by T. L. Hayes
Rachel looked at him and said, “No it’s not. I was there, remember? Bedside vigil, and all that? Oh, what do you know? You spent most of that time in a coma.”
“One day! I spent one day unconscious. I would hardly call that a coma. At least you didn’t go all Shirley MacLaine at my bedside and start screaming for my meds.” Bobby grinned and Rachel rolled her eyes again. Lou and Steve were laughing at them.
Rachel turned back to Lou, ignoring Bobby. “So now that we’re here, we going to get out of here and go out for dinner, or what?” She looked between Lou and Steve.
Lou looked at Steve as well. “I know we haven’t discussed dinner yet, but you want to?”
“Alas, I cannot. I forgot to tell you earlier, but Mom signed us both up for this cooking class and I have to go. I’m sorry. But it was lovely meeting you two.” Steve smiled at Rachel and Bobby.
Rachel waved her hand dismissively. “Of course it was.”
Steve laughed as she stood and Lou stood with her. “I will see you later, my dear.” Steve gave Lou a chaste kiss on the cheek.
“Call me later and tell me how class went.”
“I will.” With one final smile and wave, Steve was gone.
Rachel, who had turned to watch Steve leave, addressed her comment to Lou. “I’m sure you hate to see her go, but mm, to watch her leave,” she said wistfully.
“Hello? I’m right here, you know?” Bobby said.
“Yeah, so am I,” Lou said. “But you’re not wrong.” Lou craned her neck to catch a glimpse of Steve through the windows as she walked to her car.
Rachel turned and faced her teacher again and raised her hand in the air. “Way to go, teach, good job.” Lou met Rachel’s high five with enthusiasm.
“Still here,” Bobby said, somewhat dejectedly.
Rachel turned to him and grabbed his chin. “I know, my love, and you’re cute too.” She gave him a small peck on the lips and Lou sat back smiling, delighting in their company.
* * *
After a while, Bobby left to go meet his brother, and then it was just Rachel and Lou sitting next to each other on the sofa. Rachel grinned and smacked Lou on the knee. “So, are you going to tell me about that hot piece who kissed you or not?” Rachel’s eyes danced in mischief and it was hard not to get caught up in her spirit.
Lou looked at her somewhat dubiously. “Hot piece? Is that any way to talk to the teacher you purport to respect?” Lou tried to look stern and was able to for a couple of seconds.
Rachel waved her hand in the air in a dismissive gesture. “Oh, I’ll respect you in the morning. That’s then. Gossip now, woman!”
“You appear to be living vicariously through me. Maybe we should talk about that,” Lou said calmly, fighting a grin of her own.
“Why would I have to do that, when I have my own hot piece? You’ve met him.”
“So things are still going well between you? How’s his recovery been? I noticed a slight limp when he walked in.”
Rachel turned serious. “Yeah, the cold weather really does bother him. I wasn’t thinking about that when I asked him to move to Minnesota. But he’s doing well otherwise. He doesn’t limp all the time, only when the weather gets to him. He gets migraines sometimes too. Par for the course, they say. But he’s not letting it stop him. He’s loving grad school and still finds time for his music.” The serious look passed and she grinned again and pointed an accusing finger at Lou. “Ah, I see what you did there. You’re not getting out of this conversation. Tell me about Steve. She’s really hot.” Rachel nodded her head as if agreeing to a question that hadn’t been asked.
“Yes, so you’ve said.” Lou pointed her own accusing finger at Rachel and said, “Hands off, she’s mine,” then laughed.
Rachel put her right hand in the air and said, “I solemnly swear not to steal your babe. I have my own.”
Lou sighed, as if put upon. “Okay, then. What can I tell you? She’s retired military, has courtly manners, she makes me laugh and blush. And, as you’ve noticed, looks good in pants that show off her…assets.” Lou grinned.
“Look at you, doing pretty well for yourself. Well, I’m glad you found someone to appreciate you. Wait, what about your geek side? Does she know about that?” Rachel looked worried for a moment, but it just made Lou laugh.
