by Katie Heaney
But the chances that I would be able to get into UNC by then—and make use of the UNC shirt collecting dust at the bottom of my drawer—were looking increasingly slim. Over email, both they and UCLA had told me they’d let me know within a week of the Beach Cup, and that week was running out. I had thought about asking Ronni to overrule our team’s College Day precedent, make it in March or something, but everyone wanted to do what the seniors before us had done, and the seniors before them had done. And while it would be embarrassing for me to show up college shirt-less on Friday, it would be worse if Ronni moved it and everyone found out why. Which they would.
But there were four full days to get through before then, and I intended to focus on the good things, like my beautiful, perfect girlfriend, sitting across the classroom from me, beautifully and perfectly.
After class she waited for me outside the door, oblivious to the girls looking back and forth between us. I watched them over Ruby’s shoulder until they stopped.
“Hi,” said Ruby.
“Hi,” I said. I stepped in closer so our faces almost touched. I’d never kissed a girl at school before. Jamie never let me, because school-grounds PDA was against the rules, per the student handbook, and Jamie took the student handbook very seriously, despite having successfully lobbied the administration to remove gendered language from the dress code during our sophomore year so that no one could wear baseball hats or skirts shorter than their fingertips fully extended. She was a very complicated woman.
I decided not to go for a kiss just yet, and instead took Ruby’s hand. Then she laughed, and I dropped it like a hot plate.
“No, sorry,” she said. She grabbed my hand from my side and swung it back and forth a little as we walked. “You just surprised me,” she added. “It’s cute.” But the way she said cute was the way you’d say cute if your friend brought a metal Disney-themed lunch box to school instead of a plain paper bag, so when we reached the end of the hall I released her hand, pretending I had to adjust my backpack. I felt my great-grandfather’s bracelet fall heavy against my wrist, and realized there was no way I could ask Ruby to wear it. I was embarrassed I’d ever considered it. I brushed the thought aside and pushed forward.
“Want to come over later?” I asked. “After practice?”
“I can’t tonight,” she said. “I’ve also got practice.”
“Ah, okay,” I said. Suddenly I felt like crying, and made a mental note to check when I was supposed to get my period. Band practice meant Ruby would be with Mikey, and even though I knew they were over, I knew how confusing it could feel to be around an ex, doing something you used to do when you were together.
“What about Thursday?” said Ruby.
Thursday felt like a million years away, but I was still relieved she said it.
“Thursday is great,” I said.
“Okay, cool. Text me,” she said. And then she kissed me. It was brief, barely long enough for me to smell her shampoo, but I still felt light-headed when she pulled back. I looked around to see if anyone had seen us, if any faculty member was rushing toward us to give us detention, but nobody seemed to have noticed. I was more disappointed than relieved. (If you commit illegal PDA on school property and nobody sees it, did it even happen? What’s the point of so flagrantly breaking a rule if you don’t get caught?)
Ruby and I said our see-you-laters, and as soon as she was out of sight I ran to the locker room, where I knew my teammates would gas me up as soon as they saw me. And I was right.
“Q, you STUD!” yelled Kate. She ran over and whipped me in the butt with her jersey.
“I don’t know how you did it,” said Janelle. “But I’m impressed.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know how?” I grinned, pointing to my face. “Have you seen me?”
Janelle rolled her eyes, and the other girls laughed and hollered over each other. It felt good to pretend I was really that sure of myself. In here, with my team, was the closest I came to feeling invincible.
I maneuvered my way over to my locker and found Ronni seated on the bench behind me, tying up her cleats.
“So did you tell them, or is this all Alexis’s work?”
“Oh, Kate was texting me for confirmation by fifth period. This is all Alexis and associates.”
“God love her,” I sighed. My earlier worries about everyone finding out only for everything to go south were slightly ameliorated by our hallway kiss, and I only wished I had a picture for posterity, and proof. Maybe there was a security camera around there. I could check tomorrow after—No, I thought. Calm down. Don’t be crazy.
