“Tell me about your family,” Emma requested.
Keira let out an inner, grateful sigh that she’d broken the tension and replied, “Well, let’s see. I have nine sisters and three brothers.”
“What?!?” Emma turned toward her, stopping her progress.
Keira let out a loud laugh and stopped alongside her.
“I’m kidding. I have one half-brother. His name is James. He’s sixteen years older though. We didn’t grow up together. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife. I have a niece and two nephews; all of them are in college on the east coast.”
“Sixteen years… How did that happen?” Emma asked as they started walking again. “And you’re not funny, by the way,” she added with a smirk.
“It was kind of funny.” Keira smiled back. “My dad was married to his mom. She passed away. He met my mom when James was already a teenager, and they had me after that. James moved out when I was two. We aren’t exactly close, but we talk to each other every few months. I’ve visited his house a few times since they moved out there. I’m closest to my niece, Tina, though. She’s nineteen and goes to Penn. She’s pre-med and a genius. She also manages to balance being in a sorority with school. And as someone that could barely handle being in a sorority with my major back in the day, I don’t know how she does it with pre-med.”
“You were in a sorority?” Emma chuckled.
“What’s that tone supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. Nothing.” Emma laughed again and then waved her hand in the air dismissively. “Sorry, I just pictured you wearing one of those tank tops with the Greek letters on it, like in every movie.”
“You did?”
“Yeah.” Her laughter lightened.
“How did I look?”
Emma glanced at Keira and then at the ground in front of her feet.
“Pretty good, actually.”
“Good to know. And yes, we did wear those shirts, we had mixers, attended parties and did philanthropy. But I only joined because Michelle wanted me to. She was a legacy. Her mom was a big fan of her following in her footsteps. I went to rush with her just for the support, but I ended up having a decent time. She and I pledged together. We were roommates the rest of college. She actually became president our senior year.”
“And did you run for office?”
“Me? No, I hate politics.” Keira pointed up ahead. “The Chicago-style hot dog cart.”
“I’m trusting you here. If this place sucks, your recommending credibility goes way down.”
“Consider me warned.” Keira laughed lightly.
“Do you still go to reunions or whatever they’re called for sororities?”
“I take it you did not pledge a sorority at Rutgers? And no, I don’t go to the reunions. We have a Facebook page that I check every so often, mostly for networking, but that’s about it.”
“I did not pledge a sorority, no. Honestly, when rush happened my freshman year, I was caught up in Hailey,” Emma confessed, and Keira turned her head to the side. As much as it felt strange to hear Emma continue to bring up Hailey, her first love, she actually liked that Emma was this honest with her about her past. “She and I were trying the long-distance thing. Rush night was on a Friday. I hadn’t even been gone that long, but we’d been together for over a year and spent the entire summer together. I missed her like crazy. I decided to attend my morning class and get in my car to drive all the way back to Chicago.”
“How long is that drive?” Keira questioned as they arrived in front of the cart.
She ordered two hot dogs for them, a couple bags of chips, and some bottled water.
“Over twelve hours. I ate snacks in the car and drove until I got to Hailey’s house. I surprised her, and we spent the weekend together.” Emma took the hot dog the vendor handed her along with their waters.
“That was sweet,” Keira replied and took their chips and her own hot dog after paying the man. “You want to sit down over here?” She motioned to the lone bench in the lone stretch of grass nearby.
“Sure,” Emma answered. “And it wasn’t sweet. It was necessary.”
“You had to make a booty call road trip?” Keira laughed out as they sat next to one another.
Emma turned, and Keira was met with a sincere set of dark brown eyes.
“It wasn’t like that. I loved Hailey with everything I had. At that time in my life, I thought we were meant to be together forever.” She opened one bottle before passing it to Keira and opened the second for herself. “I guess most people think that about their first loves, but I really believed that. That one-year age difference meant that I graduated before she did. I hated that we were separated by circumstance and not by choice.”
“So, you didn’t want to go to Rutgers?” Keira guessed as she tore open one chip bag after the other and sat them on the bench between them.
“No, Rutgers was exactly where I wanted to go. Hails was the one that forced me to go.”
“She did?”
“It was one of those classic situations where girl gets amazing opportunity to go to a dream school, but girl also has an amazing girlfriend at home who can’t join her at that school just yet. A decision had to be made.”
“And you considered going to school in Chicago because of Hailey?”
“I did. Honestly, I think if I would have, Hails and I would have stayed together for the same amount of time though. Maybe we would have made it a little longer, but it still would have ended. It’s weird how much that one year between two people at that time in their lives can make such a difference.” She stared down wearily at her hot dog. “Oh well, she ended up with the right person. It’s as it should be.” She met Keira’s eyes again. “Are you sure you want to risk everything with this hot dog?”
“You really do take your hot dogs seriously, don’t you?”
