Like I Love You (Love Wins (JMS Books))

by J. T. Marie

  “Nothing’s wrong.” Dana pulled back, defensive. She wished the bottle was closer so she could get another glass without reaching past Bethany to do so, then eyed Bethany’s untouched drink. You gonna drink that? she wondered. When she opened her mouth to ask, though, the words that came out instead were, “Why does anything have to be wrong? I’m just relaxing, having a drink—”

  “Sitting in the dark,” Bethany pointed out, “alone, getting drunk.”

  Dana pouted. “You make it sound so bad.”

  With a shrug, Bethany said, “Well, it doesn’t look very good.”

  “We used to do this all the time back in DC,” Dana reminded her. “Sit on the futon and watch the skyline—God, we had a view, didn’t we? Kick back, shoot the shit, watch the lights out over the Potomac. What happened to us, Bethy?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Dana sighed. “Us. You and me. We’re living two different lives now, you know? I hardly ever see you anymore—”

  “Because I’m working,” Bethany interjected. “You are, too. We’ve gotten busy. It’s part of growing up.”

  “Well, it sucks.” Dana raised her glass to her lips before she remembered there was nothing in it and set it back in her lap. “I don’t like it. Any of it. This city, the damn building outside all our windows that blocks out everything else. My job, your job—”

  Laughing, Bethany asked, “My job? How can you not like my job? It pays all the bills.”

  “And keeps you away from me.” Dana twirled her wine glass and pouted at the way the scant light played off it. “We barely see each other and you know it. I come home to an empty house every night, eat dinner by myself, get up in the morning and you’re already gone—”

  “Jesus.” Bethany took a shaky breath and chased it down with a sip from her glass, finally. Dana watched her greedily, eager for another drink herself. “You make it sound like we’re an old married couple. I know I’m busy. I’m sorry I’m not around more, but you have to understand, I’m still pretty low on the totem pole at the office. If someone doesn’t want to do something that has to get done, they pass it onto me. I have to leave so early just to get there on time. I mean, yeah, I have a bike, but it takes thirty minutes weaving through busy streets in early morning rush hour and that’s if traffic isn’t heavy. Coming home takes almost twice as long some days, I don’t know why—”

  “What time to do you usually leave?” Dana felt bad now, complaining like a petulant child that she never got to see Bethany when her friend had bigger issues just to get to work.

  Another sip of wine, and Bethany’s voice evened out. “I’m supposed to work until five thirty, but my boss always, always calls me into his office at quarter past to go over something, and then I end up staying until six or later. If it’s a Tuesday, we have staff meetings at five that run until seven. No one else seems bothered by it, so I pretend I’m not, either. I can’t be all like, oh, I’ve got to go, when the rest of the staff is still hard at work, you know?”

  “So you stay until all hours of the night,” Dana asked, “for what, to look good?”

  Bethany shrugged. “Partly, yeah. And so when a better position come available, they think of me and move me up.”

  Dana let the wine glass fall on its side as she tossed her head against the back of the couch. “God, look at you. You have it all figured out, don’t you?”

  “What?” Bethany gave her a funny look. “No, I don’t. Far from it, honey.”

  “You’ve got a great job,” Dana went on, “and you’re trying to get a promotion. By this time next year, hell, they’ll be sending you to work in France.”

  Bethany laughed. “I wish.”

  As far as Dana was concerned, there was nothing funny about the idea. “And I’ll be stuck here. Or worse, back home in BFE. What am I supposed to do with my life, Bethy? Tell me.”

  “You’ll figure it out.” Bethany’s hand covered Dana’s knee.

  Maybe it was the wine, but at her friend’s touch, a comforting warmth spread through Dana’s thigh and set her crotch tingling. When Bethany patted her knee, each tap crackled along Dana’s overheated flesh, and it took all the strength she had not to grab that hand and pull it up to the V between her legs, where she really wanted it.

  “Besides,” Bethany was saying, “if I move to France, you know I’d take you with me. I wouldn’t make you go back to BFE.”

