Anyone but You

by Chelsea M. Cameron

  She was right, and I was overreacting, but I had a storm brewing inside and it was throwing me into turmoil.

  “I have a problem, Tuesday. A big problem.” Her eyebrows pulled together in concern and she reached for me.

  “What is it?”

  I took a deep breath and let it out.

  “I like you. A lot.”

  She laughed. Tuesday actually threw her head back and laughed.

  “Of course you like me. That’s obvious. You don’t spend entire weekends with people you don’t like, if you don’t have to. You definitely like me.” I hated how smug she was being about this, so I said something that was sure to silence her.

  “Oh, yeah? If you thought that was obvious, then try this: I love you!” My declaration was greeted with silence.

  “What?” she said, shaking her head as if she hadn’t heard me clearly. “You love me? Are you fucking serious?”

  “Yes, I love you, Tuesday. I do.”

  Yes, I was. I had never been more serious in my life. I hadn’t wanted to put a name to that feeling I’d been having for the past few days, because it didn’t seem possible, but there was no other word for it: love. I’d gone right from not being sure if I liked her to being so in love with her that I couldn’t even breathe.

  Tuesday nodded and breathed, pulling at the edge of the yoga mat. I waited for her to speak. To tell me that I was out of my mind. To tell me that I couldn’t love her, it was just lust. I waited for her to tell me I was ridiculous. I waited for her to run out of the room and never speak to me again. She lifted those unbelievable blue eyes and spoke, at last.

  “You love me? Well, that’s good, because I love you too.”

  If I hadn’t been sitting, I would have fallen over.

  “You love me?” I asked. This couldn’t be happening. None of this was real. I pressed my hands to the floor to ground me.

  “Yes, I love you. I wanted to ignore it, and I honestly don’t know how this happened, but I do. So I guess that means I like you too.” I tried to swallow and failed.

  “You love me and I love you and you like me and I like you, did I get that right?” I said, and she nodded. “What the hell do we do now?” Tuesday dusted off her hands and stood up, holding her hands out to me.

  “We kiss?”

  Oh. That seemed like a good idea. Kissing was definitely the right thing.

  Before her lips met mine, she smiled and touched her forehead to mine.

  “I can’t believe I love you. And I like you. How could I let that happen? I don’t fall in love with people like this. And not in less than a week. What am I doing?” she questioned, and I had been thinking just about the same thing.

  “I don’t know. Everyone is going to say that it’s too fast and that it’s not real.” Tuesday laughed and I stroked my hands up and down her sides.

  “It is too fast, but it’s definitely real. I wouldn’t be willing to take a risk like this if it wasn’t. I was ready to not date for years, and I might have moments where I get a little scared. It’s not even loving you that scares me, it’s trusting another person not to fuck me over again.” I kissed the tip of her nose and then her forehead.

  “I’m just going to fuck you. No over required,” I said, because those were the first words that came out of my mouth. Tuesday laughed.

  “That’s good to know. There are no guarantees that this is going to work out, and the fact that I’m your landlord is a little sticky.” I hadn’t even thought about that factor.

  “You can’t fuck me over either,” I said. Tuesday nodded.

  “Okay.”

  It wasn’t going to be as easy as that; it never was. There were no guarantees that we wouldn’t have a brutal breakup, but I didn’t want to worry or think about that right now. I only wanted to make out with my girlfriend, Tuesday, who I loved and liked.

  “Let’s kiss instead of talking. We’re always better at the kissing.” Tuesday smoothed my hair from my face.

  “I can’t believe I love you,” she said, but it was with a tone of wonder. Instead of answering, I kissed her instead.

  WE KISSED AND SHE HAD to be the one to put a stop to it and remind me that we both needed to lock up for the night and go home and not make out on her sweaty yoga mat instead.

