“Tell me about it.” Kelsey glanced around the bar. “Anyone interesting here tonight?”
Alison almost choked on her drink. “Don’t tell me even you are about to take a swim in the fishbowl?” As long as Alison had known Kelsey, she’d never gone home with anyone from the bar.
Kelsey shrugged. “Maybe I was hoping there’d be a new face or two, but looks like the same old, same old.”
“Yep.”
“So, what’s going on with you?” Kelsey said, turning the conversation to her friend rather than harp on her own weird evening.
“Nothing,” Alison said. She pointed at a woman leaned over the pool table in a way too short skirt and added, “But I’ll probably be going home with that one tonight.”
Kelsey laughed. “You’re too much, Al.”
Chapter 8
True to his word, Stephen took Tala car shopping. They decided on a 2016 Honda Civic. Tala didn’t have a lot of driving experience and needed something she could easily manage. The Civic was perfect for her; small but safe.
Tala hadn’t spoken to Kelsey since their awkward evening together the week before. Many times, she had wanted to call her or stop by, but she didn’t know what she could say to defend her strange behavior that night. She could apologize, but would that be enough? Tala had behaved so poorly she wouldn’t blame Kelsey if she never wanted to speak to her again. The thought of that tore her up. Maybe she could just stop by for a minute?
Tala thought the car might be a good excuse and headed out the door. Within minutes she was in Kelsey’s driveway, calling attention to herself with a series of short beeps.
Kelsey heard the honking and looked out the front window. There was a black car in the driveway with Tala at the wheel. She stepped out onto the front porch and folded her arms across her chest.
“Hello!” Tala called happily, popping her head out the car window.
Kelsey said hello but did not step off the porch.
“Come for a ride with me,” Tala said.
“I’m working.”
Realizing Kelsey wasn’t going to make this easy, Tala got out of the car and met Kelsey on the porch. She peeked through the door and saw a laptop on the dining room table with a stack of bills beside it.
“I will help you with this later. But first, please take a ride with me in my new car. I am very excited about it and I wanted to share it with you right away.”
“Why?”
“Because you are my friend, Kelsey.”
“Am I?” Kelsey demanded. “I’d never guess by the way you acted last week.”
Tala bowed her head in shame. “I am very sorry, Kelsey. We had words between us that were not good, and we kissed, and I liked our kiss but it cannot happen again.”
“You’re the one who kissed me!” Kelsey yelled. Was Tala seriously blaming her for this?
“Shhh,” Tala pleaded, her eyes darting around the neighborhood fearfully. “If someone were to hear something like this—“
“They’ll what? Think I’m gay? My neighbors already know that, Tala. Or maybe you’re afraid they’ll think you’re gay.”
“I am married, Kelsey,” Tala said quietly. “I do not care what they think of my sexuality but I cannot let them think I’m an adulteress. I am not.”
Kelsey’s laugh was spiteful. “Yeah, because I stopped you.” She turned to go in the house and Tala followed her.
“Kelsey, please,” Tala said, grabbing her by the arm. “I want our friendship.”
Tala’s hand burned through Kelsey’s forearm and she sighed. She had a definite weakness for Tala that did not serve her well.
“This is not good,” Tala said, walking over to the dining room table and the pile of bills stacked on top of it. “There is no organization here. You need a system. I will fix it.”
Kelsey stopped Tala before she could sit at the table to get down to work. “Wait. Let’s take that ride first,” she said.
Tala’s smile was the biggest Kelsey had seen it. “Okay, Kelsey.”
When they got inside Tala’s new car, Kelsey didn’t know what she was in for. Tala drove Kelsey around the neighborhood, weaving in and out of her lane as if she didn’t know there was a lane she needed to stay in at all. She rolled through stop signs and pointed at pretty houses, looking at everything around her but the street she was driving on.
Kelsey felt nauseous. When Tala slowly rolled through a red light she almost screamed. Slowly was not the way to run a red light.
“So, um, where did you learn to drive?”
Tala laughed. “You do not like my driving, Kelsey?”
“I almost shit my pants when you blew that red light.”
“What red light?”
Oh…my…God.
When it was finally over, Kelsey was never so happy to go back to paying bills.
“Okay, first you need a file box or something like that to organize the bills by date,” Tala suggested.
“First I need a drink,” Kelsey said, opening a bottle of wine. She was still reeling from Tala’s terrible driving.
“It was not that bad,” Tala said, sipping the wine Kelsey offered.
“Tala, please tell me that was a joke out there. That’s not really how you drive?”
Tala smirked. “I had one very good day of driving and that was on the day of my driving exam. After that, well, it is like this.”
“My God! Does Stephen know you drive like this?”
Tala shook her head.
“Alright, starting tomorrow I’m going to teach you how to drive.”
“I know how to drive.”
“Then let’s put it this way, I’m going to teach you how to not kill yourself or anyone else on the road.”
“Why do you do this at the dining room table?” Tala asked, her arm indicating the mess of bills. “This is a big house. There must be room for an office?”
Kelsey shrugged. “There’s an office.”
“Show me,” Tala said.
