by Katie Heaney
Ruby’s bedroom took up nearly the entire floor, and I briefly worried she’d have me sleep on the couch at the opposite end of the room from her bed. (A couch. In her bedroom.) But then she closed the door and pulled me toward her bed, and I stopped thinking altogether.
We didn’t have sex, though it was obvious we were both wondering if we would. During a break in the kissing she looked up at me and I felt like she might be waiting for me to ask her if we could, but I couldn’t come up with the words, and something about being put in that position made me stubborn. Replaying it in the early-morning sunlight, it felt silly to think of it that way, but at the time, I didn’t want to be something Ruby just went along with.
Eventually she’d pulled a sleeping bag from her enormous closet, and I was surprised by my own relief. Not that I’d really thought I’d sleep with her in her bed, because if she had the kind of parents you tiptoe around, they probably weren’t the kind of parents who’d be cool with an obvious lesbian sharing their daughter’s bed. But when we were still lying there together, mouths numb from liquor and kissing, I’d felt lonely and claustrophobic and homesick and embarrassed by all of these feelings and more. I’d never been much for sleepovers as a kid—something about another house’s smells and sounds felt foreboding in the dark, and though I always woke up first, I was afraid to leave my friend’s bedroom without them, convinced I’d encounter her pajamaed dad in the hallway, and he’d awkwardly ask if I slept okay, and I would have to lie. (This had happened to me once, at Melissa McDougal’s house in second grade, and that was enough.) But in my sleeping cocoon, after we’d said good night and Ruby’s breathing slowed, I felt better. I clutched my phone in lieu of the ragged teddy bear I pretended was only decorative, reading through text threads with Ronni and my mom and Jamie to remind myself I was still me, and in the morning I would go home.
Now it was 6:41, and I had to be at the tournament, ready to play. I’d heard footsteps descending the stairs when I first woke up, and now ambient TV and kitchen sounds drifted up from the first floor. I slithered out of my sleeping bag, tiptoeing out of the room and into Ruby’s bathroom around the corner, which revealed itself to be the second most glamorous bathroom I’d ever seen in my life, both within the last twelve hours. The towels were plush and a creamy, impractical off-white. There were weird spiky sprigs of dried plants arranged in rose-gold vases on the glass shelves, which also held a number of lotions and creams and other mysterious liquids, all neatly arranged. There wasn’t even one water spot on the mirror. I was afraid to touch anything, but I was more afraid of showing up to my game unshowered, smelling like liquor and hormones. I retrieved a spare towel as delicately as if it were booby-trapped, and stripped out of last night’s outfit. I held my hand under the showerhead (perfect water pressure) until the temperature was right, and then I stepped in. I luxuriated in flicking open each of Ruby’s several shampoos and conditioners and body soaps and sniffing their contents. Unable to choose, I made blends of all three.
By the time I got out, my butt and back were bright pink, and the mirror fully fogged. Reluctantly, I got dressed in the clothes I’d thrown on the floor. I found toothpaste and squeezed some onto my finger, my makeshift toothbrush, and snuck back into Ruby’s room. Her back was facing me, and I assumed she was still asleep, but when I got closer she murmured, “You smell good,” which scared the shit out of me.
She turned over in bed, peering at me through smeared black eyeliner. “You took a shower already?”
“Yeah. Sorry. I wake up early.”
She lifted her phone from her nightstand and laughed. “Wow. No kidding.”
“Sorry.”
“No, it’s fine,” she said. I was still standing three feet from her bed, unsure what to do with myself. I couldn’t get back into my bag, but Ruby made no signs of getting up either. “I’ll get up,” she said, but she didn’t move.
“No, no,” I said. “I’ve gotta get to my tournament soon anyway.”
“Oh right,” she said.
I couldn’t stand it anymore. I sat at the foot of her bed. In response she stretched out her leg so it grazed my thigh through the blankets. We smiled at each other, and laughed.