“She’s beginning to. She has her own geek side. She collects comic books, for one thing.”
“Get out! Like superhero comic books? Who’s her favorite?”
“Not superhero, no. Lesbian comic books.”
“There is such a thing?”
“Rachel, I will smack you off this sofa if you tell me you’ve never heard of Dykes to Watch Out For or Jane’s World.”
Rachel looked at her blankly and shook her head. “Nope, sorry. Before my time, I guess.” Rachel grinned mischievously.
Lou pulled her hand back as if to strike her and Rachel put her arm up to block. “I learned something from my sifu.”
Lou inclined her head. “So you did. But that doesn’t excuse your not knowing those comics. They are iconic and you will show some respect. I’ll send you some for Christmas.”
“Fine. Anyway, back to business. So you’re both geeks who are into hitting things, and she has perfect manners and looks good in tight pants. I think I’m caught up.”
“Good. And you’re working in theater, your young man is back in school and on the road to recovery, and it’s cold in Minnesota. I think I’m caught up too.” Lou smiled.
“Yep.” They were silent a moment, then Rachel asked, “So what’s really going on?”
“I was about to ask you the same question.”
Rachel sighed. “Just, same ol’, same ol’. You know?” She raised one shoulder, trying to make whatever was on her mind seem like no big deal.
“Having doubts again?”
“Well, not really, I mean…not so much. It’s just that…sorry, hard to find words for it.”
“I understand.”
“I mean, I love him, there’s no question, but did you see his face?”
“Yes, I saw the stubble.”
“And it’s like that everywhere! And I mean, everywhere.” As if realizing her voice had started to rise, Rachel spoke more softly. “Been thinking of asking if he’ll wax his back. Would that be selfish?”
“I think that’s a fine line. But is that what’s really bothering you—his hair?”
“The other day, I was talking to one of the actresses in the company and she asked me how many boyfriends I’ve had. I’d told her he’s the only one. She thought I meant we had been high school sweethearts. I told her, no, I’m a lesbian. Then, she was all, So, are you one of those lesbians who sleep with men or something? And I said, No, I’m the lesbian who sleeps with Bobby.”
Lou laughed. “Sorry, go on.”
“I just…I feel like I have to declare my lesbian status all the time. Like I should start wearing pride rings and dressing more like Rory, or something. I mean, it’s not like I didn’t expect this, it’s just…It’s difficult, you know?” Rachel put her arm on the back of the couch and rested her head on her hand.
“I know. Identity is important. Have you talked to him about this?”
“Some. I don’t want him to think I don’t love him, you know? I do. I just don’t want to lose me in the process.”
Lou put her hand on Rachel’s knee and nodded in understanding. “Remember what we talked about before? That it matters less what people think of you, and more what you think of yourself? You know who you are. If sometimes you have to declare that to people, fine. But the main thing is that you stay true to who you are and don’t conform to what you think other people expect of you.” They shared a soft look, then Lou sat back and said, “But maybe a labrys tattoo wouldn’t hurt.”
Rachel laughed. “Oh, yeah, I’m so the tattoo type.”
“People definitely wouldn’t expect it of you.”
“You got a point there.” Rachel jumped a little and looked, ann
oyed, toward her pants pocket. “Hold on.” She pulled out her phone and read the message, then sighed. “Looks like it’s time to feed the boy’s tapeworm. He’s starting to whine. Want to come with?”
“Ah, thank you, but I will have to decline. I have to go home and do all the things. You two have fun, and we will definitely have to all get together before you leave.”
“Definitely. I do get a hug, right?”
“Of course.” They stood and Lou hugged her good-bye, then walked her out to her car. They waved, then Lou drove home.
* * *
When Steve left the café, it wasn’t to go to a cooking class with her mother. She went home, chastising herself the whole way for lying to Lou. Not only shouldn’t she have done so, but it was a bad lie, easily discovered. Lou would see her mother on the weekend and she could easily ask how the cooking class was going. Steve smacked the steering wheel and muttered, “Dammit, you suck at lying.”
