Just Tell Her

by Nicole Pyland

  They ate in relative silence. When they were finished, Charlie took their now dirty dishes into the kitchen. By that time, Eddie was doing his dance, so Lena paused the movie and accompanied them on their walk. When they returned to the apartment, they were both slightly frozen. Charlie grabbed a blanket off the back of the couch and draped it over both of them. She glanced over at Lena, who appeared to be less nervous after their shared evening. Charlie risked putting her arm around Lena’s shoulder. Lena smiled and turned her head toward Charlie for a moment before resting her head against her shoulder and continuing to watch the movie.

  ◆◆◆

  “Well, that was fun,” Emma expressed as she took Hailey’s hand and walked them toward her car.

  “Yes, it was,” Hailey agreed. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie with subtitles in the theater before,” she confessed.

  “Me neither.”

  “You haven’t?”

  “No.”

  “Then, why did you suggest it? You seemed all into it,” Hailey questioned.

  “I don’t know. It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  “You hated it, didn’t you?” Hailey laughed and swung their hands.

  “Yes,” Emma shared. “I’m not sure I even understood the story. There was a goat involved, and what was that woman doing, carrying that bucket of water up a hill like that?”

  Hailey laughed and pulled Emma closer to her.

  “Why did we go?”

  “Because I’m stupid,” Emma stated. “I guess I thought that we should do something we never did before. We’re older, and supposedly more sophisticated now. I thought we’d like a more sophisticated movie.”

  “Em, you’re cute,” Hailey told her.

  “Sorry, I promise I’ll take you to a good old-fashioned Hollywood blockbuster next time. It will be a terrible rip off of some other movie that came before it, but at least we’ll understand it.”

  “Pretty confident that you’re getting another date, Miss Colton.”

  “Am I?” Emma stopped them and pulled Hailey back a little to face her. “Am I getting another date, Hails?”

  “Yes.” Hailey let her off easy.

  “Yeah?” Emma smirked.

  “Yes, but no more movies with subtitles.”

  “That’s easy. Come on, I’ll take you home.”

  ◆◆◆

  Charlie knew it was getting late and that she should probably be checking in to see if Lena wanted to go home, but the woman wasn’t saying anything, and Charlie didn’t want her to go. However, she was falling asleep on the couch and worried she’d pass out there with Lena still pressed against her side. They’d started the second movie, and then watched a couple of episodes of some comedy Lena recommended, and Charlie enjoyed, but by the third episode, she was having a hard time keeping her eyes open.

  “Hey, I hate to say this, but I think I’m about to fall asleep on you,” Charlie finally admitted and hated doing it because Lena sat up and looked at her.

  “Sorry, I should go. It’s really late.” She looked at the clock on the cable box under the TV.

  “You can stay if you want.” Charlie placed her hand on the small of Lena’s back. “You don’t have to obviously, but you can.”

  Lena considered it for a moment and then looked down at herself.

  “I’d like to, but I don’t have anything with me here.”

  Charlie smirked and ran a hand across Lena’s cheek, pushing the hair back from her face.

  “I do.”

  “Right. Dating a woman about your size means you can share clothes, probably.”

  “It does, yes. I have other stuff too, like an extra toothbrush and stuff like that.”

  “For your other lady guests?” Lena lifted an eyebrow.

  “It’s complicated to explain, but here I go. My best friend, Ember, is engaged to a woman named Eva. Eva is best friends with a woman named Alyssa. Alyssa is married to Hannah. They both work for Camden Hotels, and they changed suppliers for their complimentary kits they give out when you forget stuff. They had a bunch of extras, so they gave them to me and my other friend, Hailey.”

  “That does sound complicated.”

  “Anyway, I have a bunch in the bathroom thanks to my lack of lady callers,” she explained.

  “And if I stay…” Lena looked concerned, but Charlie wasn’t sure if she was concerned that something might happen or that something might not happen.

  “We sleep, wake up tomorrow, and I’ll make you coffee,” Charlie said and stood.

  Lena stood and smiled. When Charlie held out her hand for her to take, she did, and they proceeded toward the bedroom. Charlie got her set up with clothes and toiletries, took Eddie out one last time before taking her own turn in the bathroom, and climbed into bed next to the sitting Lena.

  “You okay?” Charlie asked as she pulled the blanket up to her waist and looked over at Lena, who had her hands clasped in her lap.

  “I wasn’t sure if this was your side or if that was, so I just took this one.”

  “This is my side, so you’re good.” Charlie placed her hand over Lena’s clasped ones. “Do you want to turn the TV on? It won’t bother me. Maybe it will help you relax a little,” she suggested.

  “No, I’m okay.”

  “Do you normally sleep sitting up?” Charlie lifted an eyebrow.

  Lena turned to look at her, rolled her eyes at herself, and then slid down on the bed to lie next to Charlie.

  “No, I don’t.” She turned only her head toward Charlie. “Do you think that you could hold me?” Charlie nodded and lifted her arm. Lena slid over, pressed her cheek against Charlie’s shoulder, and placed an arm over her stomach. “I can hear your heartbeat,” she said after a few moments.