“So what now?” she said.
“What do you mean?” I said. I knew what she meant.
“Are we like…” Ruby gestured at the space between us.
“Engaged?” I suggested.
She laughed, a single, loud ha! that reminded me of Jamie at the worst possible time.
“I’m kidding,” I added.
“I know.”
“We can be whatever you want us to be.”
“But what do you want?”
I looked at her, lying in the bed we’d made out in hours earlier, days after I’d kissed her first, weeks after this very scene would have seemed laughably unlikely, months after I got my heart broken, and felt there was only one possible, reasonable answer.
“I want you,” I said.
Finally, Ruby sat up and scooted down the bed to my side. The gears in my heart whirred to life. She leaned in close to me, waiting to be kissed. She had morning breath, which was comforting, in a way. It meant I wasn’t dreaming. This was really happening. I kissed her, still waiting to believe it.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been so excited to walk into school on a Monday morning. I strode into the building feeling like the post-makeover scene in every teen movie, hoping everyone else was seeing me pass in glorious slow motion. I was still wearing my normal clothes and I still had the same haircut, but surely I looked different. I wasn’t just Quinn anymore. I was Quinn, Ruby’s girlfriend. Ish. I reminded myself at every opportunity, willing it to feel real. When I saw a pair of freshman soccer players in the hall I imagined them thinking, That’s Quinn. She’s dating Ruby Ocampo. I grabbed my books from my locker and thought, I wonder what my girlfriend, Ruby Ocampo, ate for breakfast. Then I remembered she’d told me she didn’t eat breakfast. Pancakes just for me, thanks—my girlfriend doesn’t really like breakfast food.
I’d more or less confirmed our status via text message the night before, in what was hopefully a very restrained, almost ambivalent manner. Ruby had finally texted me that afternoon: the slant-mouth emoji with a bandage on its head, which briefly made me panic she was about to write the whole thing off as a drunken mistake. I didn’t think she’d been very drunk the night before, and definitely not that morning. But before I could decide how best to respond, she sent the kissy-face emoji, and I knew she wasn’t going to take it all back. Later, when I asked her if all this meant we were together, she replied Lol so formal. But then she added, Yes, I guess it does. Smiley face.
So that was that. We were official. I took a screenshot, just in case I wanted to print it for a scrapbook someday. I wanted to give her something of mine, because just saying the words didn’t feel like enough. There should be a high school couple registry, I thought. I wanted my name listed next to Ruby’s on some sort of permanent record. Maybe even a plaque.
Instead I decided to wear my great-grandfather’s bracelet to school in order to give it to her. Not to keep forever, unless we were together forever, but to wear for now. It felt important, and a small, secret part of me knew it was because I didn’t think people would believe we were together otherwise. I knew if Jamie found out she would scold me, say I was being patriarchal and probably somehow capitalist, too. She would say I was trying to mark my territory, but it wasn’t like that. Or if it was a little like that, it was more that I wanted to be marked as Ruby’s.
Now, more than ever, it felt cosmically unfair that Ruby had B lunch period when I had A. But I practically skipped into the cafeteria anyway, plotting how to share my news without screaming it before I sat down. Ronni and Jamie were already at the table, which meant Alexis was probably still in line for her usual salad and french fries.
“Hey,�
�� I said, easing my backpack off my shoulders. Good start.
Jamie’s mouth was full, so she gave me a wave, and Ronni clapped me on the back.
“What’s up, Q?”
“Not much,” I lied, stalling. I didn’t want to say anything substantial in front of Jamie before Westville’s TMZ joined us. “How’ve you been since…twenty hours ago?”
“Good,” said Ronni. “I ran a six-twenty-five this morning.”
“Are you kidding me?” I asked.
She smiled smugly, then glanced at Jamie. “Jamie was actually just telling me about her weekend.” Something about the way Ronni said it made my face go hot with worry.
“I went to the dance,” Jamie explained.
