by Katie Heaney
“Yeah,” I said cautiously. I didn’t know she knew, actually. I was never really sure how transparent to be with either of them about the other. “I think we’re going to get breakfast or something.” I knew we were, really, but I didn’t want my mom to think I was too eager.
“You know why, right?”
“He said he’s visiting a friend?”
She sighed. “He’s got a job interview.”
“A job…here?” I asked dumbly.
“Yeah.”
She peered at me again, trying to see how I felt, which meant I had to work out how I felt and then keep it from showing on my face. Mainly I was confused.
“It’s not a sure thing,” my mom added. “They might not make an offer, and even if they do he might not take it. I think he’s content where he is.”
Only then did it hit me. “What about UNC?”
“If he took the job, and if UNC is where you end up—”
“It will be,” I interjected, now fully annoyed. I couldn’t believe this. Any of it.
“Okay, well,” my mom sighed. “We’ll cross those bridges when we come to them.”
My mom watched me stew for a few moments, until I remembered that the polite thing to do was to not make this all about me.
“How would you feel about it?” I asked. “If he moved here again.”
“Eh.” She shrugged. “I don’t expect it to change anything for me. I don’t see him.”
I nodded, not entirely sure whether I believed her. My parents’ divorce was not amicable, though they communicated about me via oddly abbreviated text message when necessary. Which must have been how my dad had informed her of the job interview. I wondered why he hadn’t yet told me. Maybe he didn’t want me to freak out before he knew for sure. Or maybe he was just waiting for our breakfast, so he could freak me out in person. He did love a big reveal. I’d have to pretend Mom hadn’t already told me so he wouldn’t be mad at her for ruining it.
I leaned over to kiss her on the cheek, and she hugged me around the neck, still propping her book open with her other hand. “I don’t think it will change much for me, either,” I said, both reassuring her and trying to convince myself.
“I hope not.”
“Yeah. Okay.” I slung my beach bag over my shoulder, suddenly desperate to get away. “I really have to go.”
“Be safe. And say hi to Jamie for me.”
“I will.”
Despite what she’d said, my mom loved Jamie, a fact about which my feelings had changed at least seventeen times. I had been relieved, and jealous, and happy, and proud, and surprised. Lately I hovered somewhere between sad and touched. She’d been good enough about hiding her personal disappointment when we broke up, but I knew she felt that she, too, had been in some way dumped. The affection was mutual: she and Jamie had been on a semiregular texting basis with each other, and they’d even hung out without me a few times. Sure, it was mostly in the context of attending my soccer games—sitting together in the bleachers, stopping for drive-through In-N-Out milkshakes on the way to one of my away games—but still. Jamie never said so, but it was clear she viewed my mom as a sort of second mother, more supportive than her own. Jamie’s mom hadn’t spoken to her for almost three months after learning she was gay, which only made my mom love her harder, and which made me jealous. And yet I was incapable of being as straightforwardly kind to her as Jamie was. I still kept so much to myself. I hadn’t explicitly told my mom Jamie and I were dating until three months in, and then I’d found out she knew almost to the day when things had changed. She never pried. She never asked me if I was sure this was what I wanted. I knew I should be grateful. And I was. It was not impossible for a person to be deeply grateful and profoundly annoyed at the same time.
When I pulled my truck into Jamie’s driveway, I realized that the last time I’d been there, we’d been together. I wondered, not for the first time, how long I’d have to keep having these before-and-after epiphanies: the first night I went to bed without calling her to say good night; the first Friday night she wasn’t my built-in plan; the first time I watched one of our movies alone. At first it was devastating, and then it became soothing in its devastatingness: for a while, all I’d wanted was to keep crying. I came to know my most reliable triggers and I pulled them again and again. But they stopped working, or else my body decided it had had enough. Now that the glamorous part of the suffering was over, I hoped someday soon I might order my life around some other major event. Or person.
* * *
—
It was early enough when we got there that the beach wasn’t yet swarmed, and Jamie and I trudged through hot sand to get to our usual spot, perfect for being equidistant between the ocean, the outdoor bathrooms (Jamie refused to pee in the ocean, not wanting to harm any fish), and the pier, which we’d walk under when we needed shade and a breeze, and which we’d climb the stairs to when we needed shaved ice. When the beach was available to you every day, almost year-round, people tended to get lazy, showing up midday, squeezing themselves into four-foot spaces between other towels, applying sunscreen upon arrival. But I took the beach seriously. Being there was often the highlight of my week, and I thought it only fair to give it the attention to detail it deserved.
While Jamie stripped off her T-shirt and shorts, I twisted my umbrella down into the sand and tried not to stare. When I sat down next to her, she held out the tube of sunscreen, somewhat apologetically. “Can you get my back? I tried, but…”
It was funny, or maybe awful, that after a certain point in our relationship, I’d stopped noticing her body so much. Her strong swimmer’s shoulders, the dimples at the small of her back, the curve of her waist, even her breasts, which for a time had been virtually all I could think about—these things faded into the background of her role in my life. It wasn’t fair, how something stopped feeling so special once you were used to it. I hadn’t meant to stop feeling that I was lucky just to touch her. I hadn’t meant to forget that I might not always get to.
