by Katie Heaney
“Triple Moon?”
I nodded.
By then we were standing alone together in the hallway, and there was nothing else to do but pretend I had to pee so I wouldn’t have to walk next to her. We both knew there was nothing else safe for us to talk about.
* * *
—
I hadn’t been to Triple Moon since the Sweets show, which was a long time for me. When Dee saw me walk through the door she crossed her arms in front of her chest so the script tattooed along her outer forearms looked like one long, menacing sentence.
“Who the hell are you?” she teased.
“I know,” I said. I wanted to say I missed you, but I’d never said anything so explicitly affectionate to Dee before, and I didn’t want to embarrass myself. So instead I said, “I missed it.”
“Well, it missed you, clearly,” she said, gesturing broadly at the all-but-empty coffee shop. Besides me, there was only one other customer, a college kid with a blue mullet I’d seen dozens of times in the exact position they were in now: one leg pulled up to rest against the table and the other bouncing against the seat, a graphic novel pressed almost flush against their face. Two glasses holding milky, melting ice sat on the table. Two drinks is basically the same as two customers, I thought. I wished I had more money so I could stuff a twenty-dollar bill or two into the tip jar when Dee wasn’t looking, but I had exactly eight dollars in my wallet, which was only enough to leave three.
“Iced vanilla?” Dee asked, and for a second I worried she’d been reading my mind. I nodded. Dee took my five-dollar bill without looking at me, and I stuffed my ones into the tip jar when she turned to the espresso machine. When she set my drink on the counter I looked at it instead of her and asked, “Are you guys doing okay?”
Dee paused for so long I was forced to look up. She leaned against the back counter and crossed her arms once again. But it was different this time, the script on her arms looking more like a lyric to the world’s saddest song. I realized I’d never asked her what the tattoos actually said. They were in Latin, unreadable even on the rare occasions I got a good look at them.
“We’re fine,” Dee said finally. “We just had a slow summer.”
“It’s almost November.”
“A slow summer and fall, then.” She shrugged.
If Jamie had never said anything about it to me, I would have taken Dee at her word. But what I loved most about the coffee shop (its protective near emptiness, its free books, its often-free coffee) looked different to me now.
“Is there anything I can do?” I asked.
Dee pointed to my glass, perspiring on the counter. “You already did it.”
“What do your arms say?”
Dee laughed, a single bark she directed at the ceiling. She held up one forearm and then the next. “This one means ‘I’ll never stop loving you,’ and this one is, like, ‘Even in death, love survives’ or some shit.”
“Wow, you were really serious.”
“I was the first person in history to fall in love,” Dee said, grinning.
“Gaby?”
“We broke up, like, a month later,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Everyone told me not to get these and they were right.”
“I like them,” I said. “And anyway, you do still love her. It’s just a different way.”
Dee considered this. “You’re a sharp one, Q,” she said. “Except for the straight-girl thing. Not that I haven’t been there. Several times.”
I wanted to defend my honor and tell her Ruby really did like me, because we’d held hands, and because Ronni said so. But then Jamie walked in the door, and the subject had to be changed. Dee and Jamie exchanged warm hellos.
“Iced vanilla?” Dee asked.
Jamie glanced at me before she nodded, and I felt a tiny thrill of smugness.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hi.”
“What do you have in there?” I asked, pointing to the backpack dwarfing Jamie’s body. “Actual pot?”
“What?” Dee yelled over the milk steamer.
“Kidding!” I shouted.
“I went to the library,” Jamie explained.
I smiled. Of course she had. Jamie had never met a humanities assignment she didn’t overprepare for by a thousand percent. Science was different (we both hated that), and math she seemed to know inherently, but if there was an opportunity to research, to borrow books and print academic papers and buy and organize color-coded note cards, Jamie took it and ran. She was going to be so good at college.
My backpack, meanwhile, contained my laptop, my Civil Liberties notebook, and about seventy-eight pens.
Jamie paid, and we carried our coffee over to our favorite table. I surreptitiously stared at her as we sat and arranged our things into serious homework mode around us. Between the end of the school day and now, she’d changed her outfit and put on mascara. A small, ridiculous part of me wondered if she’d done all that for me, but a much bigger part worried she was going to see Natalie after this, or that she already had, during the two hours I was at practice.
“What did you do today?” I asked casually.
Jamie looked at me like I was the hugest idiot in the world. Which, apparently, I was. “School,” she said.
“Well. Yeah,” I said.
“What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing,” I said. (Everything.) “I’m just making conversation.”
“Okay,” said Jamie. “Well, let’s converse about legalization.”
I sighed, and Jamie passed me a book called The Legalization of Drugs (For and Against). Then she pulled out another called Weed the People.
“Yours sounds a lot more interesting.”
“Sorry.” She didn’t look up, just opened her book and ran her thumbnail along the binding, pressing the cover flat. Jamie treated her own books like a hot stovetop, touching them as little as possible, but with library books, she read the way she wanted to read: ruthlessly.
For what felt like at least an hour we read in silence, save for the soft scrape of a page being turned and Ani DiFranco warbling faintly overhead. I checked the time when the college student packed up and left, and I realized it had actually only been thirteen minutes.