Emma rolled her eyes as if that was a ridiculous question. Keira found it adorable. She watched as Emma brought the loaded hot dog to her mouth, sniffed it at first and then took a small, hesitant bite. Keira observed her chew for a few moments while bobbing her head side to side in consideration. She swallowed and turned to Keira.
“Not bad.”
“Not bad, or you don’t want to admit that I was right?” Keira laughed a little.
“Not exactly like home, but pretty close,” Emma admitted. “Thank you.”
“For the hot dog? No problem.”
“I needed this.” Emma lifted the hot dog up in the air and then sat it back in her lap. “A little taste of home.”
“You’ve been homesick, huh?”
“I never considered myself the type, but then I realized that the only time I’ve actually been away from home was college. What was probably homesickness my freshman and a little bit of my sophomore year was mislabeled as missing Hailey. I know I missed my dad, but he came to visit when he could, and we talked nearly every day until he died. But I guess I never considered myself homesick for the city or for my other friends there.”
“Tell me about these friends.” Keira took a bite of her hot dog.
Emma did the same and chewed for a moment before saying, “Well, I had a few scattered friends here and there, but none I’d call particularly close. They were mostly people I worked with. They were nice enough, but if I quit my job, we probably wouldn’t have hung out after that. I guess I kind of floated around there for a while. Then, I ran into Charlie on the job, and she was Hailey’s best friend. We figured that out quickly, and Hailey came back into my life. We’d catch up every so often, but we never really stuck around too long. It took me a long time to admit the reason why.”
“Which was?” Keira asked and popped a chip into her mouth.
“I compared every girl to her. For good or bad, I did. It was hard because we’d hang out a few times, we’d both be single, and then she’d start seeing someone, and I’d have to disappear.”
“Did she feel the same way?”
“Yeah, for a while at least. When we tried dat
ing again, though, I knew two things. One of them I had no problem admitting. And the other I kept to myself until it was obvious.”
“What was that?”
“I knew I was crazy about Hails. I always had been. I told her that much.” She took a sip of her water. “The thing I kept to myself was that I wasn’t sure that feeling or whatever she might have been feeling for me at the time would be enough.”
“How so?”
“I didn’t know yet that she was falling for Charlie. But, outside of that, she and I just felt – I don’t know – off. Part of what we had was still there. At our cores, we were still the same people, but we’d also changed. We were just different. Even if she wasn’t falling in love with her best friend back then, we wouldn’t have worked out. There was too much fundamentally that had changed.”
“Like what?”
“Well, the biggest one was the fact that we both used to want kids. When we were kids ourselves, we used to talk about how many kids we wanted and if we wanted boys or girls. We even talked about how we wanted a boy first, then a girl and their names.”
“And now she doesn’t want them?”
“Now, I don’t.” Emma met Keira’s eyes as if attempting to read the expression after her confession. “Hailey and Charlie are actually going to the doctor to see about their chances as we speak, probably. They want a family now.”
“And you don’t?” Keira asked and popped another chip nonchalantly, wondering if Emma’s continued stare was still in an attempt to uncover her feelings on kids.
“No, I don’t.” Emma eyes seemed to dive deeper into Keira’s. “I don’t know what changed exactly. I don’t remember waking up one day and thinking that I don’t want kids now when the day before, I’d wanted two or three. Maybe it happened over time. I started seeing my colleagues with their kids and then my friends who had them. Their kids are adorable and funny, but they’re also time-consuming and your first priority. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that, but I don’t think it’s for me either. I think part of it is that I spent much of my twenties in school and then starting my career that I feel like I’m only now getting to the rest of my life, and I want to have it to myself. Well, not just myself,” she added with a shy smile.
“With someone special?”
“After Hails and I reconnected and it ended between us, we were somehow able to cement our friendship. It’s been a gift to me. Through her, I met Hannah and Alyssa. They’re married and have two little ones. I also met Summer and Lena. They’re engaged now. It became me sitting at the end of the table, when we all got together, watching a bunch of couples talk about their days and their lives together. Hannah and Alyssa always had a funny story about the twins. Charlie and Hailey talked about how they were planning a wedding and building their dream house. Summer and Lena started dating shortly after.”
“You wondered when you were going to find the person you can be with like that,” Keira stated while staring off into space. “When will you find someone that looks at you how they look at one another.”
“Yes,” Emma agreed.
“I know how you feel,” Keira shared.
There was a moment of silence shared between them as their eyes met. Keira registered that it wasn’t an awkward moment at all but was, in fact, a welcomed one. She smiled warmly at Emma who smiled back and then glanced away as if the stare was too intense. Keira could agree with her on that. Those deep eyes of Emma’s, matched with the lips not far below them, made her heart race much faster than it should be while not on an elliptical machine at the gym.
“What about you?” Emma asked after a moment and then took the final bite of her hot dog.
“What about me?”
“Kids?”
There it was. The question that normally ended the possibility of a relationship if your answer differed from the person asking it. Keira often thought that it was even worse with lesbians, because the assumption was that a woman should want to have a child. It came with the gender. It also often came up early in her dating relationships, though usually not on a first date.
