Maybe Barry’s been talking to her and she’s brought me a leaflet on “How To Deal With Your First Lesbian Crush Getting Married” or something along those lines. Maybe it has handy tips on how to not start screaming during that “if anyone knows why these two should not be joined in holy matrimony” part of the wedding, and how to make a speech that isn’t bitter.
A speech. What if she wants me to be the maid of honour? She always said that I would be, at her wedding, even though neither of us thought she’d have to make a decision quite so soon.
The brochure does not, in fact, have anything to do with solving the chaos in my life. It’s about a summer course for “young film-makers”.
“I’m not a young film-maker,” I point out, looking at the cover.
“You don’t have to have experience,” she says. “You just have to be interested, and you are. It sounds like your sort of thing.”
“Yeah, but – ” I flip through it, but only half-heartedly. My mind’s still on Lucy and Barry and Declan. It does look sort of interesting, I suppose, but it’d mean I’d miss out on part of my summer. I wanted to spend this summer relaxing and not doing anything. Having to take part in something for several weeks doesn’t quite count as ‘doing nothing’.
So maybe I do want to make movies or be involved with them in some way when I’m older, but I hate the idea that you have to go to school for everything, rather than learn from your life experience. School doesn’t teach you about life. A summer course isn’t going to change my career prospects.
“But what?” she asks.
“Nothing,” I say, and try to smile.
“Is something going on?”
I contemplate telling her everything, but I’m not sure where I’d begin. I’m grateful when the door swings open and a group of girls walk in, munching on popcorn. The decision has been made for me. I’m never sure how comfortable she is with me talking seriously about Lucy and girls in general, anyway.
“Not really,” I say, and then add, “I just can’t wait for it to be summer.” At least that much is true.
Chapter Fifty-Three
“So what are we watching tonight, oh wise one?” he asks.
“Depends. What are you in the mood for?”
“Porn,” he kids. Or perhaps he’s serious.
“I don’t have porn, Barry,” I remind him.
“Yeah, you do, that Spanish one with all the sex.”
“Mexican. And it’s artistic.”
“Sure, sure.”
“It is!”
“Whatever you say,” he says innocently. He looks through the collection. “Boys and Girls? Isn’t that a bit too low-brow for you, Emily?”
“Are you forgetting I also own Crossroads? And anyway, it’s got two girls kissing in it, which makes up for a lot.”
“I knew there had to be a reason you had such a typical romantic comedy in here.”
“Are you implying that I couldn’t just own a typical romantic comedy because I liked it?” I tease.
He considers this. “Yeah, pretty much. I mean, it’s a story about two really great friends who end up falling in love and living happily ever after. Not your sort of thing, is it?”
I stare at him for a moment. “Maybe it’s exactly my sort of thing,” I say.
“Oh, really?” he says, raising an eyebrow.
“Really,” I say, and we’re doing this thing where we’re inching towards each other, and then I laugh. “Barry, we have to stop doing this.”
“What? Flirting?”
“No, using a Freddie Prinze Jr movie as a not-so-subtle metaphor for whatever’s going on with us.”
He grins. “Hey, you’re the one who has it on DVD. There’s got to be a reason for that.”
“I told you, it’s the kiss.”
“That’s the only reason?” he smiles.
“Absolutely,” I nod. And now we’re inching again. I know where this is going. And, you know, I think I like it. Maybe it’s crazy and insane, but I like it, and my instincts are telling me that this is definitely the right thing to do.
Chapter Fifty-Four
“Guess what I did last night?” I sing-song to Roisín on Thursday morning.
“Declared your undying love for Barry?” she teases.
I shrug. “Close enough.”
The look on her face is priceless. I’ve been giggling to myself with delight all morning at the thought of seeing this look. It’s classic disbelief, tinged with a bit of shock and a healthy dose of I-told-you-so.
“Are you serious?” she sputters.
I nod. “Yep.”
“Emily!” she shrieks, causing a couple of other girls sitting in the classroom to look at us strangely. “I can’t believe it!”
I grin. I love having good news like this. “Yeah. He was over last night, we were just talking, and then – then . . . ”
“Then you propositioned him,” she smiles.
“Nope. I kissed him. Or he kissed me. There was a kiss, anyway. And then there was more kissing. And then we said goodnight. And we were all happy and smiley and stuff. Quite sickening, actually.”
“I can imagine. But – you kissed him? And that’s all? That seems terribly chaste for you, Em.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask, but I know what she means.
“You just tend to move fast, that’s all,” she says. “Not that it’s a bad thing, but –”
“Nah, you’re right. But this is different. Me and Barry – aaagh! I can’t believe it.” I really can’t. It’s me and Barry. Me and Barry! And yet it seems to make so much sense, when you think about it. We’re like two halves of the same coin, coming together to form a perfect whole.
Oh, here we go again with the romantic babbling. It feels familiar. But this isn’t like it was with Hugh. This is completely different. I feel it.
Chapter Fifty-Five
At break-time Roisín, me, and a few others are sitting around chatting when she brings up the topic of Barry again.
