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

by J. T. Marie

  Finally when she could stand it no longer, she asked, “Can I go up to my room and lay down for a bit? The ride was exhausting.”

  From the living room, her dad called out, “Linda, leave the girl be. Jesus. She just walked in the damn door.”

  “All I’m saying is—”

  “Well, don’t.” Her father rattled the newspaper, a sure sign he was getting mad, and Dana flashed her mother a sympathetic smile. Coming home might have been a bad idea after all. “Lay off for two seconds, will you?”

  Softly, so he wouldn’t overhear, Dana said, “We can talk more later if you want—”

  “Just go.” Her mother waved her off with a dish towel. “If she calls here looking for you, I’m going to hang up.”

  “She won’t call,” Dana assured her. “She doesn’t even know I left.”

  * * * *

  Well, technically, Bethany would figure it out sooner or later. When she came home to an empty apartment, it would probably dawn on her Dana was gone. Maybe not at first—Dana had pulled the door to her bedroom shut behind her when she left, so Bethany most likely tiptoed past it for a couple of days, afraid to disturb her, afraid of being heard and getting caught, hoping Dana wouldn’t jump out and try to start something.

  If she ever came home. Dana still wondered where her friend had spent the night before she left. Was Bethany seeing someone? Would Dana know if she was?

  Hell, maybe Bethany had moved out first and Dana simply didn’t know it. Maybe Dana had been the last one to know…

  No, all of Bethany’s things were still in her bedroom when Dana looked in there. The apartment was leased in her name, and all the utilities were, too. Dana’s meager wages had barely covered the cost of groceries; she could never have afforded to pay anything else on her own. Bethany had been providing a place for her to live for years.

  Well, that ended now. If Bethany wanted a second income, she could put out an ad for a roommate. Dana was done with New York, and DC, and big cities in general. She was done with Bethany. Time to move on with her life.

  Time to grow up.

  Before when she’d lived at home, she hadn’t really been all that bothered about finding a job. She was fresh out of college then, worn out from the pressure of her senior year and ready for a little downtime. Sure, she’d sent out a few resumes, filled out some applications, but she never followed up on anything, hadn’t pursued the positions she wanted. She hadn’t even known what it was she would’ve liked to do then.

  Still don’t, she admitted, if only to herself. But she knew more about the workplace now, and her resume had more than just her college years listed on it. So she took a few days to spruce it up, spending some time at the library to use their computers to format it properly and run off enough copies to wallpaper the town. To her untrained eye, it looked impressive; even if the jobs it listed were only hourly positions, they weren’t local, so she liked to think it showed worldly experience, if nothing else.

  Well, east coast experience, at least. How many of the people looking at her resume in her tiny hometown would have actually gone to DC or New York? She was betting not too many. So it made her look good, in that regard.

  Then she wrote an impressive cover letter, cribbed almost entirely from a book on getting the perfect job. She spent every Sunday trawling the classifieds for potential jobs to apply to, circled each one carefully, and was at the library first thing Monday morning to tailor her cover letter to each position. She sent a copy of it along with her resume to every job listing, every single one, then sat back and waited for the phone to ring.

  And waited. And waited.

  One or two of the jobs, the ones she really liked, she called to follow up on after a week or so. She never got past the receptionist, who would tell her yes, her resume was received, and yes, it was under review, and if she proved to be a likely candidate, someone would be in touch.

  They never were.

  After a month of this, her father began griping about freeloaders under his breath. So much for being on her side. Her mother wanted to know when she was going to start doing something constructive with her life, as if she wasn’t trying to do that already.

  She’d been crazy to come back. She needed a job so she could move out on her own or she’d suffocate. Did everyone struggle like this after college?

  Not Bethany, her mind whispered.

  Fuck Bethany! In the four weeks since Dana had left New York behind, her phone had not rung once, not once, and it wasn’t just potential employers who weren’t calling, either, but her former best friend had apparently forgotten her number, as well. Things hadn’t been good between them, true, but Dana had expected a late apology, or a call to see if she was alright, or even a frantic buzz to her parents to let them know she was missing.

