Sana woke to a small hand smacking her gently, and when she opened her eyes she was looking at a plastic shark dead in the face. She gasped and sat straight up. “Oh no! There’s a shark in my bed!”

 

“Momma! I want up!” Tzuyu demanded, making grabby hands.

 

Sana lifted her onto the bed. “Did you put a shark in my bed you silly goose?”

 

“I’m not a goose I’m a shark!”

 

“Oh, of course. Thank you for correcting me but let’s try to be quiet, okay? Mommy is still sleeping.”

 

Tzuyu nodded seriously, looking over at where Jihyo was curled into Sana’s side. “Okay, Momma.” She picked up her toy, wagging her finger at it. “Shhhh... Momma says be quiet.” She tucked the shark under her arm and clambered into Sana’s lap.

 

“Tell me the Momma story.”

 

“Again?”

 

“Yes again”

 

“Shhh, sweetie, we’re being quiet so Mommy can sleep, remember?”

 

“Oh, right,” she whispered. “Momma please tell the story.”

 

“Okay, okay.” Sana laughed, taking Tzuyu’s hand in hers like she always did when she told this story. “When you were a little, tiny baby, just five months old...” She picked up Tzuyu’s hand and asked, “Can you count to five with me?” using Tzuyu’s fingers to count one, two, three, four, five. “That’s right, you’re getting so good at counting baby, I’m so proud of you. When you were five months old, you and your Mommy came to stay with me, you were so tiny.”

 

“How tiny was I Momma?”

 

“You were tiny, I could barely even see you, I had to use a magnifying glass.”

 

Tzuyu laughed and grabbed Sana’s hand. “Nuh uh, Momma,” she insisted, in a voice that was as close to a whisper as Sana could hope for. “You’re fibbing.”

 

“I am not, ask your Mommy.”

 

“I can’t, she’s asleep.”

 

“Well, I guess you’ll just have to believe me then. You were itty itty itty bitty, like a little tiny microscopic baby.”

 

“Nuh uh, Mommy showed me pictures.”

 

“Okay, fine, you’re too smart for me. You weren’t that little, but you were pretty tiny and you hardly had any hair.”

 

“I was bald”

 

“You were, you had to wear hats to protect your sweet little head.” Sana bent to press a kiss into Tzuyu’s hair. “I love you so much, Tzuyu.”

 

“I love you too, Momma. What happens next?”

 

“Then you met your best friend.”

 

“Gucci!”

 

“That’s right, baby, but maybe we should go to the living room for the rest of this story so we don’t wake up Mommy.”

 

“No, you’re just getting to my favourite part,” Jihyo said into a yawn, her voice raspy from sleep.

 

“Mommy’s awake!”

 

Jihyo sat up with a groan. “I am, darling.”

 

Tzuyu sprang out of Sana’s lap and into Jihyo’s, kicking Sana right in the gut as she did so.

 

“Oof, Tzuyu, be careful with your feet, you got me in the tummy.”

 

Tzuyu flopped onto her back, draped between the two of them, her head in Jihyo’s lap, feet on Sana’s leg.

 

“Sorry, Momma, I just got excited to see Mommy.”

 

“I know you did, baby. I accept your apology, do you want me to keep telling the story?”

 

“I want Mommy to tell the rest”

 

Jihyo smiled and brushed her fingers through Tzuyu’s hair. “Gucci fell in love with you the first time he ever met you, and since then he’s followed you everywhere you go.”

 

“Am I his favourite?”

 

“Yes, baby even more than Momma.”

 

“Gucci loves me the most!”

 

“He does,” Sana said, pulling a sour face and a pout, which spurred Tzuyu to try and comfort her.

 

“Momma it’s okay,” she said, wriggling into a position where she could grab Sana’s face in her hands. “He loves you, just not as much as me okay?”

“I guess...” Sana said, feigning resignation as Tzuyu gently patted her cheek.

 

“More story, please, Mommy,” she said, settling back into Jihyo’s lap.

 

“I can’t remember what comes next.”

 

Tzuyu glared up at Jihyo, unimpressed with her recall. “Mommy it’s when I talked, how can you forget?”

 

“I’m sorry, baby you know Mommy is not quite as good at telling this story as Momma is.”

 

“No, Mommy, you say it good too.”

 

“Thank you, sweetheart.” Jihyo cleared , ready to continue the story. “Your very first word was mama. Do you remember who you said it to first?”

 

“Momma!”

 

“That’s right and who else did you call mama?”

 

“You, I had two mommas!”

 

“But you don’t have two mommas now?”