  Dana blew out her lower lip, ruffling her bangs. “What the hell do I know about France? Nothing. I can’t speak the language, I can’t read it, the only thing I know is this.”

  Without thinking about it, without even realizing what she was going to do, she turned to Bethany and pressed her lips to her friend’s.

  Bethany must have been too stunned to pull away. When Dana’s mouth parted, her tongue eased between Bethany’s lips and Bethany did nothing to stop her from delving in.

  At least, not at first. It was heady, finally kissing the woman she loved, and Dana leaned in closer, wanting more. Bethany tasted like sweet like freshly baked bread slathered with fruit and honey, though Dana realized that might be the alcohol in her own system tainting her perception.

  And maybe it was the wine that made her think Bethany was kissing her back, but she could’ve sworn she felt Bethany’s tongue brush over hers, tentative, unsure. The hand on her knee squeezed, and a small moan escaped Bethany’s lips when Dana pulled back slightly to catch her breath.

  It was all the encouragement Dana needed to sigh, “God, Bethy, I’ve loved you forever, don’t you know that yet?”

  Then Bethany pinched her knee, and Dana sat back with a cry. “Ow! What—”

  Pushing past her, Bethany rose from the couch. “I’m sorry, but…I’m not—we can’t—”

  Confused, Dana frowned up at her friend. “Can’t what? You kissed me back. I thought—”

  “We’re just friends, okay?” Bethany’s voice was shaky with fear or tears, maybe both. “I’m sorry if you thought I was…but I’m not. I’m just not.”

  Without another word, she hurried away. Dana watched her trail like a shade among shadows through the living room to her bedroom, where she shut the door between them, locking Dana out.

  “Great.” Dana glared at the emptiness around her as if it were to blame for the shitty way she felt inside. Her lips tingled from the kiss she’d shared with Bethany—their first, and now their last. When she swallowed, she could still taste her friend on her tongue.

  Reaching across the cushion Bethany had just vacated, Dana snagged the bottle of wine and sloshed its contents. There was at least half a bottle left, but nowhere near enough to drown out what she’d done.

  Just friends. Yeah, right. Maybe before, but now? Dana wasn’t so sure that was still the case.

  Chapter 4: Maybe Something More

  September 1999

  If anything, the kiss only widened the distance already growing between them. When Dana sobered up, she wished she hadn’t—not hadn’t kissed Bethany, no, she didn’t regret that, because she recognized her only chance when she saw it, but rather wished her body hadn’t purged the wine from her system. If only being drunk was a viable career choice. She could totally give it a go.

  The days stretched out indeterminately. Winter rolled into spring, then into summer. Bethany worked later and later, or so it seemed to Dana, and when she was home, little passed between them anymore. Dana no longer thought of themselves as best friends, but rather as former friends. They weren’t even roommates, but people who shared a common space. The number of occasions when they were in the apartment at the same time could be counted on one hand. When it happened, Bethany always looked about herself guiltily, as if caught somewhere she shouldn’t be, and was quick to retreat to her room without making eye contact.

  She hates me, Dana thought. She knew it had to be true, because how could Bethany still like her when she hated herself? She’d ruined what they had together with one stupid, drunken kiss. Just call me Judas and hang me right now.r />
  As more time went by, it became harder to broach the subject, to talk about it, until it hung over their heads like a pall, heavy and dark, smothering them. By the end of the summer, Dana could stand it no longer. If nothing was going to be said, then at least something could be done, and if Bethany wasn’t going to be the one to do it, then Dana would.

  She’d leave.

  And go where?

  Well, back home, of course.

  It galled her to do it, but it had to be done. She didn’t know where else to go. Graduate school didn’t interest her, and besides, the end of August was way too late to apply for the fall semester anywhere. She could froth milk and tamp espresso at Books-A-Million or Starbucks the same as she could on Fifth Avenue, and while she’d make less back home, she wouldn’t need all that much to live off of in the first place. Hell, if she could live at home, she wouldn’t need to make hardly anything at all. Free room and board, free meals, free laundry facilities—yeah, she might be going on thirty, but so what?

