible button up and blazer,

she teaches business, maybe law. Nothing in the humanities. 

The professor wastes no time and pushes the library exit open. Everyone is always in a

rush at the Seattle University Library; faculty and students alike. Anastasia’s job is to smile at them politely, tell them where the bathroom is or how to read a fucking call number, and waste no more than two minutes with a patron. She’s rather good at keeping things brief. 

Except with one man. 

Matthew George Langley Jr. Anastasia knows his full name, not by choice, but because he

lost his student ID card months ago, and refuses to replace it. Thus, everytime he checks out a

book, she is forced to look him up in the system and test her two minute rule. 

And he loves to linger. He’ll chat about anything—the weather, the temperature of the

library, the color of Anastasia’s brown hair. He once even talked about the ethics of a 24 hour library, until Anastasia’s supervisor came up and saved her. 

Matthew, like most men, probably thinks that he’s being sweet. Anastasia does not find

men sweet. 

Her phone buzzes under the reception desk, and she glances at the lock screen

notifications. 

Suck My Queer Dick 

*photo attachment*

Vanessa: Is this giving hot butch or golf dad?

Sam-Sam: put down the shirt’s collar, u psycho

Ruby: HOT BUTCH

Anastasia glances over her shoulder then types a reply.

Anastasia: I hate to say it…golf dad. 

“Hello!!” 

Anastasia can hear both exclamation points in his voice, like two punches to the face. She

sighs. “Hi, Matthew.”

“Lovely to see you.” His smile is always obscenely large. All teeth and eye crinkles. In

Anastasia’s opinion, there is no reason to be smiling like that with a stranger. 

“How can I help you?”

Somehow, his smile widens. “I need a book for class.”

“Mmhm, course reserve?”

“What’s that?”

“Nevermind. What’s the book’s title?”

Matthew pulls out his phone, which is in an outdated otter box case and covered in

cracks. Anastasia has seen it before, of course, because Matthew always has to look up the titles. He never thinks to do it before he speaks to her. 

“It’s for my English class. Something by Virgina Woolf.”

“A Room of One’s Own? Mrs. Dalloway? Orlando?” Anastasia lists off. 

“That’s it! Orlando.”

She spins on her heel and goes to the shelf of course reserves, where sure enough,

Orlando is waiting. It’s a good book, a great book even. But if Matthew is reading it for class, well, that makes it pathetic. 

They go through the process of Anastasia finding him in the system—by this point she

has his student ID number memorized—while Matthew rambles about the reading load for his class. 

“Switch majors then.” Anastasia scans the book, a flash of red striking her pale skin.

“If you don’t like reading.”

“I love reading,” Matthew says seriously. “I’m just a slow reader.”

“Ah.” She nods politely, wondering why she engaged with him in the first place. 

“That’s a really nice sweater.”

Anastasia looks at the lavender sleeves, the left one hemmed to fit her missing forearm.

She bought the sweater at a thrift store, cause it, in Ruby’s words, makes her look like a lesbian grandma. The goal. 

That’s not why Matthew is complimenting her though. He could never understand the

complexity of queer fashion. Still, she has to be polite at work, so she says, “Thanks.”

“I like how you’ve sewn the sleeve for your arm.”

Anastasia raises her eyebrows. People usually ignore her missing arm, pretend not to

notice. Matthew had never said anything up until this point. 

She passes him the book, just as he says, “I usually tie mine.”

And then Matthew waves goodbye and walks away. For once, Anastasia watches him

leave. What did he mean by that? 

There’s a slant in the way he moves, just barely noticeable, but Anastasia is well tuned to

what the body should move like and how it shouldn’t. Her body never moves as it should. 

When Matthew pushes open the exit, he turns back to her, grin brightening to find her

looking. Perhaps he could see the curiosity in her eyes, cause he tugs up his right pant leg, revealing the sliver of metal where his ankle should be. A prosthetic foot. 

An entire semester Anastasia had been dealing with Matthew, and she never noticed. 

******

“Is that Lila’s shirt?” 

Anastasia takes an entire five seconds to look down at her Frog and Toad tee. 

Раз

Purchased at the overpriced thrift shop at the corner of King Ave.

Два

Taken off in a night of quiet moans under lavender LED lights. 

Три 

Left behind amidst a morning of matcha lattes and burnt toast.

Четыре 

Forgotten after a messy fight, and an even messier goodbye. 

Пять

“Yea,” Anastasia says to Vanessa with a forced smirk. “It was Lila’s, but it’s mine now.

Reparations for breaking my heart.”

But really, she doesn’t give a shit about Frog and Toad—who are, apparently, American

queer icons. 

