by Terry Brewer
One Month Later: February
Things went downhill after Angela watched Nicole leave Ethel’s. Not with Tracy or Sherrie or, especially, Nicole. With Billy. It wasn’t fair but she was saying “I love you” to him less frequently and finding excuses to leave early for work and excuses to work late. Billy wasn’t a fool, and he realized something was happening.
Angela liked Nicole. She didn’t love her and knew she never would but there was something exotic about the redhead and her blue eyes that drew Angela in. She knew Nicole liked her, although part of it might have been the thrill of the turn. Whatever it was did not matter to Angela. Two weeks after they met, while Billy was at a Nets game, Angela was at Nicole’s apartment and Nicole’s fingers were in Angela’s pussy and Angela squealed in the hands, and at the fingers, of a woman who knew exactly what she was about and exactly what she was doing. She felt guilty that she did not feel guilty about it.
About a month after his return from his ski trip, and two weeks after her hookup with Nicole, an early Saturday morning, and another holiday weekend, they had it out. After some beating-around-the-bush, Angela said:
“I cheated on you.” Very flatly.
They were exclusive since Josh moved out. While it hadn’t been often they did discuss getting married. They were so compatible. If two people were ever made for each other, Billy thought, it was them.
So Billy was stunned. He and the guys were a little drunk on that ski trip, and on a few earlier trips, and got a few blow jobs and he ate some pussy and over Christmas, he fucked and was fucked by someone he’d always wanted to fuck in high school when he was in Darien but that was fantasy-fulfillment and the others were just fulfilling a need while he was away from her.
While Billy may have thought his transgressions not worthy of mention, Angela knew that her one session with Nicole had to be revealed. More important, Angela concluded that Billy was a failure. Not because of his own cheating, of which Angela was unaware until later, but literally in a comparison with that woman’s touch.
Two Months Later: April
It was inevitable. Billy had been all righteousness and stormed out when Angela had told him she cheated. She didn’t give him details and he hadn’t asked. In truth, he hadn’t asked because he feared details from her would require details from him. Coward and cheater that he was, he fled and over the next week gradually moved his stuff to the apartment in Brooklyn of one of his skiing buddies as he looked for his own place. What would have torn her apart months before was a relief now. This put Angela on the hook for the Jackson Heights place. But the rent was low enough and her salary was high enough that she could afford it and now had the extra room.
It was inevitable that they would run into each other again given the closeness of their families. It happened in early April at a wedding of mutual friends in Darien, Connecticut, their hometown. Angela wore a light blue dress and matching two-inch heels and gold earrings and a gold necklace. Her long, soft-brown hair in a French bun. She looked very good. She considered herself attractive but not pretty, five-seven with boobs that were neither too big nor too small. She had a woman’s hips and the heels complemented her woman’s legs. She held a soft clutch.
When she entered the church with her parents, she saw Billy sitting on the groom’s side so she directed her folks to the bride’s, towards the rear. They were not happy when they heard she had broken up with him, but were resigned to it. Angela saw Paula sitting next to her brother and she thought that getting her out of her life was one of the good things about the break-up. She glanced at the two during Mass, and she made sure to be among the first to leave when the ceremony ended.
Angela sat in the back of her parents’ car for the drive to the reception, where she was seated with them and a few other parents and kids from the neighborhood. Billy and his family were well away, news of the break-up having compelled adjustments in the seating plans. It started to rain after they arrived. Angela could hear the drops hitting the tent. She found it soothing, and it took her back to the flopping wipers in the Uber on the way home from that Westchester wedding.
After the toasts and the dinner and before the dancing, Angela went to the ladies’ room. She thought about the last time she had been in one at a wedding and hearing the cries and especially the squeal from Tracy. After a pee and a wipe and more than a little stroking—thinking of what Sherrie and Tracy did—and a flush she opened the stall and found herself staring at Paula.
That bitch was waiting for her, probably wondering what was taking so long.
Bitch.
Paula said, “Angie, my brother’s an asshole and I’m stuck with him. I’m glad you aren’t anymore. And just so you know. I. Am. Not. An. Asshole.” She turned and left.
When Angela returned to the hall, she looked over at Paula’s table. Paula sat there with her brother and her parents without a care in the world, completely oblivious to the woman she had just addressed, a woman who was anything but oblivious to what she had just been told.
Two Months Later: June
Angela loved being an independent woman. An independent bisexual woman. She found herself at Ethel’s most weekends, often with Sherrie and Tracy, who sort of adopted her. She enjoyed several impromptu finger-fucking sessions in the bathroom—giving and receiving, sometimes both at the same time—and went home a few times with Nicole when it was late and all either wanted was a nice session. She had a few take-homes with others, but nothing became of any of them.
After a few times at and several nights spent at Nicole’s place in Astoria, Angela wondered what they were to each other. This began after Nicole made her squeal with a strap-on and when a week later Nicole asked Angela to switch and wear the strap-on herself, something Sherrie said she had never heard Nicole ever doing. They spent more and more of their free time with one another without thinking. Often doing nothing but doing it together.