 

“No, because you turned to a mommy. Now I have a momma and a mommy!”

 

Tzuyu had claimed Sana as her mother with her very first word, regardless of how Sana or Jihyo felt about the implications. It was dangerous territory, but neither of them was willing to deny Tzuyu what she very clearly needed.

 

So Sana was Momma, and that was that. Sana and Jihyo never really talked about it. It was another murky, amorphous truth, like the fact that both of them slept better in each other’s arms than they ever had apart, that just existed as it was, defying exact definition and lurking at the edges of what they could bring themselves to say out loud.

 

What was there to say anyway? How could Sana even begin to describe the depth of what she felt for Jihyo and her daughter? It was the rawest, most vulnerable kind of love, the fiercest, most precarious.

 

She didn’t know what to say to Jihyo, how to tell her the real truth, the root, the elemental truth, the axiom upon which Sana’s entire world had been rebuilt the moment Jihyo and Tzuyu entered her life.

 

Which was that she loved them, fully, with her whole heart, that they had become her world, her sky and her entire cosmos. There was nothing else but them.

 

That was the difficult truth, artless and clumsy but unwavering.

 

She didn’t know what to do with it, so she took it and hid it somewhere safe: among all the smaller, more mundane truths, calling it the Momma story. It was concrete and simple, just the facts ma’am, but embellished for dramatic effect (there was a child with an irrepressible imagination involved, after all).

 

Every time Sana told the story, it was a little different. There were always many interjections from Tzuyu. Sana changed up the teasing every time because it made Tzuyu giggle so much. Sometimes she talked about how tiny she was, or how loud she cried, or how she pooped so much the store ran out of diapers. Every time Tzuyu would squeal with delight and tell Sana she was fibbing, and Sana would deny it a couple of times before laughing and conceding to Tzuyu’s superior intelligence.

 

It was not the kind of story they ever finished, and the ending was different every time, depending on how quickly Tzuyu got bored and wanted to move on to other, more interesting diversions, usually involving Gucci and a mess of some kind.

 

On this occasion she lost interest around the time Jihyo was describing her first steps, her hand grasping onto Gucci’s fur to help keep her upright. She finally let go and ventured a couple of paces on her own before falling flat on her . Her face contorted like she was about to cry, but Gucci saved the day by her in the face until she began to giggle happily.

 

It was one of Sana’s favourite memories. They were all her favourites.

 

“I wanna play sharks with Gucci” Tzuyu declared, sitting up and bouncing in Jihyo’s lap.

 

Sharks were a game Tzuyu loved to play and that Gucci seemed to endure good-naturedly, that involved Sana affixing a shark fin to Gucci’s back and then setting him loose to follow at Tzuyu’s heel while she swam around the house, attacking unsuspecting fish while they were trying to do very boring fish things like make breakfast or clean the living room or read a book.

 

It kept Tzuyu entertained for quite a while (for a four-year-old, anyway) and Gucci never failed to stay by her side the entire time. He was always with her, no matter what she was doing. He made it clear who he preferred.

 

Sana shook her head as she put Gucci’s shark fin on and Tzuyu took off. She was so full of energy, so smart and weird and so much like Jihyo.

 

Sana’s love for Tzuyu and her mother felt heavier inside of her every day, her love for them and what they had created together, whatever it was. It was so fragile, so tenuous, Sana tried so hard to protect it and now she feared it would be washed away in the tide of her feelings.

 

Because what if Jihyo didn’t feel the same way? What if Sana ruined all she’d put so much of herself into? What if this fragile, precious thing she held in her hands but that could so easily slip through her fingers, what if this beautiful, amazing, wondrous thing just disappeared.

 

What if the family of her own she’d finally, finally found, was taken away from her?

 

Sana didn’t know what she would do.

 

But it didn’t matter anymore because the Momma story, and all the truths that weren’t quite the real truth, in totality, formed the exact shape of her desire. Everyone could see it, plain as day. Momo, Mina, her mom, her coworkers, everyone.

 

Everyone except Jihyo.

 

Which was why Sana had to tell her the truth. It just wasn’t fair to keep it from her anymore.ot when she felt so strongly. She’d given herself 30 days to come clean. Today was day 31.

 

It was now or never.

 

Sana sighed as she climbed back into bed, crawling under the covers and pulling Jihyo into her arms. She just wanted to hold her for a little bit before she laid everything on the table. Jihyo was so warm, so soft, so utterly, utterly perfect it made Sana ache.

 

“Hey,” Jihyo said into a yawn, snuggling into Sana’s side.

