With the Exception of You

Evaine couldn’t read minds.

She knew she couldn’t do the impossible, and yet when she looked at Cleo it was as if she could. To her, the barrier between reality and the extraordinary had been blurred by their connection, their years together thinning the veil of what could and couldn’t be. 

Cleo hadn’t been an open book at first. Evaine had to settle for learning her by becoming intimately familiar with her cover, even though she wanted nothing more than to turn the pages within. Cleo had been so quiet and reserved that Evaine couldn’t tell if she was thinking at all, let alone what those thoughts were. And now … they spread across her face, one after the other, layering like memories. As if Evaine had been absorbing a language, a new expression like a word learned, becoming fluent in the woman herself. The way Evaine studied Cleo’s body, the undivided attention she gave to her lover, made her the expert of Cleo, immersed her in a field study of her own making.

The first time she had read Cleo’s mind was a flash. When Evaine had read about mind readers in books, it was always words that defined them. Words of the innermost thoughts that lay a person bare as the mind reader plucked them out, hearing a person as if the words had entered the air.

But it wasn’t like that.

It was early on that she discovered her ability to read Cleo. On their third date, Evaine walked up to Cleo sitting at their meeting spot, a park bench. She could see Cleo reading a book, What Lies in Tomorrow, frowning at something on the page. A look Evaine could now translate effortlessly to be thorough absorption rather than the rough interpretation of disappointment she had thought it was at the time. When Evaine caught Cleo unaware, she was able to see the moment that Cleo felt her presence. The effect was instant; a smile spilled over her lips, her eyes brightened, and Evaine was stunned to see it. Because it was the exact way she felt when she saw Cleo—mirrored before her. 

It was just a flash. The rest of Cleo closed up again, and though her face remained clear to Evaine, her words became clipped by shyness, her offerings of information sparse. Evaine had to dig at first, watching every shift of expression to see if the intrusion was welcome. She knew only one expression of Cleo, using it to parse out others. If the first expression she learned was happiness—bright eyes and easy smile—then the second was amusement, laughter that at first was restrained before loosening in the weeks that followed. Knowing this one let Evaine into the secrets behind all of her other expressions, teaching her so much more about Cleo than any words ever could.

But there were limits to this newfound ability. Cleo only had to turn her face away during an argument and Evaine was cut off. Anger made a mask that Evaine had to ease off her, reminding her that walls weren’t necessary when it was just her—just the two of them. No need to hide when they could face the problem together. Even the absence of an expression taught Evaine more about Cleo. The silence from her had sound, one that felt like a warning siren to Evaine. Meaning that something was very, very wrong. 

Because Cleo had become so much more expressive to Evaine, an imperceptible shift of her lips as she pressed them together to suppress a smile, darkening of her eyes from one moment to the next, or the set of her jaw were now as clear as words to Evaine.

And over time, as those tiny movements began to form sentences of their own, Evaine realized that she could read minds.

One night, she lay with Cleo, legs tangled beneath sheets, hand pressed to her chest.

“Do you believe a person can be psychic?” Evaine asked, tracing a path up Cleo’s collarbone, fingers moving of their own accord like a Ouija board with a message from a loved one.

Her fingers lost their place as Cleo laughed. 

“I do. Just like I knew you’d say that,” Cleo said. The smile spread over her easily, as if it had been waiting beneath all along. Evaine studied the playful smile and  detected nothing but truth as Cleo’s face solidified into seriousness.

“I can’t see the future, and yet I can predict your every reaction,” Cleo told her.

Evaine stared into her eyes, the same way she’d done a thousand times, and this time, just like all the others, found something new.

“In a world without magic, you remain its only exception,” she breathed.