She wasn’t even sure why she felt the need to run out of the café like that, but she suddenly felt an urgent need to leave when Rachel and Bobby showed up. Not that it had anything to do with them, exactly. It was just that suddenly, it seemed like the world was going too fast and she was caught up in something that was spinning her around, and she needed to get off the ride. Maybe it was the domesticity of the situation, how natural it seemed that they were in a relationship. But it was moving too fast for Steve.
As she sat on the sofa, she could feel her heart start to beat faster and her face felt hot. The noises in the room had started to blend together and the voices were becoming indistinct. At the time, she knew what all those things meant and knew she needed to get out of the situation. After hugging Lou good-bye, she’d practically run back to her car, barely remembering to put her seat belt on. She could feel their eyes on her. She worried they could tell what was happening, but she tried to tell herself that was ridiculous. She’d been having panic attacks for several years, and by now she had developed methods to deal with them in such a way that others didn’t even notice she was having them. But that didn’t stop her from worrying that Lou noticed and might think less of her, that she was crazy or something. Before she put the car in drive, she took a deep breath—once, twice, three times—then brought the Capricorn pendant up to her lips and kissed it. Then she felt she could leave.
A few minutes later, she pulled into her driveway and turned off the ignition, then put her head on her folded arms resting on the steering wheel and exhaled. I’m fine. It’s okay. I’m fine. After a moment, she sat back up, took the keys out of the car, and opened the car door. She chuckled to herself when she realized she almost forgot to unbuckle the seat belt, the one she had almost forgotten to buckle in the first place. She pushed the release button and got out of the car and somehow made it to her front door. When she got inside, she threw her keys into a two-toned blue ceramic ashtray on a table by the door that had a small Meramec Caverns decal in the bottom of it. It had never been used as an ashtray, as no one in her family smoked. She had taken it with her when she left as a reminder of home. Her keys hit the bottom with a clank, and then she kicked off her shoes at the door and set them neatly in the boot tray.
Steve walked across her neatly kept living room to the hallway that led to her bedroom. Once there, she went to her dresser and pulled out a T-shirt and nylon shorts, then changed into them, making sure to put the clothes she just took off in the hamper in the corner. Then she retrieved a pair of tennis shoes from the closet and left the room, walking back through the house to the door in the kitchen that led out into the garage.
This room was not a place for her car. This was her gym. In one corner, there was a weight bench and bar behind it. On another wall were the free weights. Bikes hung off one wall, one for city riding and one for off-road, and on another wall hung jump ropes and boxing gloves. The heavy bag hung in the center of the room. And that’s where she went, after she put on the gloves.
She stood there for quite a while, she wasn’t sure how long, punching the bag. Long enough to work up a sweat, which she didn’t notice until it reached her eyes. She wiped it away with the back of her arm and kept going. Finally, out of breath, she stopped and tore off her gloves and hung them back on the peg on the wall. She turned around and looked at the room, at her equipment, wiped more sweat off her forehead and said to herself, “I miss this.” Chuckling to herself, she pulled the pendant out from under her shirt and brought it to her lips with a small smile and kissed it, then tucked it back in and went into the house to shower.
* * *
Lou left the café and headed home. Once inside, she kicked off her shoes near the sofa and threw her keys on her table, not bothering to pick them up when they slid to the floor. She went to the fridge to retrieve a bottle of water, then opened her laptop, which she had left on the table, and typed in her password. She pulled up the novel draft with a sigh. “No rest for the weary.” She was trying to get back into the story she’d been neglecting for the last several weeks, but the muse, that fickle bitch, wasn’t showing up. She opened her music streaming app and asked it to play her favorite musical style, rockabilly, then returned to her writing. A Stray Cats song immediately started to play, but not one she was familiar with. She couldn’t get into it and it was making her more frustrated. She skipped that song. It changed to a Chuck Berry one instead. Better, but it still wasn’t doing anything for her. “Rock Around the Clock” came on and she smiled. “Oh, hell yeah!”