“Pretty sure you broke her heart,” Vanessa challenges after a sip of spiked lemonade. 

“It was mutual.” In the moment it didn’t feel that way. Maybe even now it doesn’t, but

Anastasia isn’t in the mood to miss her ex-girlfriend tonight. She’d rather drink vodka with ginger ale and kiss someone new. 

A woman, of course.

She scans the room for the green flags. Or rather, the rainbow flags. 

The ginger in the corner, tucked in between a bookcase and a broken lamp shade.

Her button up is rolled up to her elbows, showing off a sleeve of tats. Snake. Minimalist scribble. Tits. 

Across the room, beer in hand, a bobbed красотка leans one arm on the wall, neck

curved to give the other their full attention. A carabiner dangles off their belt. Body language. Focus. 

Stuck within the crowd of dancers, dark brown eyes that match dark brown skin locks

eyes with Anastasia. Green nails, two shorter than the rest. Smile. Tension. 

There it is. 

As Anastasia walks towards the gorgeous stranger, she passes off her joint to Vanessa, and

gives a few nods to familiar faces. Her expression is honed, eyes lidded, lips parted just a centimeter. She learned it from Russian men. Anastasia learned many things from Russian men; fear most of all. 

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

“I’m Tammy.”

“Anastasia.”

A glance at the missing arm, then her eyes shoot back up.    

“Your accent is hot.”

“Mm?”

“What is it?”

She considers lying. Every single time, she debates a harmless white lie. Her mother

wouldn’t mind. She’d understand. 

“Russian,” Anastasia admits. 

Shock. Pity. Intrigue. 

“Did you grow up there or…”

Anastasia feels the crowd press in on them. House parties are always overpacked and

understocked. But American laws and lame bars chain all the students to their homes. 

“So how do you know Tyler?” Anastasia moves on. 

Tammy laughs. It’s a pretty one, makes Anastasia’s stomach turn with a warm tug. Боже,

women. 

“I don’t know him, really. He’s in Economics with Niall, who’s roommates with Larissa,

who’s friends with my friend Rebecca.”

Anastasia is not listening, she’s watching Tammy’s lips, pulling closer and closer. 

“Do you have any family in Russia? Are they, like, ok?”

There it goes. What a fucking turn off, war is. The word ‘like’ too. 

With a sigh, Anastasia says, “I gotta pee.”

The line is long but close to a full handle of Smirnoff. Anastasia snatches a red solo cup

that looks clean enough, and pours for five seconds. She sings a lullaby as she counts.

Спят усталые игрушки, книжки спят. 

A homeland that is not her home, not anymore. 

Одеяла и подушки ждут ребят. 

Family fleeing, family enlisting. 

Даже сказка спать ложится,  

Putin’s voice loud and clear.

Чтобы ночью нам присниться. 

Shit Vodka that tastes nothing like home. 

Ты ей пожелай: Баю-бай.

Nevertheless, Anastasia throws the liquid back and pretends to enjoy the muddled taste.

Her phone buzzes; she chucks the drink on the floor, and pulls it out.

Suck My Queer Dick 

Ruby: WHY THE FUCK IS NATHANIEL DAVIDSON HERE?!

Vanessa: No fucking wayyyyy

Sam-Sam: Want me to kick him out?

Anastasia: That’s the one who called Marcus a f@*?

Ruby: YEP 

Sam-Sam: Bad news. It’s not just Nate, the whole Basketball team is here. 

Vanessa: A gay Stevie Nicks enthusiast throws a Full Moon witch party and the

BASKETBALL TEAM COMES?

Ruby: LOLOLOLOL

Anastasia: I’m speechless.

Sam-Sam: Tyler claims he didn’t invite them.

Anastasia: Welllll half the people here he didn’t invite.

“Is this the line?” 

Anastasia’s thumb freezes on the screen and she braces herself as she looks up. Matthew

George Langley Jr.

It’s strange seeing his smile when there isn’t a counter between them. Without all the

fluorescent lighting and quiet whispers, Matthew’s smile doesn’t seem so false. Eager and nauseating, but not false.

“Hey,” Anastasia finds herself saying. She’s not at work, she has no obligation to be nice. 

“Cool bling.” 

She knows he’s referring to the band tied snug around her upper arm, its chains draping

down past the elbow’s abrupt end. But. “Bling?”

 With a wide grin, Matthew lifts his right foot, showing off the glow in the dark stars

stuck to his prosthetic ankle. “You like mine?”

“Looks like a kindergarten art project.” Anastasia turns her back to face the bathroom.

Three more people.

“That’s what I was going for!” 