“I think Jamie was upset,” Ronni said, so quietly I only heard it on delay. I didn’t know she could even speak at that volume. I shut my locker door and sat down next to her.
“Really?” I asked.
She nodded. “I walked to class with her after.” She feels sorry for Jamie, I realized. Which was outrageous.
“What did she say?” In my head, totally without my permission, I heard Jamie’s voice say: I still love her. I miss her. I never should have broken up with her. I ran my hand over my hair, like I might wipe my brain clean. Jamie would never talk like that, and I knew it.
“Nothing, really. It was just how she seemed.”
I bent over to pull on my cleats so Ronni couldn’t see me wilt. “I’m sure she doesn’t care,” I said. “She has Natalie.”
Ronni shrugged. “I dunno.”
“Doesn’t she? Were they at homecoming together? Did Alexis say?” My heart raced suddenly. I didn’t want to know. I had to know. I’d scoured Instagram for evidence after lunch and found nothing.
“She was there, but I don’t know if they were there ‘together,’ ” she said. “Alexis said it’s complicated.”
My eyes closed reflexively, like I could keep what Ronni had just said out. Complicated was not good. Complicated means there was something to complicate.
“Why’d you bring this up, anyway?” I said. “Jamie and I are friends. Like she wanted. She should be happy for me. And so should you.”
“You know I’m happy for you.”
“I thought I did.”
Ronni stood up, annoyed with me now. “Look, I just thought you’d want to know. I know you still care.”
“Not like that, I don’t.”
Ronni looked at me steadily, seeing right through me.
“Okay,” she said. The if you say so was implied.
I was mad all the way through practice, and all the way home. This was not the triumphant Monday I’d envisioned. My friends didn’t care that I had a new girlfriend. Apparently, the only girlfriend I was allowed to have was Jamie. Never mind that I hadn’t been the one to end that—Ronni was going to make sure I felt guilty about it, as if Jamie’s feelings were still my responsibility. Jamie, who went to freaking homecoming without me. (Jamie! Homecoming. I still couldn’t believe it.) It wasn’t like she was sitting at home all weekend, every weekend, crying her face off over me. She’d moved on, to another girl, to a life without me. Why wasn’t I allowed to do the same?
When I got home, after I showered, while I was eating last night’s reheated salmon and vegetables and once again searching all social media for photos of Jamie and Natalie together at homecoming, Jamie texted me, and I nearly choked to death on asparagus. Imagine that obituary.
Hey, she said.
I closed out of Instagram, worried she might somehow be able to see what I was doing, and waited. Forty-two full seconds went by.
We should probably get together to talk about Triple Moon stuff this week
Shit. Another thing I hadn’t thought about as much as I meant to.
OK, I replied. When?
Tomorrow night?
Your house?
My stomach flipped. I’d assumed we’d go to Triple Moon to work on saving
Triple Moon, which, in retrospect, seemed stupid. Neither of us wanted Dee or Gaby to know what we were up to until we had a legitimate plan to present to them. Jamie hadn’t been over to my house in a long time, and I didn’t know how I felt about seeing her there again. But I also knew how much Jamie hated having anyone over to her house, and how many questions her mom would have for her if I were to show up there again. My mom, at least, would attempt restraint. Hopefully.
Yeah, that works, I wrote. I’ll be home by 7.
Cool, she replied. See you then.
She was still typing, and I caught myself holding my breath. Partly to keep myself from watching that bubble and partly because I missed her, I texted Ruby, just to say hi. Then I remembered she was at practice and felt bad for bothering her until I went to bed. I was already asleep when she replied, hello and good night. xx.
