Something About Her - Hardcover

Taylor, Clementine

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593544307 ISBN 13: 9780593544303

Verlag: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2023

Inhaltsangabe

A heartfelt and delicately crafted debut novel about two young women who become entangled in one another and embark on a surprising journey of self-discovery and modern love.

Aisling and Maya’s connection is unexpected. Maya has recently returned to the University of Edinburgh for her second year, confident in her place there and in her first proper relationship with her childhood best friend, Ethan. Finally, she is one of them, those happy couples, self-satisfied in the knowledge that they are one half of something solid.

Aisling is a first-year student from Ireland, ready to leave her controlling family behind. But despite the distance, she still feels claustrophobic, still feels watched. Reeling from her break-up with her ex-girlfriend, she struggles to make friends and finds herself isolated. That is, until Aisling joins the Poetry Society. That’s where she meets Maya, and everything changes.

Moving between Ireland, Scotland, and London, Something About Her is a story about the fragility and transformative power of first love. With vivid insight and tenderness, it exposes the fear, hope, and longing that can consume us, particularly when there’s so much you still don’t know about love, about life, and about yourself.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Clementine Taylor grew up in Oxford, England. After completing an undergraduate degree in theology and religious studies and a master's degree in gender studies, she spent a few years working as a researcher in Cambridge and London. Currently, she lives in Oxford again, where she is studying for a doctorate. Something About Her is her debut novel.

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Chapter 1

Like a Dove

County Clare, Ireland
November 2012

Orla and I walked across the school field. All the other girls in our year were way ahead of us, giggling and jovially swinging their gym bags by the straps. It was that delicate time of the morning. That time when the mist swirls and floats above the ground, whispering itself away and disintegrating into the thin air above it.

"I could've sworn I put them in here," said Orla, rummaging around in her gym bag.

I walked close to her, observing the beauty of autumn. Frozen droplets of dew shimmered on the grass like miniature crystals and refracted the limp sunlight. Burnt orange leaves crunched and mud squelched beneath our school shoes.

With her teeth, Orla removed one of her gray woolen gloves. It flopped out of her mouth like the drooping ear of a bunny.

"I'm telling you, Ash," she mumbled, her teeth clenched around the glove, "Sister Molony is feckin' insane. That assembly this morning. I swear to God."

I stayed quiet and continued to look at her. She just kept fumbling around in her bag with her bare hand. After a moment, I took the glove from her mouth, fiddling with it and then putting it on. It was still warm from her skin.

"Aisling Delaney, you stolen my glove?"

I nodded and let my lips slide into a broad smile.

"Now we have one each." I showed Orla, wiggling my gloved fingers around in her face. She rolled her eyes.

"There they are. Thank Jesus. Thought I'd left them on the counter."

Out of her bag, she produced two bacon rolls wrapped in silver foil. My stomach rumbled as I saw them. She planted one firmly in the palm of my ungloved hand. It felt like a gush of warm water, thawing the coldness of my skin.

"I dropped by O'Connor's in case your mother sent you in without breakfast."

She was right; I hadn't eaten that morning.

"You got this for me?"

"Yeah, course." She laughed, her sage-green eyes catching me gently.

She turned to study her own bacon roll. Her tongue rested on her glossy rose-colored lips as she peeled back the foil delicately with slender fingers. Then, in one movement, she took a huge bite. It wasn't graceful, but I couldn't take my eyes off her. I watched the white dust collect around her mouth, her jaw clenching as she chewed.

Then I looked at mine. Unwrapping it, I took a sacred mouthful and tipped my head back.

"Fuck me," I breathed.

Orla nodded, smirked, then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand before depositing the greasy remnants onto her school skirt.

"Jesus. Fair play," I said, eating more of it. "This is worth the stitch we'll get for sure."

We were approaching the PE changing rooms by that point, so I had one last nibble and folded the other half of the bacon roll up for later, stuffing it into the side pocket of my gym bag. Orla had already finished hers. Letting out a sigh of satisfaction, she licked the corners of her mouth free of ketchup and crumpled the silver foil up into a ball, rolling it around in her palms.