Anastasia doesn’t care enough to consider if Matthew is attempting to flirt, or if he’s being

genuine. A part of her guesses the latter. But she isn’t thinking about him, so. 

“I finished Orlando,” Matthew speaks to her back.

“Wow? An entire book?” 

He doesn’t say anything immediately, and Anastasia feels a cold as sharp as that of Петер

slap her skin. She turns around.

“I’m not an idiot.” Matthew’s frown is heartbreaking. “I just read slow.”

He has told her this twice now. Anastasia remembers the pain of learning English, the

stutters and slow sentences, the unkindness she’d faced. She’s being cruel. 

Why? 

Because he’s a man? 

Matthew had not been cruel to her. Yet. 

“Forgive me.” Anastasia’s using Russian syntax. It always seems more powerful when the

‘I’ isn’t involved in the apology. 

“You’re forgiven.” 

They turn to lean against the hallway’s wall in tandem. When the bathroom door opens,

and the line shuffles forward, Matthew’s arm brushes Anastasia’s. Not her special, unusually missing one, but her normal one. 

It doesn’t feel quite so normal now. 

“So, Orlando?” Anastasia prompts.

"I'm sick to death of this particular self. I want another," he quotes.

She pulls her eyes away from the tapestry of Prince hanging across from them, to look at

Matthew’s smile. A little softer now. Still genuine. 

“Everytime I read a good book, I sorta become the character, if that makes sense.” This

time, he breaks their locked gazes first, and lifts his chin. “I love being someone else.”

Anastasia wishes she has something profound to say. About Virgina Woolf. About

Matthew’s words. But though she works in a library, though she can recite Pushkin, Anastasia is no English Major. 

Her instinct is to ask why? Why would you want to be someone else, when this world was

created for you, Matthew? 

Maybe when she tells her friends about this later, she’ll lie and say she had. Vanessa will

laugh. Ruby will screech and get to their knees and bow. Sam will probably wink and say, “Atta queer. Put him in his place.”

Anastasia is looking down at Matthew’s prosthetic leg. She isn’t sure when she started

staring. The stickers make the metal seem less scary, she notices. Just as the earrings, eyeliner, and stiff boots Anastasia wears make her arm’s knotted end seem insignificant in comparison. 

“Were you born with it?” Anastasia couldn’t blame the crap Vodka for being so bold, she

hadn't had nearly enough to warrant this. She’s Russian, for fucks sake. 

But Matthew’s smile does not slip, and he finally brings his eyes down. Anastasia feels

warm when he meets her gaze again. “I lost it.”

She swallows. “Me too.”

Neither of them offer more, a silent agreement that a crowded party was not the place for

those stories. It seems like a promise. To tell those stories eventually. 

Anastasia plays with her pointed silver ring, sliding the metal up and down her middle

finger. She and Matthew share this one thing—but in every other way, they are antitheses. 

She’s a lesbian. Men are not a part of her life anymore. 

The last person goes into the bathroom, and Anastasia is grateful for the countdown. She

waits for the sound of a flush. Past these thin walls, she can even hear the pee slam into the toilet’s water. 

For once, Matthew doesn’t fill the silence with small talk. It’s so unlike the man she

thought she knew, she squirms. Then her eyes wander back his way, and there he is, looking back.

Stomach flips. Skin tingles. Heart squeezes. 

The door smacks open and Anastasia runs into it. She throws her back against the door

and breathes. 

That’s not right. That’s not normal. That’s not her. 

Her hand is shaking as she stumbles towards the dirty sink, dirty mirror. 

Flushed cheeks. Wide eyes. Parted lips. 

She cares. She more than cares. She likes. 

Vanessa’s voice nags in her mind, the nerves men provoke, the anxiety women misread

for crushes. Could this be that? Could Anastasia just be nervous? 

Because she is queer. She could not, would not be anything else. 

The solution seems simple, now that Anastasia’s heart rate is easing. An experiment. 

That’s what she called it all those years ago, when she’d pulled Екатерина into the

bathroom stall, and they kissed until the bell rang. An experiment. 

Anastasia is no longer that nine year old Russian citizen with two arms and a queer

secret. Yet she flings the door open and yanks Matthew aside with the same urgency as with Катя. 

Matthew grins at her, his confusion overshadowed by excitement.

“What are we doing?” he whispers. 

Anastasia pushes him back into the door, and leans her lips into his. “This.”

******

The experiment continues in Tyler’s bedroom. It drags on to the next day, when Matthew

shows up to return Orlando, his smile knowing and genuine. Experimenting in lonely library stacks. Staff room. Matthew’s dorm. Broom closet. 

It’s in the closet when Anastasia considers if the experiment is no longer an experiment. 

