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The real secret huge problem thing is that Sylvie's still sort of obsessed with Joan.
It's not like she hasn't tried to get over it. She really has. She's taken up knitting and upped her volunteering to three days a week and sees friends for dinner whenever she possibly can. Bobby is gone from her apartment except for a burned pan, set of chipped plates, and bleach-stained shirt and gone from her heart except for the ways she wakes up in the middle of the night and hates being alone. She can walk down the street just fine, is rediscovering her favorite breakfast foods, and enjoying plenty of her own, stable, predictable company.
All this to say, she's doing her best to move on. Onwards and upwards, like Jane Austen would say! But Sylvie can’t seem to shake the uncanny sense that Joan is everywhere. Her records in the window, her stupid, unforgettable, intoxicating voice out of the radio (don't shack up with a famous musician, Sylvie's learning, or it ruins her ability to listen to any popular station - try focusing at work with your ex crooning on your ear) that godforsaken Time Magazine cover Sylvie can't seem to get away from, even the imprint of her face on Sylvie’s eyelids when she falls asleep.
Sylvie's hated a lot of things about Joan - her inky hair that pulled off of Bobby’s jackets, her unflinchingly beautiful face that clearly only exists to lure other people’s boyfriends away, the way everything about her made you want to lean in and in and in – but she thought all of this would go away once Bobby left for good. It’s not healthy, she knows, to fixate like this. Sylvie’s smart. She’s always been smart. Smart, and mature, and capable, and when thinking about Joan, comparing herself to Joan, wondering what Joan was doing and if she was doing it better than Sylvie, took up too much real estate in her brain, Sylvie did the grownup, painful thing and examined her relationship, found it lacking, and released Bobby into the world to make whatever kind of mistakes she’d been holding him back from.
Now she’s stuck wondering if she waited too long, if years of fixating on Joan had become too much of a habit to break, if all this jealousy has really amounted to is these past few years thinking JoanJoanJoan.
Not like Sylvie’s ever really even met her. She knows Joan Baez, the folk star, the seductress, the famous woman with her air of effortless skill, and sometimes Sylvie kind of hates that she doesn’t know anything else. Not the way Joan sleeps, maybe on her side, curled into a ball, or arms thrown around with those talented hands flung every which way in unconsciousness. Not the way she eats breakfast, or how her voice sounds offstage, or any of those little intimacies you learn from actually being close to someone.
Bobby knows those things about Joan. Sylvie’s sure of it.
And it hurts because the most painful parts of the betrayal aren’t even something she can fully imagine. She wants to know every beat, catalogue the things Joan is that she isn’t, pin and flay every second that Joan and Bobby lost to one another. Instead she’s stuck with this idiotic habit, this fixation on the woman who stole her boyfriend, and the worst part of it is that she still likes Joan’s music.
She’s tried to imagine the intimacies, of course. As is her right, as any girl would when she finds out of an affair, of a woman who her boyfriend found secret solace within. Sylvie might not know the real Joan, the one Bobby presses against the walls of her expensive home, but she knows how Bobby kisses, knows the way his calluses scrape against the sensitive skin at her waist, so it’s not really much of a stretch to imagine Joan in her role, Joan’s mouth opening to Bobby’s, the nicotine bite of his breath souring her tongue, and all the other things that tongue might do. Joan on her knees, Joan on her back, the thrill Sylvie’s convinced men get from a famous woman performing some kind of task at their behest, if all that hair might cover Joan’s face and turn her into some sort of magical wish fulfillment with clever hands and a million-dollar throat.
Yeah. Sylvie’s imagined it a lot.
And sometimes, late at night, when she wakes in a cold sweat and remembers how Bobby left her, hates herself for being the patient, boring girlfriend and hates him even more for making her feel that way, her thoughts turn to Joan and Bobby and all that desire she watched onstage, again and again. And sometimes, in the moments she’s least proud of, Sylvie finds a way to keep herself involved. One night she sets Joan and Bobby tangled up in one another, sheets thrown to the floor, and dream-Sylvie bursts in, gasps at the infidelity. Here Joan blushes, Bobby looks up, catches Sylvie’s hand just as she’s about to run for the door and slam it behind her, and says wait, I want you. Here, he draws her back to bed and Joan moves to make room for both of them.