The next day I got home from practice later than I hoped. As a team we’d collectively played like shit, and Coach Swanson’s lecture ran us five minutes over. Then the drive home took thirty-five minutes instead of twenty, thanks to an unexplained road closure, and by the time I got home I had exactly twelve minutes to shower and make myself and my room presentable for Jamie. I showered in three, made my bed, and stared at my room from the doorway, searching for anything embarrassing I was too familiar with to see. Finally I called my mom into my room just to get a second, more judgmental set of eyes on it.
“You might wanna make your bed,” she said.
“Are you kidding? I did!”
She gave me a rather patronizing look and crossed the room to pull my quilt tight over the corners and fluff the pillows. Fine. It looked better.
“Anything else?”
“Nothing we can fix in five minutes.”
I elbowed her in the arm, and she twisted her leg to kick me in the butt, a signature Mom move I’d outlawed in public places when I was ten.
“So she’s just coming over to work on a project?” she asked.
“Yes, Mom. Nothing’s happening.”
“And you’re okay with that?” She peered at me over the top of her reading glasses, which she kept on a beaded chain that could only be described as “funky” and which she was at least fifteen years too young for. Maybe I’ll get her a new one for Christmas, I thought. Did they even make cool glasses chains, or was that like hoping for fashionable headgear?
“Quinn?”
“Yeah,” I said, a little too emphatically. “Sorry. It’s all good.”
I cringed inwardly. I had never said it’s all good before, and my mom knew it. But she let it go and retreated to her office. A minute later, at seven on the dot, the doorbell rang downstairs. Jamie took being on time very seriously.
I descended the stairs and opened the door to find Jamie with a three-paneled poster board in one hand and a bag of markers in the other.
“Oh God,” I said. “Tell me we’re not doing a presentation.”
“No.” She shook her head, stepping past me into my house. “Well, maybe. This is for us to brainstorm, but if it looks really good when we’re done I’m going to want to show them.”
“Dee will laugh us out of the cafe.”
“Gaby won’t,” said Jamie. She sat cross-legged on the couch and began arranging her supplies on the coffee table, and it could have been any of the last three years, watching her work on any number of projects for which she decided a three-paneled poster board was necessary. And, if I’m being honest, I always did. On projects we did together, Jamie never let me do any visuals. She once said my handwriting looked like that of a child on cough medicine writing a letter to Santa. I wasn’t even mad, but I gave her the silent treatment for as long as I could anyway, not wanting to give her the satisfaction of being right and funny. I lasted maybe a minute before bursting into laughter. I smiled even now.
“What?”
“Nothing,” I said. “You’re right.”
Jamie blinked at me. “What?”
(It was possible I’d never said those words, in that order, to her before.)
“You want some water? A snack?”
“Do you have a ruler?”
“Umm. I think so. I’ll look.”
I went into the kitchen and opened one junk drawer after another. (We’d started with just one—my mom liked to joke that the rubber bands and paper clips and instruction manuals and tape rolls were breeding.) Near the back of the third, under a waxy sheet with a single gold-miner stamp remaining in the corner, I found my ruler, orange plastic and rough-edged from ten years of use. I brought it and a bag of chips and two glasses of water back into the living room, where Jamie had written SAVE TRIPLE MOON COFFEE SHOP at the top of her poster board in pristine purple block letters.
“Purple for gay?”
“Yeah,” said Jamie. “I was gonna do rainbow, but that seemed over the top.” She took the water I offered her and downed half the glass in one go.
“Should you do a black outline?” I suggested.
“No.”
I rested my chin in my hand, using my palm to suppress my smile. Jamie drove me crazy, and right now, for some reason, I missed it. She held a black marker in her hand, hovering over the board, and we both stared at it for a minute, waiting for the rest of the plan to fill itself in.
“I still think we should do a benefit concert,” I said.
“What if we got someone famous to be the face of the campaign?” said Jamie.
“Who? Like Ellen?”
“No, not like really famous, but like California famous. Like Linda Weller.”
“Who?”
Jamie sighed pityingly. “Our state controller?”
