by Bryce Taylor
She turns to the bench behind her and picks up a glass of wine, takes a sip. I goggle at her.
"You don't drink," I tell her accusingly.
"Yeah, I do," she says casually.
"Since when?" I ask.
"Since I was eighteen," she says, a tiny smile on her beautiful face. Smartarse. I wasn't accusing her of underage drinking.
She pauses. "Well, not when I was married."
The hate I have for Mark has not reduced. I've tracked him down. I know where he works. Where he lives. The only thing stopping me is the knowledge that Jo would be disappointed if anything happened to him.
She looks at me oddly for a second. Enough so that I wonder if I have something on my face, stuck in my teeth. I rub my jaw nervously, feeling the barely perceptible buzz in my fingers.
I didn't know that it was possible to miss a feeling as uncomfortable as this. That I would do anything to have her approval. That if I had any doubt about my love for her, it was gone in the instant I laid eyes on her again.
"Come on," she says, a tiny smile on her face. Grabbing another glass, another bottle. I take the bottle off her. She raises an eyebrow. I smile at her and replace it with a nice vintage from the back of the cupboard. She shrugs at me, obviously not able to tell the difference between the two bottles and I feel like an idiot for switching them now.
We are walking. Silently out of the house and into the garden. To the darkened corner of the yard where implausibly no one is making out. I'm glancing at her sideways, unable to keep my eyes off her for a second but her eyes are firmly forward, as if she is contemplating the troubles of the world. We sit on the bench under the tree, me straddling it facing her, her sitting sideways, facing back to the house, hands clasping her knees.
I have been busily not imagining the potential for happy Sunday mornings out here, in this exact spot reading the paper. Because it will remind me that I'm alone. That I won't be happy.
"But aren't you a good Christian?" I ask, cross-examining her. Not yet ready to let this drinking thing go.
"You can be a Christian and drink," she says, easily falling into our habit of debate. Her shoulders relaxing.
She is right. It's true that you can be a Christian and drink. Just not the flavour of Christianity that she subscribes to and married into.
You can be gay and Christian after all.
Then she looks up, glances sideways.
"Who says I'm a Christian anyway?" she asks. I don't even know if that is rhetorical. My brain sputtered to a halt at 'anyway'.
"You," I say.
"When?"
"You prayed at dinner," I say, blaming her, feeling the solid ground beneath my feet start to shift.
"I didn't say I was a Christian," she says. Serious now.
"Are you a Christian?" I ask, exasperated.
"No." There is no hesitation in her answer.
Fuck. No fucking way.
"I believe in God," she says after a short pause, "I just don't know about everything else right now."
"When?" I ask her.
"A while," she says.
I wait. I've got all the time in the world to wait for this explanation. To wait for her.
"Starting a few years ago," she says, frowns, "more than a few years."
Turns to face me, crossing her legs on the bench. Mirrored to me.
She is thinking.
"It was not what I thought it would be, you know, being married. Mark and I weren't great together," she says her eyes fixed on mine. Letting me see each painful emotion. Courage under fire.
"He had other women and I stayed out of the country to avoid him," she says. "By the time the whole corruption whistle-blowing thing came around I was having a full crisis of faith. After."
She stops, a twitch in her jaw as the muscle clenches tight.
Takes a breath.
"After Mark and I divorced, I just left, took a bag and went," she continues. "I found that no-one wanted anything to do with me, the people I'd held faith with as a Christian didn't and I didn't know anyone else anymore."
She knew me. Or she would have if I'd kept in contact.
"It was a few months after that, that you ran into me," she says. Swallowing. Looking uncertain, a state I have never seen her in. "I prayed that morning, for the first time in weeks, on my knees in the chapel at the shelter."
"I prayed that He would do something to save me," she whispers. "I felt nothing, just an emptiness, hanging on the edge of a cliff with no one and nothing."
She stops, her mouth compressing into a thin line. I don't need to have had faith to know how much this has hurt her. Because unlike me, Jo was a true believer with a strength of conviction that underpinned her whole being. That losing this most precious of gifts would have caused more anguish than losing everything else. That I should have seen this.
"I didn't think that He would send me you, that He would punish me more," she says and her voice is cracking.
I open my mouth. I'm not a punishment. She lays two fingers on my leg. Burning a hole through my pants.
I shut my mouth firmly. Who knows what would come out right now?
"You weren't a punishment," she says frowning at me, "you turned out to be."
She stops. Searching for the right word.
"A blessing." There is a vulnerability in her eyes that is breaking my heart.
I don't even know what that means. I think that hope is clouding my judgement.
"I was at a loss, I didn't know what do. Everything that had made up my life was gone and I hadn't a clue about where to go from here. What I could build from," she says, as always her eyes on me. "Then there you were, looking at me the way you always did, as if what I said meant something."
She laughs derisively. "You were actually impressed that I'd been fired for doing the right thing."
I still am.
"Of all the people that I knew when I did it, there wasn't a single person who thought I'd done the right thing. You made me realise that it wasn't me that had it wrong," she says, her eyes on mine meaningfully.