This is the part in the story that Sylvie would never, not in a million years, admit to. This is when her fingers trace across her own stomach, muscles tensing at the memory of other kinds of touch, lower and lower until she takes the plunge past the line of her underwear, fingers moving against herself to the thought of Joan and Bobby’s bodies around hers, inviting her into whatever they’ve created, like she’s always belonged there. The aftermath feels strange each time, body loose, Joan’s lips and Bobby’s hands still flickering through her confused and flinching thoughts.
//
It’s something about this, the way she can’t quite picture Joan and Bobby at their least guarded, the way she’s never even heard Joan really laugh, how Bobby’s gone and it’s Joan’s fault, but now he’s not with Joan either, and how Joan’s face keeps appearing in her dreams, like some kind of ghost, that makes Sylvie pick up the phone when Joan flies into town. Sylvie might not be Bobby’s girlfriend anymore, but she was for a long time, and she still knows people.
It only takes two favors to get the address of Joan’s hotel, another to get herself upstairs, and it’s not until her knuckles are poised, ready to bang on the door so loudly that Joan knows there’s some kind of reckoning waiting on the other side, that Sylvie’s panic signs begin to flash this is a bad idea and are you crazy. She’s about to turn and leave, and check herself into the nearest hospital that treats confused and jealous women, write the night off as a temporary moment of self-righteous insanity, when the door swings open.
A fairly generic room opens behind it, hotel grade furniture across the room, patterned carpet, and blankly pleasing painting hung over the bed, and in the middle of it all, Joan. Sylvie’s never been this close to Joan before. Never close enough to smell her, cinnamon and vanilla and undeniable talent, never close enough to feel the quiet gravity Joan pulls as she breathes, in and out, watching Sylvie. Of course Bobby fell for her, Sylvie thinks, then realizes she inadvertently spoke aloud as Joan’s eyebrows lift. “You’re Joan Baez,” she tries.
Joan blinks once. Nods. “You’re Bobby’s girlfriend.”
“Ex-girlfriend,” Sylvie corrects, and Joan’s mouth twists into a wry grin.
“These days, who isn’t.”
“I’m Sylvie.”
Joan’s smile melts into something slightly softer. “I’m Joan. Do you want to come inside, Sylvie?”
Poor judgement, a phone call, and an abundance of nerve that Sylvie can’t seem to muster back up end her on Joan’s couch, she realizes, dazed as Joan hands her a glass of something sharp and fruity smelling. The couch is reasonably comfortable, if upholstered in one of those mildly garish hotel prints, and Joan is sitting across from her in a long skirt and black tank top that shows off the tanned expanse of her shoulders, the arch of her neck. Sylvie tries very hard to not feel entirely inferior. It’s only after a moment of silence, Joan’s feet tucked up into her seat while Sylvie rearranges the pillows at her back that one of them speaks.
It’s Joan. “Are you here to scream at me about Bobby?” she asks, a weariness in her gaze. “He left me too. If that’s any consolation.”
“I know-“ Sylvie begins to say, then stops herself. “That’s not why I’m here.”
Joan frowns. “No?”
“No,” Sylvie shakes her head, “I mean – I’m here because I hate you.”
“Ah,” Joan looks at the floor. “Okay. Anything else?”
Sylvie opens her mouth, prepared to leave, prepared to escape this situation that can only ever be ill-advised and uncomfortable, but now the words won’t stop. “I think about you all the time, I can’t stop thinking about you, and I thought it was jealousy, that my boyfriend liked you more, but now he’s not my boyfriend and I still can’t get you out of my head and I want to. I want my mind back.” Joan looks at her, and keeps looking. Sylvie feels every inch of her skin burn with embarrassment, held in place by the stillness Joan exudes. “Sorry. Um. I’ll go.”