I sighed, and looked around the empty shop.
Jamie peered up at me from her hunchbacked reading position. “Keep reading.”
“It’s boring.”
“It’s due Tuesday. Do you want to be doing this on the weekend?”
She flushed a little when she said it, and I realized she knew about my date (question mark) with Ruby. Ronni must have told Alexis, who would have told Jamie. I felt both panicked and thrilled.
“No,” I agreed. “I don’t.”
We resumed reading, and I took a few note cards off the top of Jamie’s pile to write down the talking points I found in my book. (These were variants on drugs are bad, mainly, but expressed in many more and larger words.) I looked up a few academic studies online and wrote down facts and statistics from there, too. I didn’t really agree with the point I’d be arguing, but the more I looked into it, the more determined I became to argue it well. The next time I checked the time on my phone, an hour and twelve minutes had gone by. The coffee shop was closing in less than twenty minutes. Jamie had headphones on, so I tapped on the page she was reading to get her attention.
“What?”
“It’s almost eight.”
“Really?” Jamie pressed her phone screen—to make sure I wasn’t lying about the time, I guess. “Okay. I’m basically done anyway.”
“Me too.”
“Really?” I gave her a look. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “I’m as surprised as you are.”
“Do you think we’ll need to meet again, then?” From the tone of her voice, it was ha
rd to tell whether this was something Jamie wanted, or wanted to avoid.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I can do the rest on my own. But thank you for getting these books.”
“Sure.”
“I’m gonna win, you know,” I said.
Jamie laughed, which was the point. “We’ll see about that.”
We packed up our things and brought our empty glasses to the counter.
“Finally,” said Dee. “I want to go.”
I remembered something. “Oh, hey—Sweets wants to do another show.”
Dee looked from me to Jamie and then back to me. I could see the effort it took for her not to tease me about Ruby. “Do they,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“How’s next Friday?”
“Um. I can ask, but that’s homecoming weekend.”
“Oh yeah,” said Jamie. “Does that…matter?”
Does it matter to you? I thought. I felt myself go sweaty around the collar. I didn’t want to know. “I dunno. I think that cuts into attendance a bit.”
“Just remind me, and I’ll send you the calendar,” said Dee. “Actually, email Gaby too, will you? Pretend you’re asking her first.”
“Okay.”
“How’d you guys do last time?” asked Jamie, and immediately I felt embarrassed for not having asked the same thing.
“Good,” said Dee. “Better than average. It’s just, you know.” She shrugged.
“What?”
“The average is low.”
She looked resigned when she said this, and I wondered just how dire their situation really was. Dee was proud, and she would never ask for help, especially from teenagers. I wished there were something I could do, but I had an empty wallet and no job. I must’ve looked worried, because Dee perked up and laughed it off, like she’d been joking.
“Oh my God, relax,” she said. “Please, get out of here so I can leave.”
“Thanks, Dee,” said Jamie.
“Yeah,” I said. “Thanks.”
Dee waved us out the door, and in the parking lot Jamie surprised me by asking for a ride home.
“You didn’t bike?”
“I got dropped off,” she said. She was trying hard not to smile, and my stomach dropped like the ground had disappeared from under me. So Natalie was the reason for the mascara. It was clear she wanted to be asked for details, but I didn’t want to hear it from her. I’d find out later, from Ronni, from Alexis. Instead I just nodded toward my car, and for the first time since she dumped me, Jamie climbed into my passenger seat.
As soon as I turned the car on, a song from my Moving On—I Mean It This Time, 2.0 playlist blasted through the speakers. I grabbed my phone to turn it down, and scrolled through my music for alternatives for a second before landing on the obvious choice. I tapped my screen, and Sweets’s Type Two took over.
“You’re allowed to listen to other things,” said Jamie.
“This is what I want,” I said.
Jamie nodded and looked out the window. I used to joke she was like a dog, craning her neck out in summer to smile into the sun and wind.
“I’m worried about Triple Moon,” Jamie said to the window.
“Me too.”
“I wish there was something we could do.”
“You don’t think they’ll close, do you?”
Jamie turned to look at me and suddenly I felt naked, like a helpless, clueless baby. Somehow, until I said it aloud, the thought that Triple Moon might not always be there hadn’t really occurred to me. Because I had eyes and ears I knew business wasn’t exactly booming, but I assumed it was a rough patch that would mend itself in time. They’d start advertising more, maybe debut some new drink, and the norm would return to half-full from mostly empty.
“I think it’s a miracle they’ve been in business as long as they have,” Jamie said finally.
I remembered then the links she’d texted to me: news articles about lesbian bars closing across the country, and the think pieces that followed, wondering why. I remembered feeling like it was, in some way, my fault, even if I didn’t live in those places and wasn’t old enough to go inside if I did. Meanwhile, Triple Moon—a safe place to drink lattes and do my homework and read gay books and laugh and cry and fall in love with girls—was right here, and I had taken it for granted.
We sat in silence, and I listened to Ruby singing through my speaker. I’ve held this person’s hand, I thought. She’s practically famous. Then I had an idea.