My stomach dropped into my feet. Immediately, I had ten million questions, but I was too shell-shocked to ask any of them. Who? (Natalie?) What? When? Where? WHY? As of last week, as far as I knew, Jamie had had zero plans to attend the dance. I knew this because I’d listened very carefully anytime Alexis and Jamie talked about Alexis’s homecoming drama on the other side of the lunch table, and Jamie had made no indication she would also be there. How did she even get a ticket so last-minute? I wondered, ridiculously, as if our crappy school-gym dance tickets typically sold out like Coachella.
“What’s happening?” said Alexis, who, apparently sensing potential drama, had rushed over to the table with tray in hand. I realized I still hadn’t said anything.
“Jamie just told us she went to homecoming!” I exclaimed brightly.
“Oh. Yeah. She was sorta my date.” Alexis grinned, leaning into Jamie as she sat down. I felt a flare of jealousy, even as the relief that Jamie hadn’t gone with Natalie (at least not formally) rushed through me.
“How?” I said. “I mean, what about…Jacob? Or those other guys?”
“Please,” said Alexis. “Bringing a boy to the dance is so nineties.” She threw her arm around Jamie, and they looked deep into each other’s eyes. Then they cracked up, evidently at some incredible homecoming-related inside joke I hadn’t been there for, and would never be part of. I had a horrible feeling I would be hearing about this dance for the rest of the year, if not the rest of my life. My own Saturday night felt impossibly far behind me, the details increasingly fuzzy and dull.
“I wasn’t going to go, but Alexis played the feminist card, and I couldn’t refuse,” explained Jamie. I wondered if this was for my benefit, but then, why would she think I’d care? (I was of course wondering if Natalie had gone too, maybe with band friends, and who she’d danced with, and if that included Jamie. But that was just curiosity.)
“It’s actually really progressive for a lesbian and a straight girl to go together,” Alexis agreed.
Jamie cocked her head. “Well…”
Alexis gasped excitedly. “Wait. Do you think anyone thinks I’m gay now?”
“No,” the rest of us said. Alexis’s shoulders slumped a little.
“What did you wear?” Ronni asked Jamie. We’d all seen about two thousand pictures of Alexis in her dress weeks earlier, when she’d asked us to vote on her six different options. “Where are the pictures?”
“Don’t tell her—I’m still editing them,” said Alexis, holding her hand out to stop Jamie before she could ruin the surprise. “Anyway, you get way more impact posting on a weekday.”
“Right, of course,” said Ronni. I could hear the slightest sarcasm in her tone, and I knew it was meant for me, but I couldn’t bring myself to look at her. If she saw my eyes, she’d know I wasn’t okay. And I worried that if she knew I wasn’t okay, she’d be disappointed in me, for not being tougher, for taking everything so personally.
“A lot of people were there with friends, actually,” said Alexis. “You guys should have come.”
Ronni shrugged, and I knew this was my chance, the clearest opening I was going to get. Like Natalie Reid? I wanted to say. But I couldn’t let Jamie have that. I would have to find out later. Instead I had to take control. I had that weird, out-of-body feeling I sometimes got when I was about to say something I was scared to say, like the only way to get to the other side of it was to make my mouth say the words, even though the rest of me was somewhere else.
“I went to a party with Ruby,” said my mouth.
Alexis smacked her hands against the table, making us all jump.
“Alexis, please,” said Ronni. I’d told her everything on Sunday at the tournament, of course, so this was old news to her. I took a risk and glanced at Jamie. She was staring right at me, and I looked away.
“What happened? Whose party? David’s? Was it amazing? I’ve never been. I was invited last year one time, but then I got food poisoning, remember? I honestly wanted to die. I almost went anyway but then I threw up in my garage,” said Alexis.
I remembered that day perfectly, because Jamie and I had been together when Alexis had called, crying, post-vomit. Jamie had switched it over to FaceTime so we could both talk her down, and at the sight of her pale, sweaty, mascara-streaked face, we’d accidentally burst out laughing and couldn’t stop. Alexis hung up on us and, eight seconds later, called us back, laughing too.
