Tess sighed, knowing that trying to lie to her sister was futile. Tess had never been good at lying, especially to Breanne. She could never keep a story straight, and even if she managed to, the guilt overwhelmed her and she always ended up narking herself out. “Ugh.” She sat in the dining room chair and pulled her leg underneath her. “My hard drive crashed again. The woman who fixed it, kind of, asked me out… in a way.”
Breanne rubbed her hands together, excited at the probably of her sister focusing her attention on anyone other than Hillary. “Wait, what do you mean by… in a way?”
Tess chewed on the corner of her finger. “She gave me her number, and umm—” Tess thought of the way Courtney had brushed her lips across her own. She fought the urge to run her fingertips across her lips, “She told me I should call her sometime.”
Breanne all but bounced in the chair. “Well?”
“Well what?”
“Did you call her?”
“Ugh.” Tess gnawed on the corner of her fingernail. “No. It’s weird. Hillary and I just broke up. I feel like I’m cheating just thinking about it.”
“But you are thinking about it?” Breanne grinned when her sister shot her a look and then shot her one of her own. “That’s dumb. It is dumb for you to feel like you are cheating. Yeah it has only been a month, but it is like the fourth time the two of you have broken up, and all because she has cheated on you, I might add.” When Tess started to protest, Breanne added, “It is normal to feel weird, especially after years of on again off again with her, but that is the difference between the two of you.”
“What?” Tess questioned.
“The fact that you feel guilty thinking about it, a month and a half after the two of you broke up, because she cheated on you. Yet, she doesn’t feel guilty, actually carrying on another relationship while she is crawling in bed with you every night.” Breanne held up her right and left hands and bounced them back and forth like a scale. “You, equals a good person. Hillary, equals dirty whore.” With that, the right hand fell before she lowered both hands.
Tess couldn’t help but grin at her sister. “Quit.” When her sister started laughing, she ran her hands over her face and decided it wasn’t such a terrible conversation after all and spoke hesitantly. “I saw her at work last night.”
Breanne nearly whooped with excitement. “You actually called her? My little sister actually called a girl… on purpose?” She pointed at her phone. “It wasn’t like an accidental call, right? Your phone didn’t sporadically dial a number you had saved that just happened to be her, and that forced you to talk to her, because of course, she was already on the other end of the line and you didn’t want to look dumb, right?”
Tess laughed loudly. “No, you jerk, my phone did not magically call her and force me to talk to her.”
“So you called her, then?” Breanne looked at Tess skeptically and then shook her head, amused, with Tess’s response.
“Not exactly.” Tess tapped her finger on the table and avoided eye contact. “I ran into her at work, or more so, I kind of yelled at her at work… but she didn’t hear me, so it was okay… except that I guess she did hear me…” Tess trailed off, wondering if it really counted, because Courtney had done her job and disappeared. “I have to call her, though, because I have paperwork for her to sign, so there’s that…”
“My God,” Breanne scoffed. “You’re pathetic, you know that?”
Tess looked at her sister, obviously offended. “What? I can’t control it if she happens to be working at the same hospital I am, and I run into her before I have a chance to call her.”
“You weren’t going to call her.”
“Yes I was!”
“You weren’t going to call her.”
Tess protested again, but knew Breanne was right. “Maybe I was…” She stood up, but sat back down roughly and pulled her knees up to rest below her chin in a pouting manner. “I could’ve called her.”
Breanne shook her head at her sister. “At some point, you are going to have to grow up… branch out a little.”
Tess rested her head on her knees. “What if I don’t want to branch out a little? What if I just want to have a freaking life that isn’t disrupted every six months because my significant other gets bored with me and needs to branch out on her own?” Tess sipped the warm water and stood to retrieve a bottle of cold water from the fridge.
Breanne nodded in understanding, “And by someone, you mean Hillary?”