"You made everything right again, as if it was the smallest thing to fix, just a tiny favour that remade my whole world," she says, her voice breaking around the edges.
"You," she takes a breath, "you, who of all people had no reason to care, cared more about me, just me, than I could ever remember anyone else ever doing. Not for any other reason than you seemed to think I was worth it."
She removes the hand from my leg. Crosses her arms across her chest.
"I thought after dinner that second night," she shuts her eyes for a second, "I thought I could feel something changing. This possibility of a new beginning. That implausibly you could feel it too. That maybe."
She pauses.
My feelings weren't changing that night. I see that now. What I had felt for three years as a teenager was the truest representation of love I have ever had. That feelings like that don't go away.
"Then I found out about Cassie," she says softly.
Oh, sweet Jesus. Pamela. The job interview. Why didn't I think?
"I was so angry with you," she says. "You didn't think to tell me that you were in a long-term relationship? In all the hours we spent talking and all the emails you didn't mention her once."
Only she isn't angry. She is hurt. I've hurt her.
"I didn't want to," I tell her miserably, truthfully. The pain of shame splintering through my heart.
"Why do you have such a need to lie to me?" she asks sadly.
"Because this relationship wouldn't exist without my lies," I tell her, my eyes downcast. I don't even know if that is true. It's one more lie.
"Because you wouldn't like the real me." The truth.
She opens her mouth.
"I don't like the real me," I tell her, looking her in the eyes. Also the truth. I much prefer the other me that I reserve for her.
"I'm pretty sure I love the real you," she says seriously, the crease in her forehead speaking to her
incredulity that I should hide who I am, that she can't fathom my motivations.
"I am sure I love you," I tell her immediately, unintentionally, my subconscious not checking in with me about divulging this truth.
I shut my eyes.
I'm not talking platonically about loving her.
I think she is. She has to be.
What the fuck am I doing?
The buzz of anticipation hitting me, a physical pain, a grenade resting lightly in one hand, the pin in the other, waiting for the certainty of the world coming to an end.
She reaches out and squeezes my hand, her fingers clasping my hand, my eyes still shut tight. The feel of her fingers on mine is so new and unexpected and intimate.
I, no shit, fall off the bench backwards.
Hit my head.
Hard.
Get up, head spinning. Black dots banging on my eyelids. Demanding to be let in.
I shouldn't have gotten up. I bend over woozily.
Jo at my side. It's not helping that her arm is around me.
We go back into the house. She checks my head carefully. Pronounces me ok.
I want to ask her to check again except that I don't think I could survive her hands caressing through my hair twice. Her careful attention on me.
I'm biting my lips together because I no longer know what to say. The thought of talking about something mundane too much like giving up, the thought of pursuing the talk about love and feelings too terrifying.
She smiles ruefully at me as if she can read my thoughts and holds out her hand.
"Do you want that glass of wine?" she asks meaningfully.
I take her hand, wondering if perhaps the whack to my head was a little harder than I thought. If it was I don't want to come around. Because we are back sitting cross-legged on the bench, wine in hand, talking, knees brushing. Her passion for whatever subject we are discussing right now is infectious. I want to talk about it too. All night.
We have finished the bottle of wine and I've barely had half a glass.
Eventually, though it is down to business.
"Are you seeing anyone?" she asks. Not casually. Her grey eyes are direct on mine.
"No," I tell her.
She doesn't raise an eyebrow, but she should. I don't have a good track record on the truth.
"I haven't seen anyone since Cassie," I tell her, "but I have slept with two different women, both one night stands that I met out. And I made out with one other girl who ended up not wanting to sleep with me even though I would have slept with her."
Not that any of these women meant much to me, more of a 'why not' situation. Sometimes I hate myself, the callous indifference I have for all but the few who are in my inner circle.
"Who wouldn't want to sleep with you, Meg?" she asks, amused, an eyebrow raised.
"You," I tell her harshly, painfully.
"That's not true," she says seriously.
I'm staring at her. Incredulous.
"Are we talking about sex?" I clarify. Because if this is more of that, 'I'll take the couch' business I'd prefer to know now.
She is smiling. Her dimples visible in the darkness.
"Yes Meg, we are talking about sex," she says calmly. As if she hasn't slept with just one person in her entire life.
Shit.
"Are you single?" I ask. If she is seeing someone I will die.
"Yes," she says grinning, her teeth reflecting the light from the house. Doesn't pause before going on. "I have only ever slept with Mark. Actually, I've only ever done anything with Mark." Always the unvarnished truth.
I wonder what kind of child she was. If we were the same age if I would have been friends with her at school. How on earth it's possible that she made it all the way through high school without doing anything all with anyone. Even I managed to sneak in a few kisses, mostly from boys, but one girl too and you really didn't get much more repressed and socially awkward than me.
She casts her eyes up. To the tree branches overhead. Or the sky. Or god. I don't know.
"It wasn't exactly great," she says. Then, "You have a low bar."
Holy shit. She is planning on having sex with me.
"Are you seducing me?" I ask her, feeling the anticipation of possibility rising.