  Plan A had failed. She had to fall back on Plan B now.

  But the big question was, would her parents let her come back?

  * * * *

  Dana waited until the second week of September to call home. Watch Bethany pick tonight of all nights to come home early, she thought, sitting on the edge of the couch so she could watch the apartment door over her shoulder as she used the phone. Was it just her, or did it take forever for the line to ring through from New York to Virginia? Calls never seemed to take as long to connect when she’d lived in DC.

  You’re just homesick, she told herself, listening to the distant ring. Come on, pick up. Come on, come on…

  After an eternity, her mother answered. “Hello?”

  “Mom, hey.” Dana sighed in relief. “There you are. I thought you weren’t home.”

  “I’m here, honey. What’s wrong?”

  Dana felt herself get defensive. “What does anything have to be wrong? Can’t I just call and say hi?”

  With a laugh, her mother asked, “When’s the last time you did that? Besides, I can hear it in your voice. I’m your mother, remember? So what’s up?”

  “Are you trying to sound cool?” Dana asked. “Because it isn’t working.”

  “Just tell me already. Do you need me to loan you some money again? Is that it?”

  Dana bristled. “No, I don’t…actually, it’s—” She sighed. When she spoke again, she couldn’t keep from pouting, and she hated the little girl sound of her voice. “Things are going too well at the moment. Between Bethy and me.”

  “Aww, baby.” The sympathy in her mother’s voice made Dana dissolve into tears. She’d promised herself she wouldn’t cry, too. “What happened?”

  “Nothing happened,” she lied. “We just…I don’t know. Drifted apart, I guess. She has her own life here and I hate it. I want to come home.”

  Carefully, her mother said, “Okay. It’s a bit far for us to drive up and get you, though. Can you take a bus?”

  Sniffling, Dana admitted, “I don’t have the money. My job sucks, I’m broke all the time, everything’s so expensive up here—”

  “Calm down, sweetie. Calm down.” She sighed, obviously gathering her thoughts, then told Dana, “I’ll buy the ticket. Do you still some checks for your account at the credit union? Your dad can put in the money tomorrow.”

  Dana tried to think where the checkbook might be. Somewhere in the boxes in her room, the stuff she’d never managed to unpack in all her time in New York. “I should have them somewhere, yeah. If not, I at least have the ATM card in one of my old purses.”

  The checking account was the first one she’d ever opened, back in high school, and she’d kept it all throughout college as a handy way for her mother to deposit money she could then use at school. She hadn’t thought of it in years, though. Now when she borrowed money, her mother usually mailed a check that Dana could deposit into her new account at the bank around the corner from the coffee house where she worked.

  Where she used to work. The moment her father deposited enough funds into her old account for a bus ticket, she was quitting her job and coming home. If the account was still open. And if she could find the ATM card or a check to access the money.

  It has to be open, she told herself, and I’ll get the money somehow. I need to get out of here.

  * * * *

  In the end, she didn’t even leave Bethany a note.

  Dana toyed with the idea, really she did, but thought she should tell her friend in person she was leaving. She owed Bethany that much, didn’t she? The evening before she was scheduled to take the ten-thirty Greyhound bus south the next morning, she waited up late for Bethany to come home from work so they could talk things out. Well, maybe not everything, but at least she’d say goodbye.

  Six o’clock came and went without any sign of her roommate. Okay, fine. Bethany usually ran late. Dana ordered in Chinese from down the street and waited for the delivery guy to ring the buzzer outside to let her know he was downstairs so she could go pay him. The Chinese food was top notch in Manhattan, and if nothing else, she knew she was going to miss it when she left.

  At seven o’clock, she sat on the sofa alone, eating lo mein noodles and watching the patterns the setting sun threw against the ugly building outside her windows. She’d miss the Chinese food but not the view. Back home there were trees and squirrels and silence, not the constant drone of city life. Engines revving, brakes squealing, people yelling, horns honking…even with the windows shut, Dana could still hear it all, day or night. When she got back home again, she’d probably think she had gone deaf or something, it’d be so damn quiet. She couldn’t wait.