Tess sat back down and shook her head. “I don’t know anymore.” She took a long drink and replaced the lid on the bottle. “It’s just… it’s supposed to be Hillary, you know? We fell in love. We’ve been through so much… we were supposed to live happily ever after.” When she saw her sister roll her eyes, she kept talking, but felt defeated. “It wasn’t all bad. We have fun together. She’s fun… and she’s good with Ali.”
“She may be good with Ali, but she isn’t good with you.” Breanne stood. She was tired of having this conversation with her sister every six months, and her sympathy was thinning. “Everyone doesn’t live happily ever after, Tess. Sometimes life happens and things change.” She looked at her sister knowingly. “Of course, in your case, life didn’t happen, so much as your girlfriend is a cheating whore, but hey, who am I to judge?” When Tess’s face flushed with anger, Breanne finished her speech quickly. “You are never going to know if you don’t try. Maybe the reason you can’t get over Hillary is because you don’t branch out and even make an effort to be friends with another girl, let alone have an active interest in her. Maybe it’s not head-over-heels love, maybe it’s proximity.”
Tess rose, her irritation with her sister’s jabs simmering into anger. “Not everyone has a life that fits into a pretty little box, Breanne. Not everyone gets to graduate high school, find the love of their life, get married, have two point five children, and look down on everyone who doesn’t fit in the same pretty little box that they do. Just because I don’t fit into your pretty little box, doesn’t mean that I don’t know how to love someone!”
Breanne followed her sister into the living room. “Hey, it isn’t you I’m saying doesn’t know how to love.” She watched as Tess angrily gathered Ali’s things and packed them into her bag. “You deserve better, Tessie. Maybe it’s time you started realizing that. You have someone right in front of you who is interested. What is it going to hurt to go for it? If it doesn’t work out… then it doesn’t work out, and you can tell me I was wrong.”
Tess stopped packing for a minute, savoring the thought. “It would feel good to tell you you’re wrong.” She sat down on the couch and folded the articles of clothing in her hand before putting them in the overnight bag. “It’s just… it’s weird, Bre. It’s awkward and it’s weird. Everything with Hillary is… comfortable.”
Breanne sat down beside her sister and took the folded clothes back out of the bag. She unfolded them and started refolding them again. “You are never going to be comfortable with anyone as long as you keep avoiding them like the plague.”
Tess opened her mouth to argue, but closed it again. Truth be told, she just plain didn’t like people. She was awkward around them and pretty much assumed that every person on the planet was judging her for some reason or another. I should probably talk to someone about that, she thought, smirking at how pathetically antisocial she had become. “Well I have to call her to sign the papers anyways.” She rolled her eyes when her sister sighed. Tess’s phone chimed in her pocket. “I just… I don’t want to hurt anymore, Bre.”
Breanne sighed again. “Do more than call her, Tess. Give her a chance, and for the love of God, change your damn phone number!”
CHAPTER FIVE
Courtney came home to an empty house. The porch light was on, but the house was dark. She didn’t bother turning on the lights as she knew every inch of her house and didn’t plan on having company after eleven. Instead, she made her way to the kitchen and flicked on the light over the island. Enough
illumination to highlight the bottles of wine in the cupboard. She pulled one out and was in the process of popping the cork when she heard Jasper’s toenails clicking on the floor behind her. She turned to see the dog come lumbering in from the living room and sat down on the kitchen floor to chat with her best friend.
“You know how sad it is when you have gotten so fat that you can’t even get excited to see me anymore?” Courtney laughed when the dog laid across her lap with a loud thump and hid his face under her arm as if he were embarrassed. She rubbed his belly for a minute and reached behind her to grab a bag of crackers out of the cupboard. At the crinkling sound, the seemingly exhausted dog perked up so fast into a sitting position that he nearly took Courtney’s leg out. “Yeah, that’s what I thought, you lazy ass,” Courtney giggled and took a bite of the cracker, waving the other half in front of the drooling dog. “How much do you love me?” When the dog half howled, Courtney shook her head and threw the rest of the cracker into her mouth.