I rubbed the sunscreen between my hands to warm it up first, but Jamie still arched in shock when I pressed them to her skin. Her back was fair and freckled, and I told myself it was only her safety I had in mind when I slipped my hands under the straps of her bikini to make sure no skin went uncovered. I wiped the extra lotion down her arms and then my own.
“Do you need me to do yours?”
I quickly shook my head, even though I wanted her to. “I put it on at home.” I’d worried in advance about the erotic potential of sunscreen application and decided it was best to limit it as much as possible.
Instead I unpacked our lunches, though it was barely eleven o’clock. Being on the beach, even for a minute, made me ravenous. We chewed our sandwiches silently, watching people arrive all around us. At the far end of the beach the last surfer holdouts were coming out of the water in their glittering wet suits, done until the late afternoon, when the rest of us would start packing up to leave.
“How do you make such good sandwiches?”
I laughed. “Me?”
“Yeah. Whenever I make one, even if it has the same exact ingredients, it tastes like shit.”
“That’s because you made it for yourself,” I said. “Food always tastes better made by someone else.”
“I think it’s specific to you, though,” said Jamie. A warmth entirely unrelated to the sun spread across my chest. “I mean, my mom’s food tastes like shit too,” she added.
I grinned. “It really does.”
Jamie elbowed me in the ribs. “Only I’m allowed to say that.” I winced from her touch but smiled through it. It was a nice but complicated feeling for her to tease me now, especially for something no one else knew me well enough to joke about. While Jamie could tolerate criticism of the people she loved—especially of her mom, especially during those few months of post-co
ming out silent treatment—I could not, even and maybe especially when I knew it was fair. One of my and Jamie’s biggest fights as a couple had started because Jamie had agreed when I said my mom seemed lonely. I’d stormed out of the restaurant where we were eating late-night tacos, gotten in my truck, and driven away. I came back for her a minute later, but still. It had not gone over well.
“Do you wanna go in?” I stood up fast, and bread crumbs fell from my board shorts to the towel below.
Jamie squinted up at me. “You just ate.”
“That rule isn’t real.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Maybe for, like, babies.”
Jamie rolled her eyes. “I’ll stay with our stuff.”
Then it was my turn for an eye roll. Jamie was always worried some stealthy preteen thief was going to make off with our beach bags in broad daylight. And then we’d be destitute, out a whole twenty bucks and a half-punched taco-shop loyalty card between us.
“Suit yourself,” I said, and took off jogging toward the water. I never got sick of that feeling: the way my adrenaline kicked up and my sun-roasted sleepiness fell away in anticipation of plunging myself into cool, salty water. I loved the moment the sand switched over from hot and dry to cool and damp. Sometimes, when there weren’t too many people in the water to see me do it, I ran that last stretch with my eyes closed, leaving it to my feet to sense when I was almost there. When I felt water slap against my calves I was awake.
I dove under the water and resurfaced where the water came up to my chest. I smoothed my hair back and turned to look at the beach. Jamie waved and I waved back. Then I did something I knew she’d kind of hate me for, but which I also knew would work: I started yelling.
“COME ON IN, JAMIE!” I hollered. “THE WATER’S FINE!”
I watched her glance casually around, pretending to search for whoever this Jamie person was.
“YEAH, YOU! GIRL UNDER THE BLUE UMBRELLA!”
I could see her scowl from forty yards out. Oh, she is going to straight-up murder me, I thought. But she’d have to come into the water to get to me first.
Slowly she stood up, and slowly she strode into the water, trying to make it clear to me and anyone watching that she’d just happened to decide, independently, that she was ready to swim after all. She dipped gracefully underwater, and moments later, when I saw her gliding directly at me, still underwater, I screamed. There was nowhere to hide; Jamie looped her arms around my legs and took me under.
Water rushed into my ears, and I was on my back, looking up through water into blue sky. Jamie let go of me right away, and I wasn’t hurt, and I didn’t expect to be so mad, but I was, and I wasn’t sure why. I shot to the surface and flicked the wet hair from my face.
“What the fuck, dude?”
“ ‘Dude’?”
We squinted at each other, blinking back saltwater tears.
“You’re stronger than you think. That hurt.” I was lying, sort of.
“Oh, I know I’m strong,” she smirked.
“Oh, well, then, great.”
“Relax. You survived. And anyway, you kind of asked for it.”
I didn’t know how to argue with that, so I turned my head and spit, trying to get the salt out of my mouth. I hated being told to relax. Everybody hated being told to relax. It was, like, the one thing you could say to guarantee a reaction opposite to its supposed intention. So I changed the subject.
“Sweets is gonna play Triple Moon.”
Jamie didn’t react. She didn’t even look at me. She slowed her treading until she was hardly moving at all. She dipped the back of her head into the water and asked the sky, “When?”
“Two weeks,” I said. “Less than.”
“So they already talked to Gaby?”
“And Dee.” I could have left it there but I didn’t. “I went with her, actually.”
“What do you mean?”
“Ruby and I went over there yesterday. Together.”