Joan lifts her glass, downs it, and motions to the bottle. “Would you like another drink? I owe you a conversation.”
Sylvie shivers. She shouldn’t be here. But Joan is real, not just made of newspaper and a voice on the radio and the smell of another woman’s perfume on her boyfriend’s skin, so Sylvie pours the first drink down her throat and holds her glass out for another.
Joan pours them both a second, wrist smooth and careful with the bottle, then settles back into her seat. “So,” Joan tilts her head, “you hate me?”
“I think so.” Sylvie lifts her chin. “I’m pretty sure.”
Joan nods. “That seems entirely fair. I suppose an apology wouldn’t change anything now?”
Her eyes meet Sylvie’s and a snaking sort of electricity swims, unbidden, up Sylvie’s spine. An offer, from Joan Baez. Something playful. Sylvie inhales. “An apology couldn’t hurt. Since my boyfriend left me, and you’re the reason why.”
“Okay,” Joan shakes her head, “you can be mad at me all you want. But just so we’re clear, he didn’t leave you for me. Me and you, to him, I don’t think had anything to do with one another. He probably could have carried on forever like that. He left us both, for all the other things he wanted.”
“No,” Sylvie shakes her head, “you were a part of it. You had to be. You opened doors. You gave him things I couldn’t.”
Joan’s face shadows, lost for a moment to a memory Sylvie isn’t privy to. She’s suddenly jealous of the privacy. She wants to know, implicitly, what Joan is thinking. Joan sighs, tired and long. She looks back up. “I’m sorry, Sylvie. I’m sorry. For any pain I caused you, I’m so sorry.” Sylvie’s blood runs hot at the sound of her name in Joan’s mouth. “It’s easier for me to believe that he didn’t leave you for me. I don’t want to be capable of doing a thing like that to someone else. Another woman.” Sylvie doesn’t want to believe her. She wants to keep Joan firmly in her head as wanton seductress, unfeeling and mysterious and happy to steal boyfriends on a whim. But the Joan in front of her looks genuinely sorry, pained as she speaks. “Would you believe that I loved him? And that’s why everything else happened? Because I was silly enough to fall in love?”
The bitter tone to her voice, the disbelief, is one Sylvie knows well. “Of course.” Sylvie feels Joan’s guilt lift, just an inch. She likes how this feels. The helping. “I loved him too.”
Joan looks at her, surprised. The sparkle is present at the very corner of her eyes, and Sylvie wants it all the
way back. Joan doesn’t look away. “I didn’t really know about you, or I was trying not to notice. And I was lonely. I’m usually lonely. And I thought, well, maybe Bobby’s who I’ve been looking for.” And something about looking at this woman, really looking, eyes allowed to roam over every detail of Joan’s face, the depth of her pupils and the scatter of freckles on her cheeks, makes something shift inside Sylvie’s stomach. Yes, this woman found Bobby while Sylvie wasn’t looking, until tonight never offered Sylvie so much as an apology, has been weighing on Sylvie’s mind since the first time she heard Joan’s voice on the radio singing one of Bobby’s songs.
But she’s just a girl, younger than Sylvie realized, a girl who could have been in school with her, a friend. A lonely girl who has been used and thrown away and shoved under the weight of everyone else’s expectations, trapped in different ways than Sylvie, but trapped all the same. She looks tired, and betrayed, the same way Sylvie feels, and it just doesn’t seem all that possible to hate her. She wants to tell this to Joan. “I don’t hate you. Not anymore.”
The sparkle creeps a little more into Joan’s expression. She almost smiles. “Is that so?”
Sylvie crosses her legs, straightens her back, and tries to look as professional as she’s always been taught. Joan looks a little shy, a little unsure, but that same playful thing is sparking in her gaze, threatening to run across her face. “I accept your apology.” She offers her hand.