  “I can feel your heartbeat,” Charlie returned and ran her hand up and down Lena’s back. “It’s very fast.”

  “Sorry,” Lena said.

  “Nothing is going to happen until you’re ready or if you’re ever ready,” Charlie shared. “This is our second date. It may not be with me when it does, but I’m not the kind of person who will pressure you into doing anything. If it’s not me, I hope that whoever you find won’t pressure you either.”

  “Do you normally go slow with stuff like this though? I feel like making anyone wait for things at my age is so… lame.”

  “You’re not making me wait for anything. I don’t mind a natural progression of things, and yeah, I tend to go slow.” She thought of Hailey and then again found herself pushing her out of her mind. “Slow can be good. It builds anticipation.”

  “Anticipation is nice,” Lena agreed.

  “Yeah, it is.” Charlie closed her eyes, and after a few minutes, she felt Lena’s heart rate slow and her breathing even out.

  CHAPTER 8

  “Do you realize this is the first time we’ve woken up together?” Hailey professed as she took in Emma, lying beside her.

  “Oh, I guess it is.” Emma laughed a husky morning laugh. “We had to sneak around back then, and you never visited me at the dorm.”

  “Like my mother would have let me,” Hailey replied and ran a hand down Emma’s back over her shirt.

  “True,” Emma said. “I had a roommate anyway. She never left the room, so we would’ve been able to wake up together, but we wouldn’t have been able to do anything else.”

  “Yeah, I definitely would not have had sex with you on a top bunk with her under us,” Hailey told her, causing Emma to laugh deeply.

  “She would’ve freaked the hell out. She was not a fan of rooming with a lesbian. Now, I almost wish that would have happened, just to see her reaction.”

  Emma was lying on her stomach with her head turned to Hailey. Hailey placed her hand under Emma’s shirt and ran it up her back.

  “So, you didn’t see her reaction with any other girls?” Hailey tried not to sound shy or hopeful, but she was sure she hadn’t pulled it off.

  “Hails, it took me a long time to start dating after
you. I was in my own off-campus apartment by the time I went on another date, and even then, I was still into you, and it went nowhere.” She closed her eyes as Hailey’s hand dragged back down.

  “I didn’t want us to break up,” Hailey revealed.

  “I didn’t want us to break up either,” Emma said only moments later.

  “Why did we then?”

  “Because we thought we should,” Emma stated and opened her eyes to see Hailey’s green ones looking back at her. “It felt like everyone around us, trying the same thing, doing the long-distance high school to college romance, was failing and breaking up. I just don’t think we had the faith that we’d be the couple that actually made it through all that.”

  “Well, that was stupid.” Hailey lifted Emma’s shirt enough to see the small of her back and pressed her hand to it before running her fingers over it side to side.

  “I know. We were young though. We didn’t know that it could work. People always say it can’t, but we should have known better, I guess.”

  “But, Em, this feels good. Don’t get me wrong, it does, but we still need to get to know who we are today. I’ve loved going through old memories with you. I want to keep doing that, but we need to know who the other person turned out to be. I feel like I only know that old version of you that I fell in love with. I know you’re not that person anymore. You’re this person, and this person is someone I like and want to know more about.”

  “I know. I understand,” Emma agreed. “We will. We should have a whole day or something where we don’t talk about the past and catch each other up on the stuff we missed and what we want out of our lives now to see if it’s still real.”

  Hailey smiled and stopped moving her hand against Emma’s skin.

  “I’m going to make coffee. Want some?”

  “I’m more of a tea girl these days,” Emma admitted.

  “Tea? Did you become British since we dated?” Hailey joked, but thought about her weekly coffee dates with Ember and Charlie, and then she thought about how Charlie always made her coffee when she stayed over.

  “No, I just found a kind I liked, and I drink it now, but I don’t abstain from coffee altogether, so I can do coffee with you this morning.”

  “Good. I’ll make it then.” Hailey climbed out of bed and headed toward her small kitchen.

  They’d come back to her apartment only to say goodnight, since Emma had driven them to the theater, but Hailey asked her in. They’d spent a couple of hours talking about their summer together after Emma graduated, and then Hailey invited her to stay the night. They hadn’t gone past kissing yet. Hailey was both happy and unhappy about that, because her body had always reacted to Emma. Every time she was near, Hailey’s pulse quickened, her body tensed, and most of the time, she got wet. She’d gotten turned on last night, while they were nearing the fooling around status, and she wanted more. But she’d heard Eva and had gotten much the same from Ember later about how they should get to know one another more before they started up again. So, while her body craved those touches she knew Emma could provide, her brain and heart were telling her to take things slow, until she knew they could fall in love with who they were today and not who they were back then.

  ◆◆◆

  Charlie awoke to Lena lying next to her and smiled. She thought about waking her first but decided to make them coffee and bring it back instead. She slid out of bed in the way she’d practiced with Hailey and headed out to the kitchen. Eddie was entertaining himself with a toy Ember had purchased for him a year ago, that was surprisingly still intact, but he lifted his head and wagged his tail when he saw her enter.