“Nope, you don’t love me enough.” She took another cracker out of the package and chuckled when the dog howled loudly and smacked it out of her hand with his paw. The cracker hit the ground and shattered into several pieces that the husky gobbled up with less than graceful speed. Courtney smiled at the dog’s lack of grace and handed him two more before spinning the package closed and standing.
“I’m bored, Jasper.” She reached for the bottle of wine and finished removing the cork. She had spent all day filling appointments for her brother so he could have time off, and after hours of staring at computer screens and mainframes, she was irrevocably bored. She had planned on spending her time off catching up with friends, but most of them were busy, and since her brother had chosen her time off to have his pre-midlife-boyhood crisis, she was doing her sisterly duty and helping out, but she was bored beyond words with the mindless tasks.
Pouring herself a glass of wine, she pulled her cellphone out of her purse to listen to the messages. There were two messages from her brother about appointments and letting her know he wouldn’t be back tonight. The sounds in the background told Courtney that unlike herself, her brother was having a very good time. She smiled and shook her head, wondering if the girls her brother was with knew what a perpetual playboy he was. The dimples get them every time. Her smile was short lived when she heard her father’s voice in message number three. He wanted to know if she had heard from her brother and let her know that he would be in town in a few weeks, so her appearance at dinner was required.
“Yes, Dad.” Courtney rolled her eyes and took a long drink from the glass of wine in her hand. She didn’t know if she was up for another pretentious dinner with her father where he pretended she wasn’t gay and asked her when she was going to settle down and have a family. Courtney had never had a close, personal relationship with her father, but their semi-relationship had become even more estranged when she came out and stated that she was not going to be getting married and settling down because it was not yet legal for her to do so, which was her way of officially stating what everyone had already known. Courtney had known she was gay back as far as she could remember in her childhood. She had never lived life any differently. It is what it is, she thought, yet for some reason, her father continued to pretend his daughter was straight as a board and fit into his chiseled perception of her.
Courtney set her glass on the counter and ran her finger around the outer edge of it when the fourth message started. She smiled when she recognized the voice on the other end.
Hey, Courtney, it’s Tess… from the hospital. Um, I just have some paperwork I need you to sign… Confidentiality stuff for the hospital, and I wanted to apologize for the other night. I’ll be at the hospital until midnight tonight… or um, actually I will just leave them at the desk and you can come in when you can. Thanks.
Courtney looked at the wine glass, around her dark house, and then at the clock. She had half an hour. She looked down at what she was wearing and groaned, sure she probably didn’t smell great either, and the hospital was fifteen minutes away.
Forty minutes later, having showered and changed in record time, Courtney waltzed through the emergency room doors and towards the nurse’s desk with fresh make-up on and smelling much better. She arrived after midnight, but she was banking on the thought that nurses never get out on time. Her wishful thinking diminished when she saw three nurses behind the desk, none of them the one she was looking for. She frowned, wavering on whether to just leave so she had an excuse to come back a different night, but decided the documents were probably pressing and she didn’t want to get Tess in any trouble.
“Excuse me,” she directed her question to one of the nurses behind the desk. “I worked on the mainframe the other night, there are supposed to be some papers here I need to sign?” When the nurse just stared at her with confusion, Courtney elaborated, “I’m a computer technician.”
“Oh, sure.” The nurse looked over her shoulder, “Hey, Elsie, do you have those papers Tess left?” The nurse shook her head and handed Courtney the papers and a pen. When she had read over the documents and signed and initialed them, she handed them back to the nurse, “Thanks.” She was turning to leave when she heard a familiar voice behind her. She turned to see Tess walking through a set of double doors behind her, pulling on a sweater.
“See you tomorrow, ladies. I hope you have a slow night.” Tess stopped briefly, arm halfway through the left side of her sweater when she caught Courtney’s gaze. The way the woman was smiling at her brought the butterflies back to her stomach. She stood there for a full thirty seconds before she realized she was standing awkwardly with one arm half in her sweater. She swallowed and pushed her arm the rest of the way through. “You’re here.”