Tentatively, Joan shakes it. When their fingers touch, something fizzes up Sylvie’s arm. Joan is even prettier up close, even prettier than her pictures, and some combination of the sharp drink on her tongue, the dizzying black of Joan’s hair, and the newly surfaced softness on her face makes Sylvie bold. Bold enough to ask the question she’s been wanting to ask this entire time, the puzzle she’s been trying to solve since Bobby first sang into Joan’s microphone while Sylvie sat, and watched, and pretended not to care. Joan, sensing the question, lifts her head.
Sylvie squeezes her hands together, relaxes, takes the plunge. “I want to understand. What you have that I don’t.”
Joan frowns. “Honey, I don’t think it works like that,” she says, cool girl bemused and folk star familiar.
But Sylvie presses on, leans forward. This is the thing she has to know, before she can really leave any of this behind. “I was a good girlfriend. I know I was. I did everything right. But he didn’t stay. I couldn’t keep him.” Sylvie doesn’t like how she sounds, whining and broken and blaming herself. Every strong part of her understands that it's more complicated, that it’s couldn’t be her only job to be perfect, that Bobby messed up more often than she ever had. But none of that stops the hurting. None of that makes him come back.
Joan, shaking her head, seems to see this, seems to see Sylvie seeing this. “Someone wants to stay or they don’t. And it's not your fault when they leave. There’s nothing you could have done, and it still hurts like nothing you’ve ever felt before.”
Sylvie leans forward, back, then forward again, swimming with this realization that she and Joan might both need to hear this, might both be hurting in the same way. The pain she sees etched across Joan’s face is the same thing she sees in the mirror. “I’m sorry he left you.”
Joan’s eyes widen, surprised, and then she laughs. It’s a golden, round sound. Sylvie can’t hold back her smile. “You’re better than most of us, to feel that way.”
Sylvie laughs too, and likes the way their voices sound together. “I hate that you’re a better kisser than me. That’s the worst part of it.” Joan blinks. “He told you that?” Oh,” Sylvie winces, “not at all. But I saw the two of you onstage. All that electricity.”
Joan hums, low in her throat. Her gaze settles again on Sylvie, thoughtful, and Sylvie feels the pull inwards, wants to fall right into Joan’s orbit. She understands, a little more, why Bobby likes this girl. Despite everything, she does too. The moment passes. “I’m sure you’re underestimating your own abilities,” Joan says. “I’m not the keeper of anything special.”
The moonlight is bright through the window, glow from the table lamp soft on Joan’s face, and Sylvie’s whole body shudders. Joan is still looking at her, and Sylvie is overwhelmed by all the times she’s seen this girl, thought about her, every fantasy of being chosen over her, being chosen beside her. She’s not sure who leans in first, Joan’s face half-hidden in her hair or Sylvie clenching her sweating palms, but Joan’s mouth is on hers, soft and yielding and clever, and Sylvie feels like she’s sticking her fingers into an electrical socket.
She pulls away, panting, and sees Joan’s expression shy and close. Joan tries for a smile. “Did that help? Solve the mystery? I’m not anything other than normal.”
“No,” Sylvie can’t find the words to say how strongly she disagrees, “if it always feels like that-“ She wants to say I can’t believe he ever looked at me again but instead she presses herself forward and Joan meets her.
Briefly, she considers trying to taste Bobby somewhere on Joan’s lips, but all she can taste is Joan and Bobby feels unimportant, all of a sudden. Like he doesn’t matter in this brave new world. Joan’s on the couch next to her and Sylvie traces the skin of her arms, softer at the crook of her elbow, veins at her wrists, while Joan’s hands find the small of Sylvie’s back. Her fingers travel up Sylvie’s spine, playful, curling at the top of her neck and pulling her close, closer than Sylvie thought possible. Joan is panting now, flushed and squirming when Sylvie bites at her throat, kisses down the muscle to her shoulder, and when Sylvie gathers up her courage and slips a hand underneath Joan’s shirt she whimpers.