 

“Hey,” Sana said back, breathing in the scent of Jihyo’s shampoo. It made her lightheaded.

 

“There’s nothing for her to get into is there?”

 

“Nah, I think we got everything put up last night. They should be fine for at least twenty minutes.”

 

“Twenty entire minutes? That’d be a record.”

 

“I’ll get my stopwatch.”

 

That made Jihyo laugh. She was so pretty when she laughed. The more time Sana spent with her the more she seemed to open up, to come into herself. She used to be so subdued, so controlled. Now she laughed unabashedly, her entire body shaking with it at times like she was letting go, just a little.

 

Like she was happy.

 

They could be happy together, the three of them. Sana knew they could. But only if Jihyo wanted it. Only if Jihyo loved her back. It was terrifying to want something so badly.

 

She kept trying to bargain with herself. She just needed a little more time, a little more so she could prove to Jihyo what a good mother she could be, what a good wife. But no. She’d had plenty of time. Jihyo either loved her or she didn’t, and no amount of time was going to change what was already in her heart.

 

“Can I talk to you about something?” Sana tried valiantly but still failed to hide the tremor in her voice. She didn’t want to scare Jihyo, but it was so hard to be calm when she was so afraid herself.

 

“What? Is something wrong?” Jihyo’s hands curled into Sana’s shirt, her body tensing against Sana’s side.

 

“No, no. There’s nothing wrong. I just have something I want to ask you.”

 

“Oh. What is it?”

 

“This Friday is the holiday party at work, and I was wondering if you and Tzuyu might want to come.”

 

“But isn’t that just for you and your coworkers?”

 

“And our families.”

 

“Families?”

 

“Yeah,” Sana said brightly. “Do you want to come? I think there’ll be other kids there for Tzuyu to play with. My coworkers are all nice. I know they would love to meet you.”

 

“They would?”

 

“Of course.” Sana cleared one too many times and then tried to cover it with a cough. “I kind of talk about you and Tzuyu a lot.”

 

“You do?”

 

“Well, yeah. You’re my two favourite people. So do you want to come?”

 

“Okay,” Jihyo said, ducking her head, the light through the window revealing the amber highlights in her hair.

 

She was so pretty and so soft. Sana just wanted to touch her, to kiss her, to finally find out how soft her lips were.

 

“There’s one thing I need to ask you first though, just so that we’re clear, and on the same page about everything.”

 

“Um, okay...” Jihyo’s brow furrowed just slightly, and there was a hint of movement of her bottom lip.

 

“We’ve been living together for a while, but we’ve never really talked about what we are.”

 

“What we are? I don’t think I understand.”

 

“Well, we’re roommates, and we’re friends but we sleep in the same bed, and Tzuyu calls me Momma.”

 

“Is that bad? Are we doing something wrong?”

 

“No, it’s not bad, and we’re not doing anything wrong. I just think we need to talk about it.”

 

Jihyo was getting increasingly anxious and fidgety. 

 

Sana just needed to get it over with.

 

“I need to know how to introduce you to my friends. I need to know if...” she stopped for a moment to find Jihyo’s hand and give it a reassuring squeeze. Jihyo smiled but still looked very concerned, “if you want me to introduce you as my friend, or, um... as my, you know... girlfriend.”

Sana could feel herself blushing to her ears. But that didn’t matter because she said it. She actually said it. She tripped over herself trying to get the words out, but she did it. Now all she could do was wait for Jihyo’s response.

 

“Girlfriend? Are you asking me if I want you to pretend we’re girlfriends?”

 

Sana winced. “No, Jihyo, that’s not what I’m asking you, I’m asking you if you want to be my girlfriend.”

 

Jihyo still looked confused.

 

“I have feelings for you. Romantic ones.”

 

“Oh.”

 

Sana’s stomach sank. She was having trouble reading Jihyo’s expression, and the longer Jihyo was silent, the more Sana became convinced that her answer would not be favourable.

 

“Are you... in love with me?”

 

Jihyo’s words and the look on her face were like a lance through Sana’s heart. She wished she could take it back. She’d been greedy. She’d wanted too much, hoped for too much and now she feared she would lose everything.

 

She held Jihyo’s gaze, a tear slipping from her eye. “I’m sorry, Jihyo, but, yes, I am. I have been for a long time.”

 

Jihyo started to cry, and that hurt Sana even more.

 

“I, um... I can go, if you want, so you can have some space. I know it must be a shock to you. I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable. I just had to tell you the truth.” She shifted away from Jihyo, making to slip from the bed and go cry in the bathroom, but Jihyo’s hand on her arm stopped her.