She laughs wryly. "I'm trying," she says.
"There is no need," I tell her honestly, recklessly.
Disappointment creases her face.
"Oh," I say, understanding at once, although it is insane that she would have taken my comment that way. High pitched surprise clear in my voice. "Oh, no need because you could just click your fingers. I'm all in. Whatever you want, I'm all in."
Apparently, the truth is easy once you start. I don't care if I sound desperate.
She looks me in the eyes and clicks her fingers.
We are grinning at each other.
Because this is wonderful. And hilarious.
And she is drunk. Quite drunk. More than one bottle of wine drunk. Even though she doesn't look it.
"Jo."
"Yeah."
"You are too drunk for this," I tell her regretfully.
She considers this for a moment. "Could I talk you around?"
"Yes," I tell her, truth an unstoppable wave now, "but I would hate myself for it."
"Oh." She looks disappointed and I can feel my resolve crumbling.
"I'm sorry," I say contritely.
"Not as sorry as I am," she says, laughing.
"I hate you right now," I tell her. Resisting the urge to rest my hand on her knee.
"I thought you loved me?" she asks.
"A lot of love and a tiny bit of hate," I tell her. "No, not hate, it's frustration."
An awful lot of frustration.
"Imagine how I feel," she says wryly, "the last time I had sex was four years ago and it was awful."
I nod. I have to give her that. Four years. It seems impossible.
Jo goes home with Pamela. Who is laughing now that I finally get the 'closet' gibe. Apparently, Jo and Pamela have been talking a lot. In Syria.
Jo has linked arms with Pamela as they walk to the cab on the street and I feel a stab of jealousy, a knife wound in the side, my teeth gritted, the feeling taking me by surprise. I want to call her back but I don't. I am not going to be possessive or insecure.
I never have been and I won't start now.
At the very least I will learn to exercise the kind of self-restraint that Jo would expect in a.
Oh man.
I don't even know what.
I'm certainly not going to think about that now.
I'm supposed to be hosting a party after all. Even if my heart is hardly in it.
I shut down the music an hour later, pre-emptively before the police visit.
My neighbours are going to be hating on me for a while I think.
I kick everyone out a few hours before dawn, the last few stragglers who preferred my lounge to a club or their own home.
Aimlessly clean-up, filling boxes and boxes of bottles and cans. The odd condom and baggie in the bin. Till finally at dawn it isn't clean but it is tidy. The cleaners can do clean.
God knows how they are going to clean up all that glitter in the lounge.
Have a shower.
Chapter 5 – Let’s Do It
The sun has risen and I'm sitting on the front step thinking. About Jo. Of course. If and how much she is going to remember. Where we might go from here. When it might not be too soon to send her a message. Just to say, hey.
Who knows what else you would say after the revelations of last night. My mind has not come up with another possibility than that single word.
A car pulls up on my quiet street.
Jo.
Looking stunning. The light of my life.
Terribly, atrociously dressed in black and white horizontally striped tights, green canvas combat boots and an orange woollen cardigan. Hair in revolt. Clearly, she has dressed herself this morning. Pamela wouldn't let her leav
e the house in this.
Gorgeous.
I wouldn't change a thing.
Striding across the road towards me, a smile on her face. There is a hope rising inside me, an illuminating light. An implausible and intangible future at arms reach.
She is catching me in her arms. Her head buried in my neck. Drawing my scent in. She smells just delicious. I'm smiling against her neck. "Please tell me you are sober," I breathe in her ear.
My second most fervent wish right now. My first obviously being that she is still interested in me.
She laughs, a low pleased chuckle. Picks me up and swings me around.
Wow. That hasn't ever happened to me before.
I like it.
"I am," she says. Amused.
My arms start to tighten around her.
Then.
"What if I've changed my mind?" she asks, seriously.
My heart drops. A mile. Into an abyss.
"Kidding," she says watching my reaction with a smirk, "I shouldn't tease you, you are so gullible."
"I love you so much," I tell her. Sincerely. Because I need to say this out loud.
"I'm waiting to see how good you are in bed before I jump into anything," she says in return.
She is deadly serious.
I raise an eyebrow.
"I'm not joking," she says resolutely. "I've been there before. I want to know what I'm getting into before I commit this time. I'm not going to settle."
Fair enough. I'm happy that she isn't planning on repeating the mistakes of her last relationship.
Ok. Honestly, I'm not happy. However, I'm sure I can beat anything Mark could put up.
Pun intended.
I'm smiling because only Jo would think this is a good time to say something like that. That she couldn't lead with some sort of conciliatory line about liking me a lot. Though I guess the consolation prize is that she is planning on sleeping with me.
Luckily I don't get performance anxiety.
A smile stretching unbidden on my lips. I've never been so fucking happy in my entire life. Fifteen year old me can't quite believe this. That at the very least Jo is going to kiss me and who knows, maybe a whole lot more.
I wrap my fists in her cardigan. Pull her in.
Feel her body against mine.
Her fingertips resting on my hips.
Her grey eyes, clear and waiting, resting on mine.