One Month Later: July
On a rainy Sunday in July and shortly after she had gotten in after sleeping at Nicole’s, Angela was getting out of the shower when her apartment’s buzzer rang.
“Hello?”
“Angie, it’s Paula Wilson.”
Angela had thought about Paula once in a while after the wedding and after Paula’s bizarre words in the ladies’ room. She had no contact with the bitch and heard nothing about her, or Billy for that matter. She was the better for it.
She buzzed her in and opened her door as she awaited the elevator. When she came in, Angela saw that all of Paula’s five-five was dripping with wet from the rain. Her eyes were red from the tears. Her short brown-hair plastered to her skull. Angela grabbed a towel and ran to get a T-shirt and a pair of running shorts and told Paula to change in the bathroom. Through the door, she asked if Paula wanted coffee, and to her “that’d be great, thanks,” she poured a cup and waited in the kitchen.
When she came in, Paula sat at the table and took the coffee.
“Why haven’t you called me?” She said it slowly.
“What?”
“Angie. Why. Have. You. Not. Called. Me?”
Angela had no idea what this woman was going on about, and that’s all she could say.
“I told you. At the wedding. I told you that I wanted you to, you know, really get to know me.”
“Paula, I have no idea what you are talking about.” Again. “You always made it clear that you didn’t like me and that you didn’t think I was good enough for Billy. All you did at the wedding was say you were glad I was rid of him and after a while, I figured that you were just being nice to me for a change.”
“You are such a fucking idiot.” This was the Paula Angela remembered. “I was glad you weren’t with him because I wanted you to be with me.” This was not the Paula Angela remembered.
“Wait, Paula, are you gay?”
“Well, I have some friends who know. And a few close ones from college, but no one in the family knows and no one in the family can know. Do you understand that? No one can know
and I’m trusting you on this but, yeah, always have been, as far back as I can remember.”
Paula was three years older than Angela (and Billy) and Angela realized that she’d never had a steady boyfriend. “And your dates at weddings and stuff?”
“Just beards, friends of mine happy to help me.”
“But Paula, you really have been a bitch to me…”
“Because I was scared shitless, okay. You are a fucking idiot.”
“But Paula, one big issue, you don’t know whether I’m gay.”
“Again. I can’t believe I want someone who is so damned stupid. Of course, you’re gay. Or at least bi-. I’ve seen all of the signs. I know all of the signs because I’ve had ‘em all. And I was pissy with you all the time because I was pissed that you weren’t with me but with my asshole brother.
“He really is. You know what he did? When you broke up he said you cheated on him. Did he ever tell you how often he cheated on you? I overheard enough of his conversations to know, although they always justified it as not-cheating if there was no fucking involved, just blow jobs and pussy-eating. Although apparently he did fuck Sally Johnson, you know, from high school, cause I heard him say, ‘that didn’t count because that was just fantasy and her tits aren’t even real.’ Fucking asshole. You ever wondered why he was so eager to go away on holiday weekends with his buddies. All assholes.”
Angela didn’t know what of what she was being told was the most troubling. That Paula knew Angela was gay. That Paula wanted her. Or that Billy was a fucking asshole who cheated.
She started laughing. “You are such a bitch. Why didn’t you tell me about him?”
“First, are you gay?”
“Well, if getting home at nine after sleeping in another woman’s bed makes one gay, I’m gay.”
Paula’s jaw dropped. “Are you serious?”
“She’s a regular fuck-buddy. You’d like her. Although she has a thing for turning straight girls and I assume that ain’t you.”
Paula’s jaw stayed dropped.
“I was about 50-50 boys and girls in college but after I set in with your brother it was just him and he may be an asshole but he’s good in bed. The person with whom I cheated? It was her bed I was in this morning. I, in fact, was a turning conquest to her.”
Paula’s jaw relaxed, but only slightly.
“It was funny. It all started at a wedding a few months before the one where we met in the ladies’ room.” Angela told of “meeting” Sherrie and Tracy and getting together with them while Billy was away. Her initial kiss and later tryst with Nicole, that while she didn’t think the kiss was “cheating” there was no question about the tryst. That’s when she spoke to Billy and his own little side-things explained why he ran out.
The rain was not letting up, still pounding against the apartment windows. Angela jumped up and grabbed Paula’s hand. After picking up her keys, she pulled the older woman with her, now racing down the stairs, the elevator far too slow, shouting, “After what you told me about your asshole brother I need a good cleansing.” The two were on the sidewalk holding hands as the torrents poured over them both. Angela looked up, her eyes forced closed by the rain, and was rid of him.
After a minute, the two ran back inside, Paula having been drenched twice within twenty minutes, and through the apartment door. Paula took a shower and put on yet another of Angela’s T-shirts and yet another pair of Angela’s running shorts while Angela took her shower. When they were dressed, and after Paula mopped up the water in the hallway with a towel, Angela suggested they head down to a coffee shop a few blocks away to talk. And that’s what they did.