Instead of writing, Lou stood up from her chair and started dancing around her kitchen, singing along. When that song was over, an Elvis song came on: “Fever.” She smiled to herself and started to snap her fingers in time to the music, moving slowly and sensually, with her eyes closed. The song changed to “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” and Lou stopped dancing, but the smile stayed in place. Then she shook her head. “No, stop that. Stop thinking that way. Elvis, I don’t need this right now.” She skipped that song too, though skipping Elvis seemed like sacrilege. “Yakety Yak” played next, and she started dancing again. She was startled by her phone buzzing in her pocket, and yelped. Laughing at herself, she pulled it out and saw that Bill was calling.
“Hello. Just let me turn the music down.” She reached over to her laptop and paused the music. “Okay, what’s up?”
“Why are you out of breath? Were you muse dancing again?”
Lou laughed. “I told you about that?” Lou resumed her chair and took a drink of her water.
“Don’t you tell me everything?”
“No, just most things. Besides, I have to get that bitch here somehow.”
“What bitch?”
“The muse! Try to keep up.”
“Honey, if this is how you talk about her, no wonder she’s not showing up. You need to romance her and say nice things to her. Make her want you.”
“Bill, you do know she’s not real, right?”
“Bite your tongue. You’ve just cursed yourself—I hope you know that.”
“I think I’ve already done that a long time ago. It seems like she’s taken a powder on this story. Also, I’m a little disturbed about how you describe my relationship with her. I don’t want to seduce my muse. That’s just creepy.” Lou sat back in her chair and stretched her legs out in front of her. When she did so, she felt something under her foot and looked under the table to see her keys on the floor. She dragged them closer with her foot, then reached down and picked them back up and put them next to her on the table.
“Anything’s gotta be better than you dancing around your living room to old rock and roll songs. I mean, how does that work, exactly? You just shimmy those boyish hips of yours and hope she’ll be enticed by that?”
“Boyish hips? What do you mean, boyish hips? I don’t have boyish hips.” Lou twisted around in the chair to try to see what he was talking about.
“That’s what you get caught up on? Anyway, I didn’t call to talk about your boyish hips, or your bad lesbian dancing—”
&
nbsp; Lou interrupted him. “Why is my dancing bad lesbian dancing? And who said it was bad? You’ve never seen it—you’re just assuming.” She grinned, though he couldn’t see.
“How could it not be, with those hips? But I digress.”
“Hey…”
“As I said, I digress. I was just calling to invite you and your young paramour over for dinner, or a friendly game of Parcheesi, you know, as people do.”
“Parcheesi? What, are you eighty? And why do I hear Admiral Ackbar screaming in my head right now? Hmm?”
“That’s that guy from Star Trek, right?”
“Wars! Star Wars. Seriously?”
“Hey, I can’t keep up with all that geeky shit. I have a life.”
“Why are you being such a bitch today? First, I have boyish lesbian hips that can’t dance, then you throw my favorite fandom under the bus, and me along with it. What’s wrong with you?” Lou was still smiling, but she was also concerned about him. Bill didn’t talk much with her about personal things, but she wanted him to know she was there if he needed her.
Bill sighed. “It’s nothing. Just one of those days. Sorry, love. But the invitation was sincere. We would like to get to know the one who has stolen your heart. It’s tradition for all the lesbians we know. We must approve their dates.”
Lou chuckled. “What, two lesbian friends, and suddenly it’s a tradition?”
“A tradition has to start somewhere. So, are you game?”
“I got a bad feeling…”
“Oh, stop it. Just ask your nerf herder and get back to me.”
“Oh, a correct reference. I’m so proud of you.” Lou chuckled.
“Oh, shut up.” They ended the call with laughter.
Elvis’s “A Little Less Conversation” started to play and Lou smacked her hands together. “All right, you Greek bitch, let’s get some work done.” She put her fingers on the keyboard and began to type.
Chapter Eight