Page 66 of Make Room for Love
She had enough money to scrape by for now, but not enough to save anything. What if her prescriptions became much more expensive? What if she had an emergency? What if the university screwed up their payroll and took their sweet timefixing it, like they’d done in Mira’s second year? And—she didn’t like to think it—what was she going to do when she wasn’t living in Isabel’s apartment at a discount anymore?
Mira was so fortunate. She was going to be fortunate for as long as this lasted. The truth was, they weren’t taking things slow. Their relationship, whatever it was, was somehow both exhilarating in its newness and comfortable like they’d been together for years. But a fling being this intense didn’t mean it would last.
She wasn’t about to make financial plans for the next several years of her life. No matter how good Isabel made her feel, no matter how tempted she was to fantasize about the future. When she left, she would need a place to go.
“I don’t know about this,” said Liz, on Mira’s right. “We’ll lose a lot of our momentum if we have to wait until next semester. We’re going to have to get all the first-years on board. And the administration might try something worse in that time.”
Mira had thought of that too. She had been too nervous to say it. Patrick looked like he was about to respond.
“I agree with that,” Mira said. Everyone turned to look at her. “I think we can win next month if we focus on canvassing and stay on message?—”
“We’re already canvassing all the time,” Patrick said.
Mira tensed up. She tried to regather her thoughts. Did Patrick ever interrupt the men on the committee? The worst thing was, she couldn’t write him off entirely; he had a point. “When I’ve been talking to people recently, what seems to work is when I emphasize that it’s not just about the money and benefits, because the real point of unionizing is having power. And it’s not good enough for the administration to give us more money if we don’t have a voice in the decision-making process.”
She took a breath. Patrick cut in, saying, “That doesn’t?—”
“Let me finish.” Mira trembled with frustration. This shouldn’t be bothering her so much. But it was one thing to have strangers be rude to her, and another to have someone who was supposed to be her equal on the committee treating her this way. “I know we’ve won people over by emphasizing how little money and how few benefits we get, because that’s what matters to people who are just trying to get by. But I think if we emphasize the difference between the administration deigning to give us something, versus us having the power to demand what we deserve, we’ll win more people over.”
She was gathering conviction, determined to just get her words out without interruption as much as anything else. “What this pay raise really means is that the administration is afraid of us. They’re afraid of the power we have. And we should encourage people to see it that way. We can take the administration’s attempt to weaken us and use it to our advantage.”
The room was silent. Everyone’s eyes bore into her. Maybe Mira didn’t know what she was talking about. She’d only been on the committee for a few weeks, and if Patrick and Shreya agreed on something, they were probably right.
“We’re already having trouble getting people to sign up for canvassing shifts,” Shreya said. “How do you think we’d get this message out to everyone in the next four weeks?”
“I’ll personally go door-knocking every weekend and make phone calls every day. I’ll run more trainings,” Mira said impulsively. She sounded more confident than she felt. Maybe she was actually right, and they stood a chance. Or maybe she was trying to lead them down a path that would destroy everything they’d worked for in the last four years. “We can go all in on that, internally and externally. Tell people who have volunteered that if they’ve dropped off recently, they can come back. I’ll do as much as I possibly can.”
“I like that idea,” Liz said. “Focusing on how the administration is afraid of us. If it were true that the union wasn’t going to do anything anyway, there’s no reason for them to give us a pay raise and go all out trying to defeat us.”
Other people were nodding. That was more terrifying than reassuring. Patrick was silent for once.
Shreya said, “We need to decide today. Is this what we want?”
Around the room, people voiced their agreement, which mostly filled Mira with dread. She had said something, and the committee agreed with her, and she was going to be on the hook for this. She just had to hope she’d made the right call.
30
Mira was home early,sitting at her usual spot at the table, wrapped up in one of Isabel’s flannel shirts. She got up and greeted Isabel with a kiss—not a chaste peck on the lips, but a real kiss, overwhelmingly hot and sweet after a hard week of work. And then another, and another, until Isabel had thawed from the cold.
“Sweetheart, let me take my coat and boots off,” Isabel said after they broke apart, both panting. Coming home to Mira was a balm. Isabel had started at a new job site an hour and a half away in the Bronx, working twenty stories up in a building with no walls in the bitter wind. She’d been on her guard all week, making sure her crew knew better than to try anything with her. Nobody had, but it had been exhausting all the same.
She wanted to get lost in kissing Mira. They’d seen so little of each other since Mira had taken on her new responsibilities, and all week long, Grace’s words had never stopped echoing in Isabel’s head. But Mira was so clearly happy to see her, and they had the whole weekend to enjoy each other and be close again.
The fear was receding. Maybe she could even talk to Mira about it, leaving out the truly painful parts, if she worked up the resolve.
Isabel hung up her coat, slipped out of her thick sweatshirt, and took her boots off and kicked them aside. Mira immediately grabbed her by the belt loops and pulled her in, pressing those delicious curves close, and Isabel went hot and weak.
She tugged at the flannel shirt Mira was wearing, adorably oversized on her. “This is mine.”
“Oh, is it? What are you going to do about it?”
Isabel slipped the shirt off Mira’s shoulders and let it fall to the floor, finding a sleeveless blouse underneath. “Now I’m cold,” Mira said. She batted her eyelashes.
Isabel laughed. She couldn’t resist even if she wanted to. She loved this woman so much it hurt. She pulled Mira close again and kissed her, stroking Mira’s bare arms and back as Mira happily squirmed against her. “Is that better?”
Mira replied with another kiss, making a contented sound into Isabel’s mouth. Her fingers roamed over the back of Isabel’s head and pulled out the bobby pins that kept her braid under her hard hat all day. Pins clattered to the floor as they kissed and kissed. Finally, Mira got the braid loose, unraveled it, and ran her fingers over Isabel’s scalp through her hair.
Isabel moaned, a shudder rippling from her head through the rest of her body. Undoing her tightly fastened hair after work was always a relief for her poor scalp, and Mira doing it for her was heavenly. Then Mira reached for the top button of her flannel shirt. Isabel smiled. “I’m gross from work. Let me shower first.”