Kelsey led Tala to a hallway off the kitchen, and then opened the door to a large, beautiful office with its own entrance from the outside. “This house used to belong to a psychotherapist. It has its own entrance so she could see clients at home without them ever actually having to come into her house.”
“This is wonderful!” Tala exclaimed.
Kelsey produced a key. “It’s yours.”
“What do you mean?”
“This is the key to the outside door. If you’re going to be my bookkeeper, you’ll need access to an office even when I’m not around.”
“But don’t you want to learn to do this for yourself?”
“I really don’t.”
“Kelsey, it is easy.”
Kelsey smiled. “Then you’ll have no trouble doing it. We should probably discuss your fee.”
“Once I get everything organized, you would probably only need me a few hours a week. Kelsey look, you have file cabinets!”
“I know.” Kelsey laughed. “They’re empty.”
“Not for long.”
“Would thirty dollars an hour work for you?”
“That is too much. Twenty.”
“That’s too little. Twenty-five. And I’ll have to pay you in cash because I have no idea where my checkbook is.”
Tala rolled her eyes. “Kel-seeey.”
“What?”
“Cash or check, you will still need to keep track for your taxes.”
Kelsey winked. “Nothing my bookkeeper can’t handle.”
Chapter 9
Evelyn Greene rolled to the side of the bed and lit a cigarette.
“That’s a disgusting habit,” Stephen said, reaching for his pants. He’d been sleeping with Evelyn on and off for over ten years.
Evelyn shrugged. “You could always go home to your passionless wife.”
Stephen regretted ever having told Evelyn about his struggles in the bedroom with Tala. He loved his wife. Evelyn was just an old habit that was hard to break.
�
�Maybe she goes the other way,” Evelyn suggested, knowing she was getting under Stephen’s skin. She had no actual desire to leave her marriage for Stephen; she had just preferred the way things were before he got married.
“Stop it. Why would you even say something like that?”
“You said her new friend is Kelsey Daniels?”
Stephen nodded.
“Kelsey is a lesbian.”
“How could you possibly know that?”
“Ask Bill Evans. He’s her real estate attorney.”
“Bill knows Kelsey?”
Evelyn laughed. “Not in the way he’d like to, but yes. He’s handled several real estate transactions for her and, according to him, she definitely goes with women.”
Stephen waved his arm in the air like Evelyn was speaking nonsense. “Bill says that about every woman he can’t get into bed.”
“Maybe so, but this one wanted him to make sure that if she let her girlfriend move in, the woman would have no claim to her house.”
“Okay, so her girlfriend lives with her.”
“Nope. Moved out.”
“How do you know so much about Kelsey Daniels anyway?”
“I keep my ear to the ground, Stephen. And make no mistake; your wife’s new BFF is a lesbian.”
Stephen thought about Evelyn’s words on the way home. Even if Kelsey was a lesbian, he reasoned, that didn’t mean she was automatically interested in his wife.
Tala’s sweet smile came to mind and he swallowed back a small lump of fear. Who wouldn’t be interested in his wife? Tala was beautiful, and she was kind, and there was gentleness about her that carried over to everyone she met, except Evelyn Greene. Almost as if she knew there was something not quite right there.
When he got home an hour later, Tala was already in bed. He didn’t hesitate to wake her.
“I heard something about your friend today,” he said.
Tala’s heart froze in fear. “What did you hear?”
“That she’s a lesbian. Did you know that?”
“Yes,” Tala said, knowing that if she lied she would only look suspicious. “But what Kelsey does in the privacy of her own bedroom is no one’s business but her own. It is not up to us to judge her, Stephen,” she said. She gave him what she hoped was a meaningful look. “God will do that.”
Satisfied with his wife’s answer, Stephen rolled over and went to sleep.
Tala felt sick at the hypocrisy of her own words.
**********
“Brake!” Kelsey yelled, grabbing the door handle in fear. “Tala, hit the brake!”
Tala stopped just in time to avoid a collision.
“Jesus Christ.” Kelsey wiped the sweat from her brow.
Tala laughed. “You’re silly, Kelsey.”
“Tala, you nearly killed us.”
“You make things big.”
“I can’t believe my life almost ended at thirty-two.”
“Thirty-two?” Tala teased. “My, you are old.”
“Said the woman married to a man twice her age. Daddy issues much?”
“I do not know what this means.”
Kelsey chuckled. “Just make a right at the next corner and let’s try again.”
Tala did as Kelsey asked and thought about her words to Stephen the night before. She had only been protecting herself, but at what cost? She did not believe God would judge Kelsey any more than she believed He would judge her, but she had said it to preserve her own situation, and the realization of that sickened her.
“I said something I am ashamed of, Kelsey,” she admitted.
Kelsey turned in her seat to look at Tala. Something was definitely off with her today and Kelsey was about to discover what it was. “What did you say?”
Tala burst into tears. “I said God would judge you!”
The car swerved to the left and Kelsey grabbed the wheel. “Okay, Tala, let’s just pull over.”
Tala stepped on the brake while Kelsey guided the car to the right and shifted it into park.