Sylvie’s not a blushing virgin or anything, dated respectably in school, went to the dances and parked afterwords in her boyfriends’ cars, has had Bobby’s hands on every inch of her skin, but Joan’s different. Maybe it’s the fantasy made real, the way she groans at Sylvie’s thumb against her nipple in a way Sylvie hadn’t ever imagined, or the yielding softness of her thighs, the way her legs part when Sylvie slips an exploratory hand between them. Sylvie tugs Joan’s top off over her head as Joan pulls off her skirt, hair falling in front of her shoulders until Sylvie reaches forward and pushes it back, presses her body against Joan as Joan gasps and rolls against her.
Sylvie’s over her now, Joan back against the couch with eyes blown wide, skin flushed, the muscles in her stomach twitching as Sylvie traces her fingers across a hipbone, lower and lower until her fingers move through slippery heat and Joan’s whole body shudders. There, fingers moving inside Joan as she whimpers, back arched and mouth open, Sylvie realizes it might have nothing to do with Bobby at all, that this might be the most enjoyable night of her whole life because Joan Baez really is as special as everyone seems to think. Sylvie presses a kiss to the skin just above Joan’s knee, another to the inside of her wrist as she clings to Sylvie’s hand, and it’s all impossibly urgent until it’s not, until Joan gasps and gasps again and trembles, twitching around Sylvie’s hands as she slows to a stop.
Joan laughs, differently than she had before, less unsure, bubbling with the fragile kind of joy Sylvie’s seen before on the faces of other girls she knows, a momentarily unselfconscious sort of delight. “Thank you,” Joan breathes, soft and still returning to herself, and Sylvie’s trying to catalogue the moment, trying to commit to memory what Joan Baez looks like with her hair tangled and cheeks flushed, the rise and fall of her breath, when Joan pulls herself up and kisses Sylvie so deeply Sylvie thinks she could lose herself and never want to come back.
Joan is a good kisser, nimble and inviting, so Sylvie isn’t even embarrassed when she moans at Joan’s hands at her hips, teasing up her ribcage, swimming down into her jeans. Joan leans back, lets Sylvie’s shoulders rest against the arm of the couch, and looks up, eyes full of is this okay and Sylvie nods, gasps, tugs Joan back over her. Joan kisses a line down her sternum, the friction from her guitar calluses feeling oddly familiar against Sylvie’s breasts, bites at her bellybutton and licks a smooth stripe across the inside of each thigh before delving deeper. This, of course, is a thing that has made Sylvie feel pleasure and shame in equal measure, always assuring her partners you don’t need to go there, everything else is enough, I promise, but Joan’s tongue is against the most sensitive parts of Sylvie before she can even think to assure Joan that she knows it’s gross.
Joan’s hands land at each of Sylvie’s thighs, tracing patterns that Sylvie keeps losing track of, the soft scrape of nails and the warm friction of a mouth lifting her up and up and up, winding her tighter and higher and faster. Joan hums again, presses a hand at Sylvie’s hip like an invitation, and then Sylvie’s orgasm rolls through her, Joan licking and holding and teasing until Sylvie’s truly done shivering. Sylvie pulls her up, kisses her again, thinks she could kiss Joan forever and ever and ever, and Joan is so warm against her, so beautiful and precious and blushing, even now, shy in a way that makes Sylvie brave.
“I never meant to hurt you, or anyone,” Joan breathes, face pressed against Sylvie’s collarbone. “I just got so used to pain. To everything hurting.”
Sylvie tucks her head into Joan’s hair, inhales shampoo and sweat and something more intrinsic underneath it all. You’re better than I ever could have imagined she wants to say, or I can’t believe I ever went a day without knowing the real sound of your laugh. Instead she traces a flower on Joan’s shoulder, smiles as Joan shivers, tilts her head to kiss Sylvie. “Thank you,” she decides to say, “for letting me in. Letting me understand.”