  Eight and nine o’clock both slipped by without her noticing. She’d turned on the television and spent some time flipping through the channels, dozens of cable networks that all somehow managed to have nothing on at same time. Finally she caught the tail end of Titanic on HBO—how they got HBO, she wasn’t sure, it was part of the package deal they’d gotten when they first signed up for cable service. Neither of them watched it, but the cable was in Bethany’s name so Dana couldn’t cancel the premium channels and Bethany couldn’t be bothered. Now Dana couldn’t, either.

  So she watched the ship sink and got weepy-eyed at the end, then hated herself for crying all over again. How was she supposed to have an adult conversation with Bethany when a stupid movie brought her to tears?

  But it looked like she wasn’t going to talk with Bethany, because it was going on ten now, and Bethany still wasn’t home. Dana dried her eyes and decided to call it a night. She had a long day ahead of her—even if she’d be spending it sitting on a bus, it was going to be rough and she wasn’t really looking forward to the journey. She just wanted to be home already. Maybe Dana could wake up early enough to catch Bethany before she left for work.

  If not, oh well, she thought. I hate to leave things hanging between us, but it pretty much sums up perfectly where we are with each other right now, doesn’t it?

  As it turned out, Dana didn’t get a chance to say anything to Bethany the next morning, even though she was up at seven. She hadn’t set an alarm; she just couldn’t sleep from the excitement of leaving. The bags she was taking with her were packed and ready just inside her bedroom door. Everything else she owned was boxed up and neatly stacked against the wall, her home address written on each box and a note on her dresser informing Bethany that she’d send a shipper to pick them up when she could.

  At first she thought her roommate was still asleep. Dana used the bathroom, then stood outside Bethany’s door a long moment, hand raised, debating on whether or not to knock. In the end, she tried the knob and found it unlocked. As quietly as she could, she eased the door open and peered inside the room. “Bethy?” she whispered.

  No response.

  The room was dark, but from the scant light slanting in through the blinds, she could see the bed was still made, the room empty. Bethany hadn’t come home the night before. />
  Dana felt irrational anger surge through her. “Fucking bitch,” she muttered, shoving the door open wide. What the hell? Couldn’t Bethany have called? Where had she slept?

  “You know what?” Dana announced to the empty apartment. “I don’t care. I hope she has a nice life, because I intend to.”

  Less an hour later, she left the apartment behind and headed out to fight against the subway rush hour traffic one last time. She’d mail the key back when she felt like it.

  She was proud of herself—this time she didn’t cry.

  * * * *

  Dana’s father picked her up from the bus station. As usual, they had little to say to each other, but he carried her bags to the bed of his pickup truck and didn’t comment on her return, two things for which she was thankful. After almost eight hours on a cramped bus, not only had Dana realized she got horrible motion sickness, but also that she had to put Bethany behind her once and for all. Since they met, her life hadn’t been her own. Everything she’d said and done for the past six years, she’d done for Bethany.

  That ends now.

  She moved into Bethany’s dorm room at her friend’s request. Moved to DC after graduation because Bethany asked. Went to New York—why? Because of Bethany, of course. Dana didn’t need her mother to tell her she was throwing her life away after someone who obviously didn’t care about her. Dana had finally realized it for herself.

  But when she arrived home, her mother said it anyway; pointing out what you were doing wrong with your life was what mothers did best. Dana only half-listened to the conversation, refusing to get drawn into an argument, punctuating the talk when necessary with, “Yes, Mom,” and “I know, Mom,” and “You’re right, you’re right.”

  “I never trusted that girl,” her mother said at one point. “I told you…”

  Dana nodded, while inside she thought, Actually, no, you never mentioned it. Up until now, you loved her, too. You don’t even know why I’m mad at her and you’re taking my side. You’re supposed to do and I love you for it, but if anything changes—which it won’t, I just know it—but if it does, you’ll be telling me this same thing all over again, I told you, blah blah blah.