“I am so sorry, Kelsey,” Tala sobbed. “I did not mean it. Stephen said he heard you were a lesbian and I didn’t know how to protect myself.”
“So you said God will judge me?”
“I only meant that no one else should!”
Tala continued to cry and Kelsey patted her hand. “It’s okay, Tala. You don’t need to feel this bad about it.”
“I have injured you,” Tala said, wiping her tears with the back of her hand.
“Look at me, Tala. Do I look injured? You said what you thought you needed to say in the moment. Did it end the conversation?”
“Yes.”
Kelsey shrugged. “Then you handled it well.”
“Why are you so forgiving of me, Kelsey?”
Kelsey gave a weak smile. “Because I don’t know what it’s like to be you, Tala.”
**********
Dalisay Mercado was not pleased to find the payment from her daughter was a hundred dollars short. Cristano told her to leave it alone, but she could not. Tala was married to a wealthy man and she was living a good life in America. There was no reason for her to send less money this month.
“We are fine, Dalisay,” Cristano protested when his wife reached for the phone. “Leave Tala alone this time. We are comfortable.” It had always bothered Cristano that his wife continued to take money from their daughter even though everyone in the house was working and they were living well.
Dalisay ignored her husband and waited for Tala to answer the call.
“Hello?” a male voice answered.
“Hello Stephen, I wish to speak with Tala.”
“She’s not here, Dalisay. She’s out with a friend.”
“What friend?” Dalisay demanded. “Tala does not have friends in America.”
“She does now.” Tala had been hanging out with Kelsey every day for weeks now but Stephen didn’t mind. She still made sure he was taken care of, and that dinner was on the table every night. He was glad his wife finally had a friend she could talk to. Tala had been happier lately than she’d been in…well, ever.
“And you approve of this?”
Stephen sighed. Dalisay was not the easiest woman to deal with and he thought to spare his wife the trouble. “If this is about the money, Dalisay, I’m sorry to tell you that was all we could afford to send this month.”
“It is not about money,” Dalisay lied. “I only wish to speak with my daughter. I will call back another time.”
Stephen heard the phone click dead and wondered how something as sweet as Tala could come from something as awful as Dalisay.
**********
When Tala stepped through the door of Underground with Kelsey by her side, she felt like she belonged somewhere for the first time since arriving in America.
“I can’t believe Stephen is letting you stay out so late,” Kelsey made the mistake of saying.
“Stephen does not control me,” Tala asserted, folding her arms and glaring at her friend.
“That’s not what I meant. I just meant he’s used to having you home. Let’s get a drink.”
Alison was in her usual spot at the bar and rose from her barstool to greet them.
“You must be Tala,” she said, with an appreciative nod.
“And you are Alfred?”
Kelsey burst out laughing. “Al is short for Alison, not Alfred.”
Tala blushed but felt better when Alison laughed too. “I will buy the first square,” Tala said.
“Huh?”
“Round,” Kelsey said, smiling. “She meant she’ll buy the first round.”
Tala didn’t know much about American slang and it showed. “I am not stupid in my own language,” she offered.
Kelsey laughed. “You’re not stupid in this one either.”
Alison flagged down the bartender and ordered the drinks and Tala insisted on paying. Kelsey nodded that Alison should let her. They were laughing and getting on well when a snide voice from behind said, “Well, i
f it isn’t Miss Saigon.”
Kelsey turned to confront her ex but Tala was already on it. “You are very ugly to me,” she told Julia.
“Am I now?”
“Yes, your ugliness on the inside shows on the outside.”
“She’s got you there,” Alison said.
“Shut up, Alison.”
“Just go away, Julia,” Kelsey groaned. “Why don’t you ever just fucking go away?”
“I’ve warned you before, Julia,” the bartender said. “Leave these ladies alone or you’ll be removed from the bar.”
“Fine!” Julia stalked away.
Kelsey went to the bathroom and came back to find Alison huddled away in a corner with a tall brunette, and Tala politely trying to ignore the advances of a large, older woman.
“There you are, sweetie,” Kelsey said, sizing up the situation quickly and wrapping her arms around Tala from behind with all the familiarity of a longtime partner.
Tala leaned into the warmth of Kelsey’s embrace and felt her knees go weak at the feel of Kelsey’s breath on her neck.
“Sorry,” the woman said. “I didn’t know she was with someone.”
Kelsey shrugged. “No worries.”
Tala was still in Kelsey’ arms when she turned to face her. “I had this under control,” she lied.
“Is that so?” Kelsey tried to ignore the heat between them, and pulled Tala in just a little bit closer. “Act like it’s real,” she whispered.
Tala felt Kelsey’s hip press against her center and the charge between them grew stronger. “It is real, Kelsey,” she whispered back. Her mouth was so close to the soft flesh of Kelsey’s neck that it took all of her energy not to let her lips brush across it.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
Kelsey released Tala from her embrace. “She’s gone. And you’re vibrating.”
Tala blinked. “I’m vibrating?”
“Your phone,” Kelsey said with a smile. “I felt it vibrate in your front pocket.”
“Oh.” Tala checked her phone to see a text from Stephen and sighed. “Stephen spoke with my mother.”
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