“What if we got Sweets to help us with a fund-raiser?”
Jamie didn’t say anything, which was how I knew she thought it was a good idea.
“It could be like a benefit concert,” I continued. “We charge more, like ten bucks or something, and then instead of the band keeping part of it, all the money goes to the shop.”
“It’d have to be twenty at least,” said Jamie. “Maybe more.”
“People pay thirty dollars for a concert all the time. They pay a lot more than that.”
“Usually the band is, like, famous, but yeah.”
“Sweets is thirty-dollar famous for sure,” I said. My head was buzzing now, my free leg bouncing against my seat.
“Um, my exit?” said Jamie.
“Shit.” I looked over my shoulder and sailed into the turn lane I’d almost blown past.
Turning off the exit, I braced myself, expecting to feel something about seeing Jamie’s house for the first time in months. Not that it felt like more than a few days had passed. Every turn was automatic, and every house that led to hers was put there to remind me where I was. In twenty years I’d come home from wherever I was living (San Francisco, or Mexico City, or London, maybe Brussels) and I knew this route would feel exactly as familiar as it did now. I snuck a glance at Jamie, mentally tracing the profile I’d memorized the first time I saw her. I still knew every freckle, and maybe I always would. When we were together I’d thrilled at every private look and every inside joke and every piece of Jamie trivia I could recite as my own. I’d been so proud of how well I knew her, like that made her mine to keep. But now all that knowing felt different, like lyrics to a song I didn’t even like but inexplicably knew by heart.
When we pulled into the driveway all I felt was impatient. I couldn’t wait for Jamie to get out of my car. I couldn’t wait to get home and into my bed. I especially couldn’t wait for my picnic with Ruby. Now there were two things I wanted to ask her, and I had no idea how she’d respond to either one. Suddenly that not knowing didn’t scare me so much anymore.
I meant to spend Sunday morning doing all the homework I hadn’t done on Saturday because I was too nervous about my date (question mark) with Ruby. But then it was the day of the actual date thing, and the very idea of opening a textbook was laughable. Like I was going to sit down and read about kinetic energy when I was seeing Ruby in eight and a half hours. I needed every minute of that time to pace frantically around the house, wondering why I couldn’t have suggested a Sunday breakfast instead of a midafternoon snack. On my twelfth trip through the kitchen my mom finally threw down her book.
“Would you stop? You’re making me nervous!”
“I can’t help it! I don’t know what else to do!”
My mom took a big bite of doughnut and rubbed at her temple. “Go get my purse,” she mumbled.
I dashed into the entryway and yanked my mom’s black leather bag off the hook by the door. I handed it over, and my mom wiped her powdered-sugar fingers on her pajama pants before digging out her wallet. She peered into it, sighing when she found only a few dollar bills. I held my breath as she slipped her emergency second credit card out of its slot. The last (and first) time my mom had given me that card was for my six-month-anniversary date with Jamie. I’d made us a reservation at the fanciest steakhouse my mom’s sixty-five-dollar budget
offering could buy. With tip I paid sixty-two.
“You’re having a picnic, right?”
I nodded excitedly. I’d been planning to cobble it together from food we already had in the house, but instantly I began to dream bigger: Fresh fruit. Cold deli sides. Buttery European cookies.
“Okay,” my mom said. “Forty bucks, max.”
“That’s plenty,” I said. “I mean, it’s enough. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” She picked up her doughnut with one hand and her book with the other. “Now get dressed and get out of here. And take your time.”
And I did. I showered and drove to the fancy grocery store out by La Jolla: the one with carpeted aisles and frigid air-conditioning and the boys my age wearing black polos who bagged your food up for you, where old people and rich people and old rich people bought organic produce and gourmet cheese as normal, everyday food. I lingered over every display, and stopped for every free sample offered to me by ladies with perfect manicures, wearing white chef’s coats and discreet hairnets: a tiny shrimp cocktail in a paper cup; a smear of truffled goat cheese on a crispy herbed cracker; four sips’ worth of cranberry kombucha, on sale this week for $3.99 a bottle from $4.59 a bottle.
I walked all the way through the store once without putting anything in my basket. I had to maximize my forty dollars, and it was easy to get sucked in by flashy-but-impractical items, like the four-pack of crème brûlée pudding that came in actual glass dishware, which I stared at for a full thirty seconds even though it cost eight dollars. On my second trip through the store, now older and wiser, I picked up a box each of raspberries and blueberries, three blocks of cheese, prosciutto and salami, two kinds of crackers, and a bag of potato chips, just in case. Then I did some mental math and put back the blueberries and one box of crackers.
The subtotal came to $38.41, so I threw a bag of M&M’s on top for dessert.
Back at home in the kitchen, my mom now upstairs in the shower, I packed everything neatly into a cooler and then stood back to appraise my efforts. I wished I’d thought ahead to buy one of those special wooden picnic baskets lined with gingham fabric. Something like that would have really pulled the whole thing together. But maybe it was better this way. With the cooler I’d look like I was carrying a couple of basic peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but when I opened it, and she saw instead an elegant, grown-up feast, Ruby would have no choice but to immediately ask me to homecoming. Or something like that.