  But no, nothing. As if Bethany no longer cared.

  Well, I don’t, either, Dana thought, but when she lay in bed at night, once her parents were asleep and the house was quiet around her, she found it hard to convince herself she didn’t miss her friend. When that happened, it was on the tip of her tongue to apologize first, and she sometimes found herself reaching for the phone, no matter how late the hour. If only she could hear Bethany’s voice again, everything would be alright. If only they could talk things out, if she could say she was sorry for going too far—it’d been one little kiss, for Christ’s sake, one kiss, that was all!—then maybe she could break through the ennui that had her trapped like a fly in amber, pinning her into place.

  One lousy, goddamn kiss. It wasn’t like they’d even had sex or anything. Jesus.

  On nights like that, when the urge to call Bethany first grew too strong, Dana got out of bed, grabbed her car keys, and threw on a shirt over whatever it was she might be wearing, then left the house as quietly as she could. Sometimes she put on shoes, but if it was nice out, she didn’t bother. She liked driving barefoot, and it was still warm enough that she didn’t need to pull on pants over her boxers, either. All she needed was an old flannel shirt over the tank top she slept, and as long as she didn’t get out of the car, she was fine.

  She’d slide behind the wheel and drive—where, she didn’t care. If she was in the mood for speed, she hit the interstate and took it as far as Richmond, then got lost in the cloverleafs and intersections, driving in circles until she wore herself out. If she wanted something slower, she stuck to the roads at home, coasting through empty streets and trying not to think of anything at all. A few times she ended up at the elementary school where she’d gone as a child, and she’d sit on the swings, her feet in the sand as she stared into the dark woods skirting the playground. Once she ventured into the woods themselves—this on a night she’d worn shoes, of course—in search of a path she remembered from her youth that had led to the James River and a dock she thought she’d stretch out on under the stars, but she got turned around somehow and ended up back at the gravel lot where she’d parked, as if the trees didn’t want to be bothered with her and had spit her out.

  By the time she returned to the house, the urge to call Bethany hadn’t really passed, but it was usually too late now to do anything about it. Phoning someone at midnight wasn’t unheard of, but Dana couldn’t in good conscience pick up the phone at three in the morning, not when she knew Bethany had to be to work in a few hours. So she’d collapse into bed, exhausted, and drift into a thin sleep haunted by dreams in which she tried calling but every time she picked up the phone, she could never remember the number.

  In the morning after nights like these, she woke up feeling disoriented and heartbroken. Would she never get over Bethany?

  Would she ever want to?

  * * * *

  November 1999

  After Halloween, Dana was pleasantly surprised when one of her applications struck gold. Well, no, not exactly—she got a call from a possible employer, yes, but it wasn’t for any sort of real career position, nothing she’d been hoping for, nothing that would pay rent or bills or let her move out on her own a
ny time soon. It was a seasonal retail position at the downtown mall after hours, unloading trucks and restocking shelves, maintaining inventory, that sort of thing. But it was a paycheck, at least, and though she avoided the mall like the plague—particularly during the holidays—she didn’t have to be into work until ten o’clock at night, after the customers were already gone.

  By her second week of work, though, she was bored. The overnight shift seemed longer than it probably was, and as the hours dragged by, the boxes she had to move from the trucks out onto the sales floor grew heavier. Even if the ones filled with only fluffy sweaters and underwear weighed a ton. Dana didn’t particularly like any of her coworkers—they were all older women her mother’s age, at least, who had been doing the same job for years and already knew each other well. She felt like an outsider barging in, or worse, the new girl at school. When they snuck off for smoke breaks, Dana was left behind still working, and during the half hour they all took at two-thirty for “lunch,” she sat by herself in the break room, eating a microwave frozen entree with her nose in a book, trying to ignore the others more than they were ignoring her.

  It’s only through Christmas, she told herself. Less than eight weeks away. I’ll find something else when the new year starts. Just get me through Christmas, that’s all I ask.