I watched her face, desperate for any indication that she was unsettled, or jealous, but there was nothing. She stayed on her back, apparently singularly focused on staying afloat.
“How was that?” she asked.
“Fun. She’s cool.”
“That seems to be the general consensus.”
Ugh. Like she hadn’t ranted and raved over how amazing and stylish and pretty she was when we put her first on our wishful-thinking list in the first place.
“Aren’t you excited?”
“Sure. I mean, I’ll be happy to see them live again.”
“And at our favorite place!”
“Yeah,” she said. She swept her arms up and down across the water in short strokes, like she was making a very skinny snow angel. “I don’t know. I’m kind of surprised Gaby went for it.”
“I’m not. It’ll be good for business.”
“Maybe, but she doesn’t care about making money.”
“Well, maybe she should.”
I thought back on the last few times we’d been to Triple Moon, and how quiet it had been. It had never been especially hopping (it was a lesbian feminist coffee shop that served mediocre coffee), but I was sure that even a year ago it had been busier on the whole.
“Well, I’m glad your grand idea for saving a band you don’t even like worked out.”
“You know I didn’t do it for the band,” I spit.
Jamie stopped floating, and for just a second, I thought I had the upper hand. But then she looked right at me and said, “Oh, right, the straight girl.”
Once again I was infuriated, powerless to prove her wrong. All I had were my tiny, stupid, inconsequential clues, which could have gone either way, and which would probably go nowhere. Suddenly my previous confidence was embarrassing: Even if Ruby did have the capacity to like girls, why would I think I’d be one of them?
“You thought you were straight once too,” I muttered.
“Oh, I know,” said Jamie. “I was eight.”
I slapped the water in frustration. I was not going to argue about sexual fluidity in the middle of the ocean. I needed enough energy to swim back to shore. “You’re not allowed to be like this!” I exclaimed.
“Like what?”
“Mean because I like someone else.”
Jamie stopped floating then. She let her feet sink and looked at the water for what felt like a full minute before speaking, and it still wasn’t enough time to prepare me for what she said.
“You’re right.”
Wait. “What?”
“I’m being weird,” she said. “I’m sorry.” She smiled sheepishly.
“You’re freaking me out right now.”
She rolled her eyes, and that, at least, was familiar.
“I apologized. Accept it. I won’t do it again.”
“Okay,” I said. “I accept.”
But my brain was running in overdrive in a thousand different directions. Was she admitting that my being into Ruby bothered her? Had she already known I liked Ruby before I said it? I wasn’t completely sure I’d realized it before I said it, so how could she? And if it did bother her, what did that mean? Could she really be over me if she still got jealous? Did I want her to be jealous, and if I did—let’s be clear: I definitely did—did that mean I still wanted to be with her?
Stop, I thought. Just stop. I dipped underwater, hoping all these unwelcome and unproductive thoughts would somehow slip out of my ears and nose and mouth and into the ocean and stay there.
I knew what I had to do to move on. To chin up. To get my head back on, like Robyn sang in one of my favorite songs from the Moving On—I Mean It This Time playlist I’d made recently.
I had to go home and have a good final cry. Yes, I’d had other “final” cries. But those other times didn’t count. This time was dif
ferent. I was reborn in the ocean that day, baptized, not heartbroken but a heartbreaker. I wasn’t going to spend my senior year moping over Jamie. I was going to spend it winning over Ruby.
Which was why the second thing I had to do when I got home was text her.
In retrospect, what are you up to wasn’t the ingeniously, slyly seductive message I thought it was when I sent it at 10:48. On a Sunday night. Probably the answer was sleeping, or going to bed soon, or something similarly unlikely to lead to a flirtatious back-and-forth. But we had to start our text rapport somewhere, and everything else I’d thought of was even stupider. For longer than I’d like to admit, I’d entertained the idea of texting her my favorite picture of Ashlyn Harris, in which she’s sitting with her teammate and partner Ali Krieger on the pitch, her hand on Ali’s shoulder—I guess as a way to be, like, See anything here that interests you?
Ordinarily I’d have been devastated that Ruby didn’t text me back within two and then five and then ten hours, but luckily I’d become a very laid-back person over the weekend. And then, presumably as an award for my unprecedented chillness, my phone buzzed on the table at lunchtime the next day. Just thirteen hours later. I felt all eight of our eyes on my phone until I picked it up.
“Who’s texting you? We’re your only friends,” said Ronni.
I was too excited to come up with a retort. Ruby was texting me. That was who.
Sensing potential gossip, Alexis perked up. “Wait, who is it?”
I ignored her and reread Ruby’s message, again and again: hey, sorry, just saw this.
It wasn’t Shakespeare, but it was a response. It was an acknowledgment that I’d texted her, that texting her was an okay thing for me to do. As I watched the screen, the typing bubble appeared, and I gasped.
“Wait. Really, though,” said Alexis. “Like—”
“It’s Ruby,” said Jamie.
That snapped me out of it. I locked eyes with Jamie, and hers narrowed, daring me to deny it. So I decided to put Alexis out of her misery, and I nodded.