“I remember,” I said. “I wish you could have been there.”
Alexis smiled gratefully. “Okay, seriously. Tell us everything.”
So I did, vaguely. I made my mouth say the words. Ruby texting me, me picking her up, making everyone drinks, us dancing. “It was fun,” I heard myself say, like it was any old Saturday night. Somewhere far above me, I was trying to read Jamie’s mind—hard enough when I was looking at her, and impossible when I wasn’t.
“Did anything happen?” said Alexis.
I nodded, grinning involuntarily. “I mean, yeah. We kissed.”
“Kissed, or like made out?”
I grinned harder, which gave Alexis her answer.
“Are you together?” she squealed. I nodded, and she squealed harder. I risked another glance at Jamie, who was very much focused on her cafeteria burger, so flat it was almost two-dimensional. Then she spoke.
“That figures,” she said.
Instantly, I deflated. Jamie could do that to you. It didn’t matter how many words she used; I’d seen her do it in one. There was a tone she had, when she found something you said so completely boring, or stupid, or predictable, that made you feel embarrassed for having ever had the nerve to be born. I had rarely been on the receiving end, but I’d seen it done, powerfully: to some senior water polo player when we were juniors; to some random homophobe at the movie theater; to her mother, once. It was a power she used mostly for good, or at least I almost always thought it was deserved. But to me, for this? She had no right.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
She looked up, all faux surprised I cared. “Nothing. Just, I think we all saw that coming.”
“It’s been clear she likes you,” Ronni said, looking nervously between Jamie and me. But I knew that wasn’t what Jamie meant. Jamie meant that Ruby thought I’d be a fun experiment, and I was the sucker willing to go along with it.
“People are going to lose their shit,” Alexis said. “Not that I’m going to tell them.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “I mean, yeah, maybe don’t announce it over the intercom, but like. It’s not a secret.”
Alexis beamed, and I could practically see the flowchart of people she planned to tell unfolding across her forehead. I’d been excited for people to know I was with Ruby, and I still was, but Jamie’s comment had shaken me a little too. What if I was just revenge? What if she really was straight, and the kiss was a curiosity she now had an answer to? I knew, like Jamie knew, that we shouldn’t assume anyone was straight until proven otherwise. But it was hard not to. Statistically, most people were. And though neither of us wanted to admit it, there was something in us both that was capable, in weaker moments, of black-and-white th
inking, and shutting people out.
Being a good queer was exhausting sometimes. Jamie and I used to joke about all the things we could think about instead, if we were straight: tree houses, purses, baby showers, NASCAR.
There was a part of me that was still afraid. That still felt that it’d be somehow worse for Ruby to dump me for Mikey than it would be for her to dump me for another girl. But I thought of the way she’d kissed me in the bathroom at David’s house, and again, later, in her bed. These were not things a straight girl did. Straight girls held your hand and hugged you too long and leaned their head on your shoulder. They took you right up to the edge of plausible deniability, and then they left you there.
This was different. I was almost positive.
* * *
—
Word spread in the style of wildfire: slow, then all-consuming. By Civil Liberties, the first time I even saw Ruby all day, it was obvious everyone knew. Which is not to say that everyone cared. But it seemed as if homecoming itself had provided disappointingly few good stories, and people were desperate for drama. Personally, I was more worried about Friday’s school-season opener game against Granite Hills, not only because they were very good, but because, traditionally, season-opener day was also College Day, when all the seniors on the team were supposed to wear their new school’s shirts to school. It wasn’t a school-sanctioned tradition, and in fact Coach Swanson seemed to dislike it, probably because there were always girls who didn’t have offers yet, girls who’d end up at some D-III school with a cornfield for a campus, girls who would quietly drop out of college soccer altogether. I was not supposed to be one of those iffy girls.