  Her shift ended at six-thirty. The mall’s food court wasn’t open that early, but the nearby Denny’s just off the interstate operated twenty-four hours, and Dana had acquired a taste for their food during exam weeks while in college. Whenever she and Bethany needed an energy boost while studying, they used to head off campus in the wee hours of the night for a Grand Slam platter, or the Moons Over My Hammy sandwich, and they both had smuggled Denny’s coffee mugs back to their dorm rooms afterward. Once Bethany even tried to get a free breakfast by claiming it was her birthday, but the waiter asked for ID and she said she didn’t have it on her so he wouldn’t know she was lying.

  Ah, good times, Dana thought as she pulled into an empty parking spot in front of the Denny’s near the mall. The sun was just barely peeking over the horizon; in another week or two, it would be pitch black when she got off from work. She knew she should save her money and not splurge on breakfast every morning, but those Lean Cuisine meals she ate in the middle of the night just didn’t cut it. Sure, her mother had eggs and bread at home, but why make her own breakfast when someone at Denny’s could do it for her?

  Plus, they had bacon at Denny’s, and Dana’s mother didn’t keep bacon in the fridge. End of story.

  There were a few other cars in the parking lot besides her—Denny’s was popular with the older crowd, people who were normally up at six A.M. and came out for coffee and the cheap senior menu, then hogged the counter to gab and chatter while sipping free refills. So she didn’t pay any particular attention to the other vehicles, and it was only when she opened the door that she caught the reflection of a familiar car in the polished chrome handle.

  No. It couldn’t be. Was that…?

  Taking a step into the diner, Dana turned and frowned out at the parking lot. She couldn’t see the license plate from where she stood, and there had to be hundreds of dark blue Toyota Corollas on the road, right? Millions, even. Bethany wasn’t the only person who owned one.

  Besides, Bethany’s in New York, Dana assured herself. Not here. God, not here.

  But when she walked into Denny’s, sure enough, there sat her former roommate and the only woman she’d ever loved, leaning over a menu in a booth off to her right. Dana stopped and stared, a deer in headlights, unsure of what to do. Part of her wanted to turn around and walk back out right this instance, just leave, but her stomach grumbled in protest at that idea. Maybe she could duck into the bathroom, then, or sneak into a booth on the opposite side of the diner, out of sight, before Bethany looked up and noticed her standing there—

  “Hey, honey,” a waitress drawled. “Sit anywhere you like. The usual?”

  Bethany glanced up idly and saw Dana watching her, then did a double take. For a moment they studied each other warily like two alley cats, each unsure of what the other planned to do. Run, a voice inside Dana whispered. Now, while you still can. Just go…

  But this was her hometown. Why should she be the one to leave?

  So instead she asked, “What are you doing here?”

  Folding up her menu, Bethany said simply, “Looking for you.”

  “What?” Dana took a step towards her friend’s booth. When Bethany nodded at the empty seat across from her, Dana dropped into it without thinking. “How’d you know where to find me?”

  “Your mother kept hanging up every time I called,” Bethany explained.

  So she had called. The thought made Dana lightheaded with relief. Bethany hadn’t forgotten about her after all.

  “The last time,” Bethany said, “she told me to stop bothering you. Not her—you. Which told me you were here after all, even though she’d said before that you weren’t.”

  Dana scoffed. “Where the hell else would I be?”

  “I know, right?” Bethany laughed, as if they were still friends. Despite what had happened, despite the time that had passed, they fell back into their friendship as easily as if it were a comfortable old sweater. Dana liked what that said about them. “I mean, hello? If I were the one who had just up and left, I’d have gone back to my parents’, too.”

  With a shake of her head, Dana tried to clear her thoughts. “That’s all fine and good, but I meant…how’d you find me here? At Denny’s? At like, six in the fucking morning?”

  “It’s almost seven,” Bethany said, defensive. “And I didn’t know you were going to be here specifically. Since I couldn’t get a hold of you on the phone, I thought I’d come down and see you in person. I drove all night.”