At the scuffed changing room door, we stopped. I couldn't bring myself to open it. Behind it, all the other girls in our year were getting ready for PE, gaggling and babbling like a bunch of pigeons. They were all far too enthusiastic for our liking.

Orla stood behind me and I turned to face her. On her ski-jump nose, which was peppered with rust-colored freckles, there was still a small dollop of ketchup. I smiled delicately.

"What? What's funny?" Orla muttered.

"Think you got a bit carried away there," I replied.

I wiped the ketchup from her nose with the tip of my finger and licked it off my nail.

We studied each other's faces, our bodies fidgeting. Orla ran her bony hand through the bottom of her copper plait, and then dropped it, linking one of her fingers with one of mine.

I let the moment hang, feeling my skin tingle as she touched it.

"Alright then." My voice was weak. "Cross-country beckons."

I started to twist towards the door, intending to finally push it open, but Orla drew me back with one small tug. I looked at her and something caught in my throat. Our faces were close now. I could feel the warmth of her breath on my lips.

Orla assessed the field around us. No one to be seen.

Leaning in, slowly, like a dove tilting its head, she kissed me. It was as soft as silk on the corner of my mouth. I felt her fingers adjusting my chin so that our lips met completely. They moved together like dancers. I could smell her fresh, wind-brushed skin. I could taste the salty ketchup on her tongue. As we pulled apart, my heartbeat pulsed in the pit of my stomach. Both of our faces cracked into a squirming smile.

"We can't let anyone see us," I whispered.

"I know, Ash," she reassured me. "I know."

2

Mutual Confession

That wasn't the first time it'd happened. Orla and I had kissed once already. It had been about a week before, behind the art building. We'd ended up there after lessons and it had just sort of happened. After that, for the whole week up until we kissed again outside the changing rooms, my palms were sweaty and my stomach a constantly spinning merry-go-round.

During the last few years of school, Orla and I had become much closer. Sure, we'd always been good mates, but something had sort of shifted. I think it was our loneliness that brought us together. We didn't have many friends, but we didn't feel we needed them. We had our books and we had each other.

By the point we had our first kiss, it had been clear to me for a while how Orla felt about me, and, I think, how I felt about her. It was kind of obvious from the way we looked at each other, from how our conversations always had some sort of subtext, or from the way we reacted when our skin brushed up against each other.

Whenever we had a lesson that even touched on homosexuality, Orla would make a thing of muttering to me as we ambled through empty corridors after.

"As if being gay is a sin," she'd whispered to me once as we walked. "How long ago was the Bible written anyway? I mean, catch yourself, it's the twenty-first century. My parents wouldn't even say that sort of thing, and they're Catholic, for God's sake. I just won't have someone tell me I can't be that."

"Be what?" I'd prodded, quietly.

Orla had stared deep into my blue eyes. In that moment, she formed an expression. An expression which said, Isn't it obvious, Aisling? Her eyebrows were raised; her lips were screwed together. It was a look that confessed to me, and my own look succumbed. I confessed straight back.

Then we knew. A mutual confession.

The truth was, I'd known that I was gay ever since I'd seen Niamh O'Donnell climb a tree with bare feet at Aoife McGrath's sixth birthday party and got butterflies. A mundane point of realization, I know, but I try not to overthink it.

To be sure, though, my parents would never be fine about my sexuality in the way Orla's would be. My family wouldn't just struggle with it, and they certainly wouldn't accept it.

***

That Saturday night, a few days after our second kiss outside the changing rooms, Orla and I had arranged to go to the cinema. It was a sort of date, I guess. Not that I was particularly on board with that kind of thing.

No one would know it was a date, obviously. We wouldn't give anything away in public, just in case someone saw us and ended up nattering to someone else. It's not like they'd care about it themselves; it's just that everyone knew everyone where we lived, and I was worried.

Before I left for the cinema, I was up in my bedroom trying to put on some eyeliner. After school on Friday, I'd caught the bus home, as I always...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: G.P. Putnam's Sons
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2023
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593544307
• ISBN 13: 9780593544303
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 288
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: G.P. Putnam's Sons; https://www.penguin.com/putnam/; ; 1745 BROADWAY Attn: Madison Forsander; NEW YORK; NY; 10019; USA
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar