Carnival Confession

The festival was a twenty minute drive from my apartment, and I spent all twenty of them rehearsing what I'd say. Hi, you must be Karin. No, obviously she'd be Karin, her picture was right there on the app. Hello again. That sounded like we'd already met. I settled on nothing and decided I'd just smile and let her talk first, which honestly was my plan in most social situations.

Parking was a field of gravel that some enterprising soul had charged ten dollars to use, and the walk to the gate took me past a guy selling handmade leather cuffs and a woman juggling flaming torches at no one in particular. The sun was still up but getting low, that thick orange kind of light that makes everything look better than it is. By the time I got my wristband checked and followed the noise toward the main stages, the first strings of Edison bulbs had flickered on over the beer garden, all of them warm and yellow and hanging low enough that shorter people kept ducking.

I'm twenty-three, by the way, and I'd been divorced for about six months at that point. Married at twenty-one to a man who turned out to like being married a lot less than he liked saying he was married, if that makes sense. The yoga studio where I teach kept me busy and the apartment kept me quiet, and somewhere in the back of my head a question had been sitting there for years, patient, waiting for me to stop being scared of it. The app match was me finally poking at it.

So there I was, standing at the edge of the beer garden in a sundress I'd changed into twice, scanning the crowd for a woman I'd only ever seen in four photos. It was nerve-wracking. What if she didn't show? What if she showed, took one look at me, and made an excuse about a friend needing help with a flat tire? People did that. I'd done that once, to a guy from a different app, a whole year ago.

Then I saw her, or I was pretty sure I did. She was leaning against the end of the bar with a pint glass in one hand, wearing a green button-up with the sleeves rolled and jeans, dark hair pulled back in a loose knot. Twenty-nine years old, her profile said. Freelance graphic designer. Single. Interested in women. It was the last one that had made my thumbs shake when I typed my first message to her.

She spotted me before I got within ten feet, and I knew because her whole face changed. She set the glass down and crossed the space between us with an ease that made it seem effortless, and before I could get a word out she pulled me into a hug. She smelled like sunscreen and beer and something floral underneath, and she squeezed me like we were old friends instead of two strangers who'd exchanged maybe forty messages.

"Elle! Oh my god, you're real," she said into my ear.

"Last I checked," I said, and my voice came out steadier than I felt.

She held on a second longer than a hug between strangers really needed, then stepped back but kept her hands on my arms, looking me over like she was checking me against the photos. "You're prettier in person, which is rude, honestly. Now I look like my pictures."

"You look great," I said. "The photos don't lie, you're fine."

"Phew." She laughed and steered me toward the bar with a hand at the small of my back, and I let her, because it felt nice and because my brain had gone briefly offline. "What are you drinking? Cider? You seem like a cider person."

"Is that an insult?" I asked, grinning.

"It's an observation. Two ciders, please," she told the bartender, holding up two fingers. "Whatever's local. And whatever's cheapest, I've been here since four."

"You've been here since four? You could've just said you were eager."

"Oh, I'm absolutely eager," she said, turning back to me, taking both glasses from the bartender and handing me one. "I've been standing here rehearsing cool, casual greetings, and then I just hugged you like a golden retriever. So. There goes that."

I laughed, for real, some of the nerves coming loose. We clinked glasses without planning to and drank. The cider was dry and cold and better than festival cider had any right to be.

We found a high table near the fence line, close enough to the second stage that we had to lean in to hear each other, which was maybe the point of choosing it, though neither of us said so. She asked about the divorce in a direct way that would have been rude from anyone else, but she asked it kindly, and I told her the short version. Married young, it didn't work, nobody cheated, I just woke up one day and realized I'd been playing a part.

"And now you're here," she said.

"Now I'm here," I agreed.

"Because of me."

"Because of you," I said, and then, because apparently the cider had its own strong feelings, I said the rest. "Actually, I should tell you now before we get further into the night. You're the first woman I've ever done anything with. Like, anything at all. I've thought about it for a long time, but I never, you know. Did."

Karin set her glass down and looked at me, and her expression wasn't smirk or surprise, it was something warmer than either. "Okay, thank you for telling me."

"Is that a dealbreaker? Because I get it if it's weird."

"It's not a dealbreaker, Elle. It's honestly flattering." She took a drink, watching me over the rim. "But I want to ask, so I'm not guessing at anything tonight. Are you looking for a fun night, or are you looking to figure something out about yourself? Because those can be the same thing, but it's nice to know."

I thought about it. The honest answer was both, and I said so.

"Then both it is," she said, "and here's my only rule for the evening. We take it slow. I mean it. If at any point you want to stop or slow down or just talk instead, you say so and we do that. No pressure from me in any direction. I've done the nervous first-timer thing before, I was one myself once, and the best nights are the ones where nobody's rushing anybody."

"That sounds very reasonable," I said.

"I'm a very reasonable person. Ask anyone. Ask my exes, they'll say reasonable and then make a face."

I laughed again and we clinked glasses a second time. Somewhere behind us the band on the second stage kicked into a song with a heavy bass line, and Karin tilted her head toward it and raised an eyebrow in question. I nodded, and she took my empty glass, set both of them on the table, and pulled me by the hand toward the crowd in front of the stage.

Dancing with her was easier than dancing with anyone I could remember. She faced me, close but not grinding on me, and matched my rhythm like she could feel it before I moved. The bulbs strung overhead made everything gold. At some point her hand found my hip and stayed there, warm through the dress fabric, and I didn't pull away.

"See?" she shouted over the music, close to my ear. "Told you. Slow."

"Nothing about this feels slow," I shouted back.

"Good," she said, and grinned at me, and the night got going in earnest.

The band played three songs in a row without a break, and somewhere in the second one the space between us closed for good. Her hip was under my hand now too, and we were moving together, and the crowd around us had gone blurry at the edges. She was warm. She smelled like sunscreen and that floral thing from the hug, and underneath it something that was just her, and I kept leaning in without deciding to.

"Is this okay?" she asked, right at my ear. Her hand pressed a little at my hip.

"Yes," I said. "Very okay."

"Good. Just checking." She pulled back enough to look at me, and we kept dancing, and the look held. It was the kind of look that makes you aware of your own mouth.

The third song slowed down, some ballad with a woman's voice over an acoustic guitar, and the crowd shuffling around us got slower too, couples pulling each other in everywhere I looked. Karin didn't pull me in. She just kept her hand where it was and watched me, letting me decide, which I noticed and appreciated more than I could say at the time. I closed the distance myself. My chest against hers, her chin near my temple, both of us swaying more than dancing. Her arm went around my back and I felt the whole length of her against me, and I'll admit my brain did some quick arithmetic about the rest of her body that it had been politely declining to do up to that point.

"This dress," she said into my hair, "has been distracting me all night. Just so you know. The yellow one."

"It's my favorite. I bought it two months ago for no reason."

"There's a reason now," she said, and I felt her smile against my cheek.

The song ended and the band thanked everyone and said they'd be back after a short break, and the spell popped like a soap bubble. We stepped apart, both a little flushed, and I laughed at myself for being flushed, and she laughed too.

"I have a confession," she said. "I have a camper van back in the quiet camping lot. With a fan and actual pillows and a cooler with better drinks than this swill."

"Are you inviting me to your van?"

"I'm inviting you to my van," she confirmed. "Full stop, no expectations. We can sit in there and drink the good seltzer and talk about graphic design until you're bored, and then I'll walk you back to your car and that will be the entire evening. Or we can keep doing what we were just doing. Your call entirely, and I mean that. You say the word car and I'll drive you there myself."

I thought about my car, sitting in the ten dollar gravel field twenty minutes from my apartment, and about my apartment, and about going home alone to it. Then I thought about her hand on my hip.

"The van," I said. "Definitely the van."

* * *

The quiet camping lot was farther than I expected, past the food stalls and down a dirt path lit by tiki torches that somebody had clearly placed with more enthusiasm than surveying skill. She kept my hand the whole way. Not gripping it, just holding it, our fingers laced, and every few yards she'd glance over at me like she was making sure I was still there and still fine, and every time I'd squeeze back.

"Here we are," she said, and there it was. A white camper van, older model, parked under a big oak with a string of fairy lights clipped along the awning. A folding chair outside and a doormat that said GO AWAY in cheerful yellow letters.

"Nice doormat."

"My sister gave it to me. She thinks she's hilarious." She stopped at the bottom of the steps and turned to face me, and the joking tone dropped away. "Okay. Last chance to say car."

"Not saying car."

"Then I'd like to kiss you now, if that's all right. I've