  “Which home are we going to?” I asked. I hoped she would say that she wanted to go to her place. I was hankering to sleep in that big bed after being crowded with her in my smaller bed. After sleeping multiple nights with her, I had learned one thing above all: Tuesday took up a lot of room when she slept. Every single one of her limbs reached for a different corner, and she sprawled out as if she didn’t have a care in the world. No wonder she needed a big bed.

  “My place? Unless you want to go to yours. I don’t know if my back wants to sleep another night on your mattress, though.” She winced.

  “Hey now, that mattress has served me well since college, don’t diss my mattress.” Tuesday gave me a look.

  “Princess, if you’ve had your mattress since college, it might be time for a new one.” I didn’t want to admit that she had a point, so I just kissed her neck instead.

  “Hey, now, you can’t distract me with ohhhhh.” She moaned as I found the right spot to suck that made her incoherent.

  “Haha, I win,” I said, giving the spot one last little kiss. “It’s fine, we can go to your place.” I would miss the babies, but they’d have to get used to me being gone more. Zee was with them when I wasn’t, and when Zee had their dates, Tuesday and I would go to my place. It would be fine.

  “I think I should make us a really good dinner. How does roast chicken with potatoes and Brussels sprouts sound?” My mouth instantly started to water.

  “It sounds incredible. I’m so blessed with people in my life who are good at cooking. I’ll never learn at this rate.” I probably should, though. Just in case. I couldn’t be an adult who didn’t know how to fry an egg.

  “I can teach you. We can start slow, but I don’t mind teaching you.” She didn’t know how wonderful that was. My parents had tried to teach me when I was a kid and instantly became frustrated when I’d get distracted by something else, or put the burner on the wrong setting, or forget ingredients moments after reading the recipe. Something told me Tuesday would have more patience with me. I was looking forward to that.

  There were so many things to look forward to. Tuesday doing more yoga. Me (reluctantly) doing more CrossFit. More dares. More kissing. More turtle raves and kitten dance parties. More hanging out with Zee and watching them become friends with Tuesday. More sex. So much more sex. More of everything.

  More complications, definitely, but I couldn’t be completely focused on those. Right now I wanted to bask in the happy, and that looked like going to Tuesday’s apartment and watching her as she made the best roast chicken I’d ever tasted in my entire life.

  “HOW DID WE LET THIS happen?” she asked later, as we lay in her bed after fucking each other slowly and softly. There was a time and a place for a hard fuck, but tonight it hadn’t felt right.

  “Do you mean the sex? You took my clothes off. That’s what happened.” I still hadn’t managed to get Tuesday naked before I was naked, but I wasn’t going to stop trying.

  “No, I mean falling in love. I was not ready for this, I wasn’t looking for this, and I definitely didn’t want it. I tried, but I guess I didn’t fight too hard, because here we are.” She kissed the side of my forehead.

  “I wasn’t looking for this either. And I realize now that I’ve never really been in love. Not like this. Sure, I said the words, and I did have strong feelings, but this is . . . this is everything.” I rolled onto my stomach so I could stare at her gorgeous face. “We still don’t know that much about each other and we might want to fix that.”

  “Okay, princess, what do you want to know?” I asked her tons of questions, like who her favorite teacher was, and what was the most embarrassing thing that had ever happened to her, and when the first time she had sex
was, and what her ten-year plan was. I answered after she asked me and it was good and probably one of the longest conversations we’d had so far. Strange that I’d fallen in love with her not knowing so many things, but love wasn’t like a job interview. You didn’t get all the facts and history and check references before you fell.

  I did like her, and I’d been ridiculous to deny that. Sure, she had been an asshole when we’d first met, but now that I understood her better, I realized that the assholery was a symptom of the extreme stress and trauma she’d been under. Sure, that didn’t absolve her completely, but she told me that after she’d been such a jerk to me in those first few weeks, she’d started seeing a therapist about getting over her breakup, and for help dealing with her parent’s deaths. Tuesday was much more willing to talk about them now, which made me feel so good that she trusted me so much with something so painful.