  “You’re shitting me.” Dana didn’t know whether to be impressed at her loyalty or worried about her sanity. “From New York?”

  Bethany shrugged. “I missed you,” she said simply.

  Dana didn’t respond, just let the words sit for a moment so she could savor them. She wasn’t quite ready to admit she missed Bethany, too.

  After a moment, the waitress appeared with a glass of grapefruit juice—Dana’s “usual”—and set it down on the table between them. “Here you are, honey,” she drawled. “You and your friend ready to order, yet?”

  Dana and Bethany shared a look. Even though they hadn’t spoken in over a month, Dana could still read her friend well enough to know they weren’t finished talking yet. “Give us a minute, will you?” she asked.

  With a nod, the waitress disappeared.

  Bethany folded her hands over her menu and finished her story. “I got off the interstate and saw the Denny’s, and thought I’d stop in for a bite to eat. Remember we used to go to the one up by school all the time at like three in the morning? I’ve never actually been in one during the day. But I figured it was way too early to go by your house, so I’d—wait a minute, what are you doing here so early?”

  Dana rolled her eyes. “I just got off work. Long story. You don’t want to hear it, trust me.”

  “That’s just it, I do.” Reaching across the table, she covered Dana’s hand with hers. “Look, I know things went bad between us, and I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt you. I got so caught up at work, I didn’t realize—”

  “Wait, wait, wait.” Dana pulled her hand out from beneath Bethany’s and held it up between them to stop her. “I’m the one who screwed things up between us. It should be me saying I’m sorry, not you. I should’ve never kissed you.”

  A faint line furrowed between Bethany’s brows when she frowned. “Why? Didn’t you mean it?”

  Dana sat back, surprised by the question. “I—well, I was drunk.”

  “You said you loved me,” Bethany pressed. “Or don’t you remember?”

  Oh, Dana remembered clearly; she hadn’t been that drunk.

  As if afraid Dana might pull away again if she tried too much too soon, Bethany placed he
r hand on the table, palm up, and waited. When Dana didn’t take it, Bethany wiggled her fingers, an open invitation. “Aren’t we still friends?” she asked softly.

  “I don’t know,” Dana admitted. “Are we?”

  With a sigh, Bethany murmured, “I’ve done a lot of thinking since you left. I cut my hours at work, thinking maybe you’d come back on your own if I did, but a week went by, then two, and I didn’t know where you’d gone. I called your house and your mom wouldn’t let me talk to you, so I thought you were mad at me. I know I’ve been shitty to you lately—”

  “Where’d you sleep the night before I left?” Dana wanted to know.

  “At the Consulate.” Bethany balled her hand into a loose fist, annoyed. “I know it sounds like an excuse, and it is, kind of, but I didn’t realize how much they were taking advantage of me until you left. I mean, I’m just out of college, ready to take on the world…I’m from a small town in the sticks, for Christ’s sake! I thought people would take it easy on me, you know? This is my first real job—”

  “This is New York, Bethy,” Dana reminded her. “You didn’t seriously think—”

  “But I did, that’s just it. I was stupid, I realize that now, and I almost lost you because of it.” Bethany’s fist relaxed, opening again, and she looked at Dana, beseeching. “Give me another chance, that’s all I’m asking for here. I miss you; I miss us. I miss what we had, and I want it back.”

  Dana sighed and pushed her bangs out of her eyes. “I don’t know if it’s that easy. If we can just go back to what we had before. I—I can’t pretend like I didn’t kiss you. Like I don’t love you. I can’t ignore the way you make me feel.”

  Now Bethany caught Dana’s hand in hers, and before Dana could pull away again, she covered it with the other hand to hold it in place. “That’s one of the things I’ve been thinking about,” she murmured. “No—hear me out. I’m not saying I’m suddenly into girls, or anything like that. But I’ve come to realize that I…I can’t not have you in my life. I need you, Dana, simple as that. Please come back with me.”