 

“Please don’t go.”

 

“What?”

 

“Do you mean it?” Jihyo asked, staring at her hand where it was fiddling with the fabric of Sana’s shirt. “Do you love me like that?”

 

“Yes of course I do.”

 

And then Jihyo smiled. It was the prettiest thing she’d ever seen. Jihyo let go of Sana’s shirt and wiped the tears from under her eyes. “I’m in love with you too, Sana. I just never in a million years thought that you’d love me back.”

 

“That’s funny,” Sana said, so overjoyed she was practically sobbing. “I thought the same thing.”

 

“Do friends not ever sleep in the same bed?”

 

“They do sometimes, but probably not every night and they don’t usually co-parent a child together.”

 

“I guess that makes sense.”

 

“I mean, I’m not saying it never happened, but it’s not common.”

 

“Sana, can I ask you something?”

 

“You can ask me anything.”

 

“Will you kiss me?”

 

“It would be my pleasure,” Sana said, leaning toward her, her whole body buzzing.

 

Sana moved in slowly, giving Jihyo ample time to change her mind. She stopped when their lips were just brushing, a gentle tease she couldn’t resist. “Are you sure this is what you want?”

 

Jihyo framed Sana’s face with her hands, pulling her into a kiss that started slow, careful, almost timid. Jihyo was so soft, tasted so sweet, and the floral scent of her shampoo made Sana swoon. Warmth tingled in her chest, like she was so filled to the brim with happiness, with Jihyo, that it all spilt over and she was utterly awash in it.

 

When they finally broke apart, Jihyo was wearing an impish smirk and Sana could tell that her ears were blushing again. All she could think about was that kiss and how much she wanted to keep kissing Jihyo until they couldn’t stand to kiss anymore if that was even possible.

 

“I, um,” Sana started, “can we do that again?” She leaned forward, ready to feel Jihyo’s mouth on hers once more.

 

“Yes, I think we def….”

 

“WATCH OUT! HERE COMES A SHARK!” Tzuyu shrieked happily before leaping onto the bed with them. Gucci, thankfully, did not try to follow her and waited politely on the floor, his fin slightly askew.

 

Sana, needing only half a beat to get her bearings, wailed in mock horror, flopping back onto the bed. “Noooooo! Please don’t eat me! I am just an innocent fish!”

 

“I’m gonna eat you, Momma!” Tzuyu yelled and proceeded to do just that, not even leaving Sana one fin with which to protect herself.

 

“Oh, no! You got me!” Sana closed her eyes, letting her tongue loll out of one side of .

 

“I ate you, Momma!” Tzuyu said, matter of factly, as she crawled on top of Sana. She patted the side of her face. “Momma wake up.”

 

Sana opened one eye to peer at Tzuyu. “What?”

 

“I ate you!”

 

“You did. I’m so proud of you! Are you going to eat Mommy too?”

 

Tzuyu looked over at Jihyo, humming thoughtfully. “I’m full now.” She patted her belly. “I’ll eat Mommy later.” She leapt from the bed and darted out of the room, Gucci at her heels.

 

“That was brutal,” Jihyo said, snuggling up to Sana’s poor, mangled fish body. “You lost all your fins again.”

 

“Yes, it was terrible. I think I need you to kiss me to make it better.”

 

“That can be arranged.” Jihyo picked up her hand and kissed each of her fingertips before moving to her palm, the inside of her wrist, and finally, the back of her hand. She repeated the process with Sana’s other hand. “All better?”

 

“Almost.”

 

“Where else does it hurt?”

 

“Right here,” Sana said, pointing to .

 

Jihyo kissed her tenderly, lingering for a moment, and then laid her head on Sana’s chest, yawning. “So how long was that? Anywhere near twenty minutes?”

 

Sana grabbed her phone off the nightstand to check the time. “Not even close.”

 

Jihyo laughed. “We should get some cuddling in before she comes back for me.”

 

“I think that’s a fantastic idea.” Sana bent her head to press a kiss into Jihyo’s hair. “But you’ll have to do the holding this time.” She said, gesturing at herself. “You know, no fins.”

 

“I think I can do that,” Jihyo said, wrapping her arms around Sana. “Is that good?”

 

“Perfect.” Sana sighed contentedly, but then a thought struck her. “I do have another question, just to be clear. Do you want me to introduce you to my coworkers as my girlfriend, or no?”

 

Jihyo laughed and pulled Sana into a kiss. “Of course I do, you silly fish.”