“Barry, as in your friend Barry?” Christine asks.
“Yeah, him,” I say.
“Emily’s decided she’s madly in love with him,” Roisín adds.
I watch their reactions. They look surprised. More than that, they look disbelieving. They look as if they want to say, “Right, Emily, you’re not fooling us. We all know you’re a big mad dyke, so stop pretending.”
Maybe I’m overreacting. But their looks . . . And now we have the feigned interest.
“Is he good-looking?” Maria asks.
“Very,” I say, but I watch her. I watch the patronising smile. I watch the way they seem to act as though they’re playing parts in a play, pretending right along with me.
Truth be told, it’s been going on for a while now. The averted eyes (because eye contact could be interpreted as being interested, and that’d be a disaster of colossal proportions), the awkwardness whenever I’m the only other person in the room.
They’re right in one way, I guess. I’m pretending, but it’s not about pretending to be interested in guys, it’s about pretending that I don’t care.
And I find myself needing to leave. Right now. I know it’s going to look suspicious and probably just give them more to gossip about, but I can’t stand being around them anymore.
A couple of weeks ago, these girls were my friends. I mean, we weren’t close, not like me and Roisín or me and Barry or even me and Abi, but we were friends. And now everything’s different, and I don’t know whether I like it or not. I didn’t get a choice in the matter. In some ways I’m glad about this – taking the burden off my shoulders, I guess – but in other ways I resent it.
It’s my life. Not theirs. How dare they sit there and judge me and whisper about how they suspected all along how I wasn’t “normal”? Whisper about Abi when she walks in, whisper whenever I’m talking privately to another girl, whisper, whisper, whisper. I am sick of it, so incredibly sick and tired of it all.
I hide in the bathroom. Bathrooms are go
od for this sort of thing, this kind of emotional upheaval. I wonder how many girls have leaned against this cold tiled wall and tried not to cry.
“Emily? You in here?” Roisín calls.
I unlock the door and walk out, staring at myself in the mirror. Girl. Seventeen years old. Brunette, for the moment. Semi-attractive. Wearing school uniform. Upset. Angry. Scared.
“You okay?” she asks softly.
I want to say something profound and meaningful, explain the way I’m feeling. Instead I just burst into tears. I’m such a girl.
“I’d never make a good lesbian,” I sniffle.
Roisín looks at me, puzzled.
“I’m not butch enough,” I elaborate, with half a smile.
She giggles. “So you’re buying into the stereotypes now?”
I shrug. “Everyone else seems to be.”
“So what are you, then?”
“The resident bisexual slut, clearly,” I say.
“You sound bitter,” she says quietly.
“Oh, you think? I hate this school. I hate the way they make me question myself over and over and think about all this stuff and turn it into a big deal. I hate the way they look at me, and I hate the way they think they know everything about me. So, yeah, I’m bitter.” And the tears are starting up again.
“Oh, sweetie,” she says, giving me a hug. “Ignore them, okay? They’re not important.”
“I hate them,” I sniffle.
“You never cared what they thought about you before,” she reminds me gently.
“That was different,” I say. That was before my personal life became a topic of classroom gossip. It’s easy to be indifferent when everything’s going okay.
Roisín pauses. “You’re still you,” she says eventually. “And the Emily I know does her own thing and doesn’t worry about what everyone else is going to say.”
I smile. I love her so much at this moment for that. And I start to dry my eyes.
Chapter Fifty-Six
I get home on Thursday and stare at the photos on the wall, grinning like an idiot whenever I see one with me and Barry. How could I not have seen it before? We make the perfect couple.
Everyone else has been seeing it for ages, of course. It’s so obvious to them. I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to realise this.
I sit on the bed and sigh. He’s probably got a lot of homework to do tonight. I won’t see him.
There’s a message on my phone. Heart pounding. It’s from him. I resist the urge to squeal in delight.
I am so very giddily happily in love and I adore it. This is the sort of ‘sickening’ behaviour that Roisín teases me about, but I don’t care. I’m happy.
I go over to his house after dinner and we hang out in his room, just talking at first, and then he says, “So . . .”
And I say, “So . . .”
We laugh.
“About yesterday,” I say, and he looks worried.
“Look, if you – ” he begins.
“I don’t regret it,” I reassure him quickly. “And I’m glad it happened.”
“Really?” He smiles. (He is truly adorable when he smiles. It’s so cute!)
“Really,” I say, and kiss him.
We are still kissing – and going no further, may I add – when his mother knocks on the door and asks us if we’d like anything to drink.
She seems surprised, but in a good way, to see me and Barry jump apart, embarrassed. He never told her about Jeremy, but I think she must have suspected. For months, they spent all their time together, and after they broke up he stayed in his room, miserable, for a week. How can parents not notice things like that? How can they not make the connection? She must have known something was going on.
Parents are experts at the game of denial, I suppose. If they don’t want to see something . . . it doesn’t exist for them.
I want to call her on that almost-relieved look and tell her that Barry would probably be better off with Jeremy, that I’m really not the sort of girl that anyone should go out with. I want to ask her why she thinks it’s automatically better for him to be with a girl than a boy.