  Tuesday had been really close with her parents, especially her dad. She’d wanted to be a dentist, like him, but had gotten into fitness in college instead.

  “He seemed shocked that I wanted to into dentistry when I told him it wasn’t my passion after all. I guess I just assumed that was what he wanted me to do, but he told me he just wanted me to be happy. He really was amazing.” She showed me some pictures of him and her mom, smiling on the top of a mountain, and waving from a cruise ship.

  “They did everything together, always going on adventures around the world. And they loved each other, so much.” I wiped some tears from her cheeks.

  “Thank you so much for sharing them with me.” I kissed both of her salty cheeks and held her close.

  “Thank you for listening,” she whispered.

  We fell asleep in each other’s arms that night, and the next morning I woke up and realized I’d fallen even deeper in love with her. If this trend continued, I was going to be more in love with her every day and I didn’t know how much love I could handle.

  “What are you thinking about?” she asked in a scratchy voice.

  “How much I love you,” I said. “It scares me, honestly.”

  She stroked my face and smiled.

  “That’s how you know it’s love.”

  “Let me get this right: You are in love with Tuesday,” Zee said as they carefully poached some eggs the next morning.

  “Yes. I know, I know. I don’t need a lecture, or for you to tell me it’s too fast, or whatever advice you want to give me. All I want is for you to be happy for me.” Zee opened their mouth and then closed it. They fished two perfectly poached eggs out of the water and lay them on a paper towel before turning to give me their full attention.

  “I could say so many things right now, but the one thing I’m going to say is this: I’m happy for you and I think you two are great together.” They held out their arms and gave me a hug and I almost started to cry. Having them say that and mean it was so important. It had been the two of us against the world for so long and there was no one whose opinion I valued more than Zee.

  “I love you so much,” I said, choking back tears.

  “I love you too,” Zee said, their voice thick with emotion. “I’ll always support you, no matter what.”

  “Same,” I said, and pulled back from the hug, grabbing a paper towel to blow my nose with. They grabbed one too and then we both started laughing.

  “Now tell me about this boyfriend of yours.” They rolled their eyes.

  “He’s not my boyfriend yet. We haven’t even been on a second date.”

  “But you totally like him, like him, don’t you?” I said, dancing around them. Their face got red and they blew their hair out of their eyes and went back to the eggs.

  “I’m ignoring what’s happening right now.”

  “But you likeeeeee him,” I sang.

  “Shut up,” they said, but their face kept getting redder. I cackled in victory.

  “You’re in love, so hush.”

  “Yeah, I am.” I let out a contented sigh. I was utterly and completely in love with Tuesday Grímsdóttir. My lady, my love, my landlord. Maybe my rent would go down?

  Epilogue

  A few weeks later I was in the yoga studio, messing around with a yoga flow with Tuesday. She’d made remarkable improvement in yoga in such a short time that I was almost mad about it.

  “You can’t be better at yoga than me,” I said, as she did a flawless side crow.

  “That’s not the point of yoga,” she said, flowing back into downward-facing dog.

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. But you can’t be better at CrossFit and yoga. It’s not allowed.” Tuesday jumped her feet forward and stood all the way up, and stuck her tongue out at me.

  “You’re getting better. Your pull-ups are really coming along. In no time you’re going to be doing butterfly pull-ups.” I highly doubted that because I wasn’t a fucking gymnast, but I’d give it a try. I’d survived the Fundamentals class and had officially gotten myself a membership. I worked out twice a week now, in addition to yoga, but I was probably going to go up to three times a week once my new yoga teacher, Anne, started. I was also interviewing a part-time front desk person to handle check in so I could focus more on running the business. It was past time, and Tuesday had even hinted that she knew of a few places where I could expand, but I wasn’t ready for that yet. Too much change in too short a time already.

  Tuesday was killing it with the gym. She’d come up with all kinds of innovative promotions and had hired a rockstar social media person and I was a little jealous, not going to lie. She’d agreed that we could partner for some promotions, so I was fully intending on grabbing some of her customers and bringing them in to yoga, and I was also going to send some of my yoga students downstairs for CrossFit.