This was a traditional Queens coffee-shop. Both ordered scrambled eggs and toast and homefries and coffee. They were surprisingly comfortable as Paula answered Angela’s “tell me about yourself.” Angela knew the basics, college and job and all that but now she learned, and Paula was willing to tell, that she, Paula, cycled through several women and most of her relationships ended badly. Too often she was used and discarded when no longer useful. She blamed herself for picking the wrong women. Or, as she put it, “getting picked up by the wrong women.”
She said that she had three relationships that were of any duration and in which she felt herself an equal to her partner. Once she fancied herself in love, with a professor of English Lit at SUNY Purchase, a local college, but the professor left when she got a tenure-track position in Georgia. Their post-move communications dwindled until they reached an aphotic darkness, and all of the light between them was gone.
The other two relationships, she continued, ended when she and her lovers drifted apart until they made it official and each took what they had in the other’s place back.
For the first time, Angela felt sorry for this bitch, or more accurately for this woman Angela long thought was a bitch.
“I always knew about you but I wondered, figuring you might be bi-, whether you would simply end up marrying my brother and hating it and, more importantly, hating me. Angie, please don’t laugh, but I haven’t been with anyone since I found out that Billy and you were history.”
This was way too much for Angela. The idea of Paula being taken advantage of by lovers was at odds with everything she knew about her. But Paula said that the only meaningful relationships she had were as equals. Angela had much to process.
The rain let up and was only a slight drizzle with a hint of a blue sky to the west. Angela excused herself and stepped outside, making sure Paula could see her. She called Tracy but Sherrie picked up. Speaking with one or the other of them was often like using a speakerphone except whoever was actually on the phone would provide an ongoing commentary of what Angela was saying. “Angela wants to know if she can bring a friend over, some kind of crisis”; this was Sherrie shouting to Tracy. “Tell her that’s fine, but give us an hour”; Tracy to Sherrie.
“Can you be here in an hour?” This was Sherrie to Angela who, with a “we’ll see you then,” hung up.
After Angela reported back to Paula, the pair got changed in Angela’s apartment—Angela was a little larger than Paula so Paula went with the rolled-up baggy-jeans look. They took the subway to Sherrie and Tracy’s Loft. Knock, knock, kiss, kiss, and the four were on the sofa and a couple of the chairs with an open bottle of Merlot passing among them.
Paula was freaking out. She’d been with a lot of women and been to a lot of lesbian bars and had those three relationships but she’d never sat in the loft of a pair of get-a-room-they’re-so-into-each-other lesbians doing nothing but sharing a very nice bottle of wine, and gorging on too much finger food, gabbing away. To the others, it was natural. To Paula, it was, well, unusual.
“So wait a minute.” This was Tracy. “You knew your younger brother was a dick and you knew that Angela was gay and you knew that they were together and you didn’t do anything about it except pine for Angela?” Now, this was pretty cruel but on the whole accurate and it was said with such a combination of bewilderment and kindness that there was no way for Paula to take offense in any by it, and all she could say was, “Yeah, that’s pretty much it.”
One Month Later: August
It was platonic in August when Paula moved into Angela’s spare room. It would be a pain because Paula had to drive over an hour each way to her job in southwestern Fairfield County; she was giving up her apartment there on August 31. Stamford was at the outer reaches of the neighborhood in which she and Angela grew up—Darien—and she felt oppressed when she was there.
Angela by then cared deeply for Paula. As a sister. Paula had been through some fucked-up stuff and Angela wanted to do what she could to prevent it from happening again. She hoped that simply integrating her into her own lesbian environment would ease her friend’s isolation and expose her to the good, the bad, and the ugly—but mostly the good—of that environment, perhaps allowing Paula to find “the one.” It became easy to take her on shopping sprees and to Sundays hanging out with friends, and to Saturday nights at Ethel’s.
For her part, Paula understood and appreciated what Angie was doing. Their time together became important to both. Paula got a transfer to her bank’s Manhattan headquarters and the commute was via the subway and not up I-95. The hunger she had for the younger woman had become affection and the change was sealed when she asked Angie if she could kiss her and a somewhat befuddled Angela said she could and she did and…nothing.
This surprised neither woman. Angela had come to love Paula as a close friend. Her blood, though, was never brought anywhere near a boil by her. Paula’s passion had evolved; fires now settled into comfortable embers, warm and pleasant but never enough.
Paula was reluctant about and hesitant with other women, even those Angela “screened” for her. She danced with a few at Ethel’s but did nothing more with them. Still, bit by bit she was getting comfortable in her new world.
One Month Later: September
“Stop it.”
The “it” was Angela’s thrusting the strap-on into Nicole. Angela stopped. She was the only woman Nicole allowed to do “it.” Angela thought that her lover might be having second thoughts about her being on top. She was a combination of suddenly very pissed and suddenly very nervous. She liked topping and she liked bottoming. Hell, with Nicole she loved them both. They were doing it on almost every weekend and several times during the week for months.
Angela pulled out and flipped on her back, staring at the ceiling. She was not prepared, could never have thought to be prepared for the next two words she heard.
“Marry me.”
Neither moved except for the heaving of their chests as they came down from the physical intensity that was just abandoned, the mental intensity shooting off the scale.