Courtney smiled, unsure if the woman was happy to see her or dreading that she didn’t get out of the hospital in time to miss her. “Yeah, I took care of those papers.” Courtney motioned towards the nurse’s desk. “I figured they were important.”
Tess nodded, not quite able to form words. She had hoped when she called that Courtney would choose to come while she was working, but now she was rethinking that thought. The way Courtney made her feel was slightly terrifying and she was pretty sure it had something to do with the way she looked. Tess looked Courtney up and down, which only increased the fluttering in her stomach. The woman was gorgeous, and Tess suddenly felt like she might not be ready for this.
Courtney stood for a minute waiting for Tess to speak and wondered if she had misread something. One way to find out… “Alright… well it was nice to see you.” With that, Courtney turned and waltzed back out of the hospital.
Tess nodded in response and watched Courtney walk out. Ugh, stupid. Tess exhaled the breath she didn’t realize she had been holding and sighed. What am I doing? Tess realized the nurses at the desk were staring at her. She feigned a dense smile and pushed her arm the rest of the way into her sweater. “Jeez, long night, I keep dazing off.” She told them goodnight again and walked out of the hospital, hoping she had saved some of her dignity and they hadn’t noticed her staring after Courtney like a dopey puppy. She looked around the parking lot when she got outside but didn’t see Courtney anywhere. Way to look like an idiot, Tess thought and made her way to her car. Instead of her keys, she pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and started chewing on her lip. Just do it, she thought and dialed the number in her call history before she could change her mind. She shrieked and nearly jumped out of her skin, sending her cellphone sailing across the parking lot when there was a loud chiming behind her.
Courtney couldn’t help but laugh, loudly. “Oh, my gosh, I am so sorry.” She kept laughing when the look on Tess’s face turned from terror to embarrassment. “I take it you didn’t hear me walk over?” Tess shook her head, her body still rigid, and Courtney covered her mouth to stifle the laughter. “I just wanted to say hi,” Courtney mumbled from behind her hand, still unable to stop laughing when Tess walked over and picked up her phone, her face
flushed with embarrassment.
Tess felt ridiculous, though it is a dark parking lot in the middle of the night, she reassured herself. She held up her cell phone, “I was just calling you.” With the admission, Courtney doubled over with a second bout of laughter. “So…” she tried to stop laughing long enough to get the words out, “you gave yourself a heart attack?”
Tess was on the verge of laughter at her own ridiculousness, but came to her own defense instead. “Well I didn’t realize you were stalking me or I would’ve just nixed the phone and turned around!”
Courtney’s laughter began to subside, and she put her hand on her side. “Well I was going to leave, but I wanted to talk to you for a second first.” When Tess hadn’t followed Courtney out of the hospital, she had been mildly disappointed. However, her ego, unwilling to accept that it was because the woman wasn’t interested in her, had waited for Tess to come out and was pleasantly surprised when the she had looked around the parking lot before going to her car. Courtney told herself it was because Tess wanted to see her and not because she was making sure the coast was clear before she made her way towards the woman.
Tess couldn’t help but smile at her own embarrassment. “Alright, ha funny. What’s up?”
Courtney was having a difficult time reading the woman standing in front of her. “Do you want to get some coffee?” When Tess looked at her cell phone, Courtney took it as a sign. “Unless you have some place to be, I guess it is the middle of the night. You have a daughter you probably need to get home to.” Courtney suddenly felt foolish coming out to the hospital in the middle of the night. The woman had a child, of course she just couldn’t flutter off on a whim.
Tess smiled, she remembers I have a daughter. “No, she is with her dad tonight.” Tess wanted to say she would go for coffee, but for some reason she held back. The butterflies in her stomach were fluttering in full force. The woman standing in front of her was incredibly intimidating.
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