“Well, I have kind of a story to tell there, I think.”
“Oh, a story?” Emma lifted an inquisitive eyebrow.
“When I was a teenager, I got mono. And no, it wasn’t from making out with boys. I got it from a girl who was making out with boys.”
“You made out with a girl who made out with boys?”
“No, I was friends with her. She was contagious without us knowing. We both went down for the count.” Keira gulped. “She recovered normally. I didn’t.” She watched as Emma turned to her, now more serious than before. “It turned out, I had another condition that was making the mono worse, or the mono was making it worse. Anyway, I had leukemia.”
“You what?”
“We caught it early. The mono was kind of a blessing because it caused them to run more tests and find cancer. I got lucky. I had one round of chemo. I was in full remission a year later. I hardly missed any school and was able to make it all up over the summer. As far as cancer goes, I was incredibly lucky. Unfortunately, though, the infection and the treatment did a number on my body, and I can’t… Well, they said there’s a chance, but it’s a very low chance.”
“You can’t conceive,” Emma finished for her.
“It’s not likely,” Keira told her.
“But you’re gay, so–”
“So, the other woman could have the kids? Yeah, I thought about that. But I’m not a kid person,” she stated and watched as Emma attempted, it appeared, to hold back her reaction. “I think being eighteen and being told that I wasn’t likely ever going to have a child made me view the whole thing differently. There was another girl about my age that sat next to me often during treatment. She was much worse off. She told me that she’d been told the same thing: she’d likely not be able to have children. She said it just made her want to have them even more. She wanted to freeze her eggs when she was done with treatment and maybe use a surrogate. I thought about that whole process. It just didn’t seem worth it to me. If I wanted children, I could adopt or, yeah, I guess I could have my girlfriend or wife have them. But the older I got, the less and less I thought about having kids.”
Emma seemed to be a little in shock. Her eyes were still on Keira’s, and Keira recognized this look too. This was the sympathy look that came from the revelation that she’d had cancer.
“I’m sorry, Keira.”
“For me? Don’t be. Like I said, I was incredibly lucky. That girl I mentioned wasn’t as lucky.”
“She didn’t make it?”
“She passed away about six months later. I went to her funeral. I wasn’t entirely in the clear myself yet. It put a lot of things in perspective for me,” she explained.
“How so?” Emma asked, finished the chips and took a long drink of water.
“I’d known I was gay throughout most of high school, but I hadn’t come out. I hadn’t really dated all that much, but when I did, it was guys. I always ended things before they went too far though. Basically, anything beyond kissing was off the table for me. I picked up a reputation as the girl that wouldn’t put out, which was fine with me.” She laughed a little. “When I got diagnosed and then watched that sweet, funny girl that always took the time to talk to me as we sat there, getting poison injected into our bodies, fade away, it was like I had to tell my parents. I had to tell my friends and the kids at school. I needed to be myself because not everyone got a chance to do that.” Keira felt Emma’s eyes soften and she wondered what she was thinking in that moment. Then, she shook her head rapidly from side to side. “How did we get on this topic? This is not how you start a first date.” She laughed and stood. “Are you ready for the Exploratorium?” She asked and changed the subject.
Emma stood and nodded in agreement.
“I am. But, for the record, I actually don’t mind talking about this stuff with you; first date or not.”
“You don’t? It’s kind of a dow
ner.”
“I’m starting to think I wouldn’t mind talking about anything with you,” Emma stated and smiled.
Keira’s eyes met Emma’s again. She smiled shyly back, realizing that this may be the best first date she’d been on in a long time, and it was only just getting started.
CHAPTER 12
Emma was still a little floored by Keira’s confession, but she’d meant what she’d said to her. She could sit and listen to Keira talk all night, not say another word about herself and be okay with it. Keira’s eyes were magnetic. Emma wondered how she’d been able to look away from them all this time. There was something about the magic of their first date that Emma couldn’t quite describe. Now that it was out there that they were both attracted to the other and Emma knew the whole story about the Kellan situation, it was as if another world had opened up to her. Emma couldn’t resist. She knew they still had to work together. It was incredibly important that things go well at the fair for both of them. But the way she was feeling about Keira at this moment told her that wouldn’t be a problem. Of course, that was assuming Keira felt the same way.
As they walked on, she found herself glancing sideways at Keira. And even though the blueness of her eyes kept drawing Emma in, the fullness of her lips – still red with her lipstick from the workday – drew her away. Then, there was the neck that was long and even more exposed thanks to the shirt Emma had chosen for Keira to wear. She’d noticed Keira’s beauty since the moment she first saw her in that car that nearly toppled her over. She’d been a little more focused on the fact that she’d almost been hit by a car and by the woman’s voice as she yelled at her, but she’d still seen the face and the beauty of it. Since getting to know Keira, she’d uncovered even more about who she was as a person, and she found her no less beautiful.
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