Unpolished

His strokes are bold and precise, and his fingertips rest cool on her hand for seconds that hold an eternity. The sensation feels foreign, though not unpleasant - a smooth pressure, passing evenly along the nail. She watches out of the corner of her eye, gaze ostensibly fixed on the tiled floor.

Alex, for his part, is utterly focussed in front of her, his entire body hunched into and around her thumb. He doesn’t look at her face, and he doesn’t ask any questions, for which she is grateful. 

He hadn’t said anything earlier either, though then she hadn’t been watching his face, not wanting to see his reaction. If she didn’t see him react like this was a big deal, she didn’t have to confront the fact that it might be one.

It’s not a big deal, really. Or, at least, it shouldn’t be one.

Just a little colour on some stubby bits of keratin. No cause for concern or apprehension.

But that knowledge doesn’t change the fact that she is tense all over, her left leg shuddering where it hangs over the edge of the sofa, the ball of her foot pressed hard into the floor. Her right leg is only spared the same indignity by virtue of being trapped and folded underneath herself.

She’d stood awkwardly for minutes, hands clenched in her pockets and shoulders pulling back and forth and up and down in syncopated turn. Alex had just finished shaking out his hands, and was making to pack away his handful of colours when she’d finally managed to pull herself together and step forward. 

“Do mine?” she’d asked, half questioning, half casual, tone aggressively level, as if her voice was somehow being remastered and autotuned. But Alex, reaffirming his place as the platonic soulmate she’d never admit to having, had simply nodded his head, motioning for her to sit down with his chin, and she had, picking up the bottle she’d been eyeing for nearly quarter of an hour.

Which brings her to now, sat on the couch, her muscles tight and skin cold, under Alex’s steady hands and considering gaze. 

He finishes the nail and returns the brush to the bottle to recoat it. She snatches her hand back as he does, turning her thumb side to side to assess the damage.

See, here’s the thing. Anya knows, in theory, that she isn’t doing anything new. There’s nothing revolutionary in wearing nail polish - there’s nothing revolutionary in starting to wear it, even, when you never have before. And it’s not unusual to not wear skirts, it isn’t novel to be uncomfortable in make-up - hell, it hasn’t been groundbreaking for a girl to not like pink since 2005. Avoiding feminine things, claiming to not care about appearances, they’re just the lasting remnants of what started as some old, subconscious coping mechanism developed to help deal with the increasing sense of separation from her peers that she’d felt growing up. It’s tried and tired, a makeshift, stand-in for a real personality, built from fabricated traits and designed solely to provide distance and protection. She knows that.

But knowing something - rationally, factually, empirically - isn’t the same as knowing something. It doesn’t leave you any more equipped to do anything with that information.

Being a girl was bad. It wasn’t something people said, but it was something you knew all the same, unconsciously, uncomfortably. They weren’t smart enough, strong enough, good enough. Being a girl was bad, but it wasn’t something you could change, so you did the next best thing, and tried to prove that in all the ways that mattered, you weren’t one. You wore trousers, and gave yourself buzz cuts with your dad’s razor, and only played full contact sports. And you avoided anything soft, or sweet, or beautiful, you rejected them all hard, rejected anyone who didn’t, and prided yourself on both.

It wasn’t good, or healthy. And it wasn’t intentional, more just a mindset she found herself falling deeper into over time. Not a part of her life she enjoyed looking back on.

But, well, she managed to figure things out, eventually. She realised her anger was misplaced, her passion, derision. And she began making active efforts to better herself, conscious efforts for once - she slowly started undoing all the damage she’d done whilst making herself strong.

It was a slow process, though. And for the most part, she’d focussed her energies outward, where there was the biggest potential for harm. She used to sit front row at every one of Alex’s university drag shows, but the thought of wearing even half of what those queens used to herself, well. It felt too vulnerable. It felt weak.

So though she may know that there’s nothing wrong with owning pink, she still doesn’t keep any in her wardrobe. She can appreciate the skill needed to apply good makeup, but it’s not something she’s ever tried to learn. And if after all these years she can finally admit to herself that she loves the aesthetic of having an abundance of ear piercings, then she can also admit that in as many years into the future she’ll still never convince herself to get one.

It’s not like she particularly wants to wear lipstick and play dress up, either. She has no specific desires, no elaborate daydreams of wearing designer dresses, only to be thwarted in her endeavours by stylistic choices she’d made at the age of ten. And besides, she likes plenty of things she was never told to: comic books and thunderstorms and Ella Fitzgerald. There’s nothing to say that she wouldn’t have grown up to feel most comfortable barefaced, in shapeless clothes and neutral colours, anyway. She’s happy with her loose t-shirts, her baggy jeans, the jacket, suit and tie she keeps for special occasions. She doesn’t need the frills.

But she wonders, sometimes. What it would be like to leave the house two inches taller bedecked in floaty fabric. What it would be like to actually want to. Years of trying to undo her own conditioning, and still the thought of bare thighs pressing together beneath a skirt, of pigments and powders clinging clammy to her face, of smooth metal links snaking around her neck like a noose - she can feel herself flinch, shoulders jerking inward, as if her whole body had suddenly tasted something very bitter.

No. She could sit and think and psychoanalyse herself all she liked, ‘femininity’ wasn’t something she’d be achieving anytime soon.

This though, she thinks, still considering her single painted nail. This, is something that she can do.

It looks strange, to be sure. Unfamiliar. A pale, pastel blue - out of place even among the rest of Alex’s small collection of vibrance and sparkle. His own silver nails glint in the light as he wheels himself a little closer, bottle and brush both clutched in his other hand. 

The paint contrasts with her dark skin, both on the nail and where it spills over the edges - she tries to keep her nails short, a preemptive attempt at stopping her from biting them down to the same length. The feel isn’t all that different, physically, which surprises her - her thumb feels a little heavier, but she doubts that’s anything more than psychosomatic. It smells, though, of half-forgotten chemistry labs and misremembered practicals from her school days.

It doesn’t look like her hand, somehow. She flexes her thumb once, twice, and each time her brain is distantly startled when it sees the appendage it’s staring at move.

It’s different, but as all these thoughts bombard her head over the course of seconds, colliding like dodgems, she realises that she doesn’t dislike it. It looks, nice. Pretty. Soft, somehow, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Alex nudges her knee lightly with his, and reaches out, and she relaxes, and holds out her hand for him to keep painting.