  “Hey, bud, can you wait until I make us coffee before you go crazy?”

  He tilted his head to the right and then returned to his toy. She silently laughed at her character of a dog. If there was anyone on the planet that made her feel like an idiot sometimes, it was Eddie. The way he looked at her when she talked to him made her feel like he thought she was nuts and was definitely judging her for it. She loved him like crazy.

  “Good morning.” Lena made her way into the kitchen, wearing a pair of Charlie’s pajama pants and a black t-shirt with the UC logo on it.

  “Morning. I was going to bring this in.” She lifted a coffee mug and placed it in her machine, inserted the pod in the top, and pressed the button.

  “I heard you, so I got up.” Lena looked over at Eddie, who’d heard her enter and started walking toward her, with his claws making a tap tap tap noise against the hardwood. “Hey, little guy,” she greeted him, and his tail went crazy before he started moving his front paws back and forth.

  “He needs to go out.”

  “I can take him,” she volunteered.

  “It’s freezing out there. You get this one.” She pointed at the mug. “There’s sugar on the counter and cream in the fridge if you need it. I’ll be right back.”

  “Let me take him. Seriously, I want to. I haven’t had a dog since I was a kid. I miss it.”

  “You miss taking them on walks in fifteen-degree weather?” Charlie lifted the now full mug out of the machine and placed it on the island.

  “He’s cute.” She patted his head. “You take that one. I’ll put on some shoes and be right back.” She stood, slid the mug back over to Charlie’s side, and then walked toward the door.

  ◆◆◆

  “Thanks for squeezing me in for lunch today,” Emma said as Hailey sat down in the chair across from her at the restaurant.

  “Of course. I’m sorry, I’ve been so busy this week,” she apologized. “My boss just turned in her resignation, so things are a little crazy right now. She’s asked me to be the transition person for whoever gets the job after her.”

  “Transition person?” Emma questioned. “I ordered you a Coke.”

  “I’m a Diet person now,” Hailey revealed.

  “Oh, sorry.” Emma took a sip of her water. “I’ll have her bring a Diet one then.”

  “It’s fine. I’ll drink it.”

  “What’s a transition person?”

  “Oh, you know, that person that kind of has to learn everything you do so they can pass it along to the next person so that they can do it.”

  “Are you applying for the job?”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, Hails.” Emma smiled at her. The waitress approached with Hailey’s drink. “I’m sorry, can I get you to bring her a Diet? I’ll take that one though.”

  “Sure,” the waitress replied and sat the Coke in front of Emma instead.

  “Thank you,” Hailey told the waitress and then returned her attention to Emma. “I don’t really want her job. I like my job.”

  “You don’t want to move up?”

  “Not really. Maybe someday, but she’s a VP. That’s a lot more responsibility, and they generally require a Master’s Degree for those roles anyway.”

  “Wasn’t that a part of your plan back then? Grad school?”

  Hailey laughed a little.

  “Yeah, I guess. I thought I’d go, but I got the entry-level position at the bank right out of school, and I’ve never looked back.” She met Emma’s eyes. “What happened with you and vet school? You never told me.”

  “Oh, I got to Rutgers and took a lot of electives my first year. One was in public policy. I got really into it and started thinking about health administration after that.”

  “Do you have any pets now? I haven’t asked.”

  “No, I did. I got a dog right after I moved back, but he died a few years ago.”

  “I’m sorry, Em. What was his name?”

  “You’re going to laugh.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I named him Frogger.”

  Hailey did laugh.

  “You named him Frogger?”

  “Yeah.” Emma smiled at her.

  “Because of-”

  “Yeah,” Emma interrupted with the confirmation.

  They’d returned to their pond numerous times after that night, and
more than once, they’d made love on top of a blanket under the stars, while listening to the ribbits of the frogs hiding somewhere around the water. It was always Hailey’s idea to return there. She considered it their pond; their special place. Emma had jokingly called her Frogger one day and said that she must love the frogs more than she loved her. It hadn’t turned into a nickname or anything after that, and Hailey was surprised Emma even remembered it at all.

  “Sorry, I guess I did laugh.”

  “You’re forgiven.” Emma winked at her. “What are you doing tomorrow morning? I don’t have to be in the office right away. Do you want to stay over tonight, and we can grab breakfast tomorrow?”

  “I can’t,” Hailey expressed. “I have a work dinner tonight. It’s a farewell to the boss thing, and then I have coffee tomorrow.”

  “Coffee?”

  “That Thursday thing I do with Ember and Charlie.”

  “Oh, right. We can skip tonight, and I can join you guys. I’d like to get to know them more.”

  “Sorry, no girls allowed.” Hailey took a sip of the recently placed Diet Coke and looked up at the waitress.

  “I do not understand that logic,” Emma returned.

  Hailey placed her order and Emma followed. The waitress wrote everything down, took their menus, and walked off.

  “I mean no other girls. We just say no girls allowed because we’re all gay, so there’s no girlfriends or dates allowed.” She added the part about dates because she and Emma had not discussed their current relationship status, and Hailey knew she wasn’t ready for them to be girlfriends yet.