“I’m sorry,” I said, “but I didn’t know that was a thing until right now. Which makes me think she is maybe not that famous.”
“Influential, then. She handles budget stuff. So she’s possibly even more powerful than a high school band.”
I ignored the dig. “Is she queer?”
“Does she have to be?”
“It would be nice.”
“Well, sure. She could be. I don’t know. She has a husband. But she refers to herself as an ally.” Jamie was flustered, frustrated I wasn’t immediately convinced by her brilliant idea.
“So, probably not.”
“If you know of any queer, local, powerful politicians and/or celebrities who would care about the preservation of a small lesbian coffee shop, I’m all ears,” Jamie huffed. She watched me think about it, looking annoyingly smug.
“Fine. I don’t know anyone.”
“Thank you. I’m writing down Linda Weller.” Jamie triumphantly uncapped a blue marker and began drawing a large L in a prominent, central position on the board.
“Leave some room for other ideas, too,” I said. “Like Sweets.”
Jamie sighed. “Fine.” After about an hour she finally finished Linda Weller’s R and selected a new, light pink marker and wrote Sweets in small, barely visible letters on the right-hand panel of the board. “There.”
“Are you kidding?”
“What?” Jamie sucked in her cheeks, trying not to laugh. Which made me laugh.
“You’re such an ass!”
“I know. I’m sorry. I’ll write over it in blue.” She uncapped a new marker and traced thinly over her work. “How’s that?” She was giggling uncontrollably now, leaning back into the couch; we both were.
“Barely better,” I wheezed.
I pulled a leg up onto the couch, and my knee grazed Jamie’s. I expected her to recoil, or move back, or otherwise remind me that we weren’t allowed to even accidentally touch anymore. But she didn’t. Neither of us moved, and I wondered if she could feel the inch of air between our knees crackling too. It wasn’t even sexual tension, or romantic, as much as it was that I missed the ease of being near her without thinking about it.
“So how’s it going, with her?” Jamie said.
At first I thought Jamie meant Linda Weller. That’s how impossible it seemed that she would ask me, directly, about Ruby. I was so shocked I didn’t know what to say besides, “Good. Yeah.”
I knew I should feel grateful Jamie asked, that she was actually trying to be my best friend and not just my ex, but instead I felt raw, exposed. I didn’t want to know how Jamie would respond to any real detail. I didn’t want her to put doubt in my head. I didn’t want her to be too happy for me either. It was for me to decide if I was better off now, with Ruby, than I was last year, with her. I felt silly, all of a sudden, like Jamie had seen all of this coming, and I was just following her script. But she didn’t know everything. What I had with Ruby was mine, and Ruby’s, and I wanted to keep it that way.
Jamie watched me, nodding slowly. “That’s good,” she said.
I braced myself for a follow-up question, but it never came. So I changed the topic to the first thing I could think of. “How’s Natalie?”
Jamie’s eyes widened so slightly nobody else would have noticed. Success.
“She’s good,” she said. A pinch, somewhere behind my rib cage. Maybe a heart attack would kill me right now. Then UNC would be sorry.
“Great story,” I said.
Jamie chewed her bottom lip and fiddled with the worn, frayed friendship bracelet I’d made her when we were freshmen. The one she made me, far more intricate, had fallen off long ago, probably on some other school’s soccer field, but somehow my simple three-yarn braid had held on. Dark blue, light blue, bronze: Ravenclaw colors. She looked like she was going to say something else.
It was so quiet I could hear the neighbor’s dog’s collar tinkling as he puttered around their yard. Even my breathing seemed cacophonous. Then Jamie cleared her throat, and I froze, watching her lean forward to grab a new marker from the pile. Still, nothing.
Just ask her again, I thought, but did I really want to know more? I didn’t want to seem too eager, and I didn’t want to invite follow-up questions about Ruby, either. I couldn’t be mad at her for giving me exactly as much detail as I gave her. It wasn’t fair. As if that ever mattered.