I’m jumping to conclusions, I realise, and reading too much into the situation. The world isn’t out to get us.
Did I just say ‘us’? ‘Us’, as in the lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgendered-queer community? ‘Us’, as in me and them?
As in me, the girl who refuses to believe that sexuality is an issue, turning into some kind of sexuality-is-political thinker/activist?
Oh dear. This is new and scary.
I don’t care about issues and all that sort of stuff. Do I?
I mean, what people do in their personal life is personal, right? It’s nothing to do with anyone else. So I’ve always believed, anyway. And I don’t want to have to take a political stance on the people I fall for, for God’s sake.
“Emily, can I get you anything?” Barry’s mother asks.
“No, thanks,” I say. “I’m okay.”
Except for the thoughts swirling around in my head, of course. I think I’ll go back to kissing Barry. It’s much simpler.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
I am reading the introduction to the Velvet Goldmine screenplay in which Todd Haynes talks about sexuality influencing who you are, and I am not sure whether I like this idea or not.
Gay rights and women’s rights and all that stuff, and yeah, I care, but not enough to do something about it, not enough to think deeply on the matter or go to a protest or take a stand.
I’d make a movie, maybe, to make a point, but should movies have a political agenda behind them? People want to be entertained, not educated. No one watches a movie to feel like they’re back in school, being told what to believe in.
I’m glad tomorrow’s Friday and I can go out and get drunk and not have to think for a while.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
And so on Friday night we are dressed up and ready for action, me and Barry and Roisín and Andrew-and-Lucy. It’s a weird group dynamic, with Andrew and Lucy being more couple-ish than ever, if that’s even possible, and then me and Barry trying not to be overly affectionate to one another so that Roisín doesn’t feel too awkward, and the fact that there are five, not six of us. Hugh’s going out with Fiona and her friends. We’ll probably see them later. The good (or bad) thing about the size of Dublin is that when you’re under eighteen, you tend to run into almost everyone you know when you go out for the night.
I find myself dancing with Barry. He hasn’t taken his hands off me ever since we got here, almost as if he’s afraid he’ll lose me if he lets go for a minute. Either we’re holding hands, or he has his arm around me, or something. I’m starting to feel claustrophobic. He’s never been like this before; does the fact that we’re kissing now change everything? It’s so stupid. We’ve known each other forever and suddenly all the rules have changed, when the whole reason that we’re together now is because we got along so well as friends. The logic of that defies me.
But I do like the way his arms feel around me when we dance so closely that we should be oblivious to everything and everyone around us. ‘Should be’, because I can’t manage to block the world out, and something about that doesn’t seem right to me. He’s giving me his full attention and I’m only half-here, thinking about Roisín and whether she’s okay or feeling left out of things, and about Lucy’s Debs dress (she hasn’t bought one yet; she should probably get a white one so she can re-use it as a wedding dress), and about all kinds of things that I should be forgetting about when I’m trying to have a good time.
I should be happy, right? This is Barry. I’m crazy about Barry. We’re going to live together in our stylish apartment someday and be essential parts of each other’s lives and never be apart.
And it’s so, so easy to mistake intimate friendship for attraction when you’re looking for someone to fall for.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
I am in Barry’s arms and my head is buried in his shoulder and a
ll I can think is, Oh, holy crap.
Rebound girl strikes again. I can’t believe what I’ve done.
Maybe it’s a mistake. Maybe I really am attracted to Barry and I’m just scared of admitting it to myself, so . . .
No. That’s not the way it is. It’s me playing mind games with the person I care most about in the whole world. It’s just like Declan said, even though it sickens me to admit that he’s right.
It’s me needing someone to obsess over because that’s what I do, that’s how I function, constantly looking for someone else to develop a crush on in the search for happiness and true love.
And it couldn’t be Lucy and it couldn’t be Abi and it was so easy for it to be Barry because it’s Barry, and I adore him, and respect him, and everyone expected it.
It’s hard not to do what people expect of you. You start to see yourself and your life through their eyes. Especially when it’s your friends, because you love your friends, and their opinions mean so much to you – but it doesn’t make it right or real or true.
It doesn’t make me in love with Barry.
Because if I were really in love with him, I wouldn’t have this sense of being trapped, of having a niggling feeling that something about this is wrong, that I love the intimacy but it can never be sexual between us, because I don’t feel that way about him and I’d give anything in the world not to hurt him.
Yeah, it’s too late for that, isn’t it?
Chapter Sixty
And of course once I’ve realised this, everything’s different. To him, nothing has changed, and we’re still dancing, still a couple, still Barry-and-Emily or Emily-and-Barry, but for me – it’s like I’ve stepped into an alternate universe.
To everyone else Barry-and-Emily makes sense, and I’m the only one who sees that it doesn’t fit, that it’s not going to work.
And even he doesn’t see it, because he has feelings for me, and everybody knows it, and what kind of an ungrateful bitch am I not to appreciate this amazing person who cares so much about me and makes me laugh and makes me feel safe?
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