She decides it is, because she is queer. And Matthew’s kisses negate that. So his touches

are mere experiments, conclusions pending. 

******

“Yes,” Anastasia speaks into the phone. “Завтра я пошлю бабушке письмо.”

“Alright, I have to go, mom.” They say their goodbyes, their I love yous, Anastasia’s in

English and Ева’s in Russian, and then she hangs up. 

Vanessa calls out from the bathroom, “Did you tell Eva we love her?”

Anastasia rolls her eyes. She’s the only one on good terms with her mom. The Russian is

 cool with the queer. Ironic. But more so, tragic. 

“Ana,” Sam hisses from the other side of the couch. “Is that a hickey?!”

The sparkly sheer long sleeve under Anastasia’s vest is supposed to hide that, but Sam has

a photographer’s eye. 

Ruby screams, spatula in hand when they run out of the kitchen. “WHO!?”

“Is it Rachel from Blue Bottle?” Vanessa guesses as she shuts the bathroom door behind her. 

Vanessa and Ruby’s dorm is ridiculous. Private bathroom. Kitchen. Two rooms. They

scored in the housing lottery, whereas Anastasia and Sam ate shit. 

Ruby throws their hands up. In joy? Maybe. Probably just for the attention. “Rachel has

been flirting with you all semester.”

“Rachel’s not even queer,” Anastasia snaps. She had to learn that the hard way. 

“Then who is it?” Sam pushes. 

Usually, Anastasia doesn’t keep these things from them. Usually, there’s no reason to hide.

But when she opens her mouth to say Matthew, nothing comes out. She can’t. 

“We’re just fucking,” she says instead.

Vanessa crosses her arms. “Fucking…as in consistently?”

Anastasia raises a brow. 

“A fuck buddy!” Ruby shouts. 

“Besides Lila, you never spend more than a night with a woman.” Sam’s face is confused,

border-line suspicious. As her roommate, she knows how often Anastasia has been out. 

“They’re good in bed.” Anastasia shrugs. 

Ruby shouts again, “NON-BINARY!”

Sam stares at Anastasia, seeing right through her careful wording. “Is that what you

meant by they? Nonbinary?”

Anastasia feels the weight of her three friends. Ruby, who ran away from their sadist,

homophobic parents at fifteen, Vanessa who was roofied and raped her senior year and the police didn’t press charges, and Sam who grew up in the mormon church, and still pretends to pray every time she goes home. 

They were an exclusive group, a jaded, messy bunch of queers who shared a love for the

lavender. Anything else, loving the enemy, would be a betrayal. A violent one. 

“Yes,” Anastasia lies. “That’s what I meant.”

******

Secrets are not new to Anastasia. 

Her life is a web of conflicting disguises. American. Russian. Queer. Disabled. Refugee.

Traitor. Who would she be without them? She is so used to the layers of identities that hide the

complexity within, that another secret seems insignificant.

Matthew’s not a mere secret, however. At least to herself, Anastasia can admit that.

“How was your day today?” he asks in between kisses.

“Fine.”

Breath stolen, Anastasia’s arm is pinned on one side of Matthew’s head, palm shaking. He

is trapped in the negative space between the wall and her body, and he loves it. So easy to please. 

“Talk to me.” Matthew smiles. “What’s up?”

Anastasia steps away, breaking the tension. “Literally nothing.” 

He looks at her for a few moments more, brown hair mussed and lips swollen. Then she

moves back in. 

“Anastasia,” he tries.

 She’s not interested in talking. 

“Ana, wait a second.”

That’s a clear no. She freezes. Pulls away. Gives him space. Her arm crosses her chest,

cradling her missing one like she’s holding the knub as a hand. 

“I’d like to take you out.” Matthew swallows. “Properly.”

Now it’s Anastasia’s turn to say no. 

“I want to be with you.” Matthew seems more hesitant, but he still says, “I want to be your

boyf—” 

“I date women,” she cuts him off. 

“But maybe, you want to date men too?”

Anastasia can’t help but flinch at those words. At the presumption and wanting and hope

and doubt laced in the question. She braces herself for the rejection she has to give. Unlike all the Russian men that she dismissed before, this time feels heavy and guilty and perhaps, almost, maybe untrue. 

“We will never be anything more than this.”

******

The next time Matthew George Langley Jr. comes into the library, he drops his copy of

Mrs. Dalloway at the book drop, avoiding Anastasia’s eye completely. His face is covered in hurt. 

Anastasia watches him walk away. He doesn’t look back at her. And she can’t help but

notice the lavender sock he’s wearing over his prosthetic foot. 

A coincidence. Probably.