  Zee and Tuesday had fallen into an easy friendship, and they even hung out sometimes without me, which made me a teeny bit jealous, but I didn’t tell either of them that. I’d also introduced Tuesday to the rest of my friends and they all warmed up to her quickly. She could be totally personable when she wanted to be, but she was still hot and mean sometimes. At least now I understood why, and I didn’t take it too seriously.

  Yes, she did play her music too loud, and her packages did get delivered upstairs, and she had a tendency to shut down emotionally when she was upset. We were still trying to figure each other out, but it was worth it. She was worth it. Plus, I wasn’t a perfect person and had plenty of my own flaws that she knew about, and some she was just discovering.

  I hoped I was worth it.

  “You ready to go?” Tuesday asked, cleaning her mat and then rolling it up. Tonight we were going to my place because Zee had a date with their new boyfriend, Chris. I’d met him and he was a total sweetheart, and Zee was completely smitten. I’d never seen them so into a guy before, so I teased them endlessly about it. They got me back for being in love with Tuesday, so we broke even.

  “Yeah, let’s go. What are we making tonight?” Tuesday had taken on the task of teaching me basic cooking skills. It wasn’t going well so far, but she had endless patience for my mistakes.

  “Fried chicken with macaroni and cheese and collard greens.” My eyes went wide. That sounded like a lot, and I didn’t want to mess that much food up. Tuesday must have seen the panic in my eyes because she put her hands on my shoulders.

  “Breathe. It will be fine. You’ve got this. I’ll be right there with you. And it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t taste good, or you burn it. I’ll eat it anyway.” That was true. Tuesday was not picky about food. She’d eat just about anything.

  “Okay,” I said, and we locked up together before heading down to her car. Since we spent most of our nights together now, it didn’t make sense to take two cars everywhere.

  “We just have to stop and get a few things,” Tuesday said, and we went to the grocery store together. She thought nothing of pushing the cart with one hand and holding my hand with the other. Sometimes I still had to remind myself that this was real, and we were together. So surreal.

  Tuesday g
rabbed pasta, cheese, hot sauce, and a few other things. I just followed as she did her thing.

  “You should probably teach me how to grocery shop too,” I said, and she gave me a look.

  “You don’t know how to grocery shop?”

  “I mean, I do. I’ve done it, but I always feel like I’m all over the place and I put a bunch of things in my cart, and then I have nothing to make meals out of when I get home. Also, Zee does most of the shopping since they actually do the cooking.” It had been years since I’d stocked the fridge or the pantry on my own.

  “Oh, you precious princess,” she said, pulling the back of my hand up to kiss it. “I’ll teach you how to grocery shop. Not tonight, but we can do that this weekend. As long as you do one thing for me return.”

  “What’s that?” I asked. She looked around before leaning in and whispering in my ear.

  “Spank me and then fuck me senseless.” I gasped and heat flooded my body.

  “Fuck the fried chicken, let’s do that now.” I grabbed the cart and started racing down the aisle, Tuesday following behind me and laughing.

  “I’m starving, so maybe we can do dinner first?” she asked, when she caught up with me at the checkout.

  “Fine, but think about how good that food would taste after,” I said.

  Tuesday sighed.

  “Do you want to just order in and then we can make this another night?” There was an idea. I pulled her in for a kiss.

  “That is the best idea you’ve had all day, babe,” I said. The word rolled off my tongue with no problem now, and I knew she liked it, so I made use of that word whenever I could.

  “No, the best idea I’ve had was annoying the shit out of you so you’d come downstairs and catch me working out,” she said with a smirk.

  “Wait, you did that on purpose?” Why hadn’t that occurred to me?

  “I wanted to get your attention,” she said with a shrug, loading up the conveyor belt.

  “You are shameless,” I said, shaking my head. “You could have just told me you thought I was cute.”