by C D Cain
“Let’s go back to the question at hand and you answer with all honesty. Remember, I have sat where you are. I have felt the tornado of feelings inside of you. Lived through the not knowing of what was next. The dread and fear of what could possibly be next.” She slowly chewed a bite of her shrimp dish as if giving me time to process what she had said. “Are you a lesbian?”
I took another swallow of wine. This time, I was certain it was too large of a swallow as I didn’t taste the flavors on my palate but rather felt the burn of the alcohol in the pit of my stomach. “I don’t have an answer or even know how to begin to answer that question.” I shook my head. “I don’t know is the best one I can give.”
She tipped her wine glass to me. “Now there’s an honest answer.”
“But shouldn’t I? Shouldn’t I know if I’m gay or not? I mean hell, who else is going to know if I don’t?”
“Then shouldn’t you give yourself time to answer the question before you answer it for someone else?”
I bit my lip as I stared up into the pendant light shaped like a globe that hung above the table.
“Ask.”
I looked at her.
“Ask me what you’re thinking.”
I bit my lip again for fear of invading a personal memory for her, but who else could answer better than her? “What was it like with your husband?”
“He was my best friend. I loved him for all that he was and all that we had in common. I loved him for the strength of his love for me. But I was never in love with him the way I was instantly drawn to Violet.”
“Did you know you had feelings for women before her?”
“Not really. I knew something was different but I had never pegged it.”
“When did you know?”
Jazlyn let a smile sweep across her lips. “When she kissed me. I don’t think I’d ever been kissed before that kiss. I’d never been kissed to where I felt everything someone had left out in words to tell me. Okay, wait. That made no sense whatsoever.” She took a sip of wine and held it in her mouth before swallowing. “Let me try again. Before Vi kissed me, a kiss was just a kiss. It was nice. But when she kissed me for the first time, I felt it everywhere. I don’t mean in a sexual way. I mean I felt everything she thought and felt about me in that kiss. I wouldn’t have felt or believed it more if she had used words to tell me. I was hers from that moment on.”
I felt the tears wet my eyes. Sam’s kiss still burned my lips in my dreams. I felt the tingle in them with the thought of her lips against mine. I shook my head against the painful memory of it.
“It was the same for me,” I whispered.
She seemed to sense the pain building up inside of me. She stood from her chair and walked over to sit next to me. She took my hand and turned me in my chair to face her. Her eyes were soft, yet strong. The way she looked at me kept the pain from toppling any strength I had tried to convince myself I had. She let out a deep breath.
“Aw hell, honey, do I remember what you’re feeling. That feeling of brokenness and confusion with no right answer in front of you.” She wiped a fallen tear with her thumb. “Believe me when I say this.” She cupped my face in her hands. “It will get better. I promise you won’t always feel this. You’ll find your answer for yourself and then you’ll forge ahead. There will be a day when all of this shit you are feeling now won’t be much more than a blink of a memory.” She pulled me against her chest and held me.
I dampened her shirt with thoughts of the tears falling from Sam’s eyes as she said her goodbye. “But I’ve lost her.”
I wasn’t sure if I had spoken the words out loud or left them to be mumbled against the cloth of her shirt. Either which way, she didn’t answer.
“Hey!” Grant jumped over the arm of my sofa and ran to me as I walked in through the front door. “Where have you been?”
“What are you doing here?” For a brief moment, I wondered if my tone was as abrasive as I felt it to be.
The look on Grant’s face took every bit of the questioning away. He stopped short. “I’ve been waiting for you,” he said with less excitement than before. “I wanted to see you.”
“I’m sorry.” I walked over to him and took his hands in mine. “Really, I’m very sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you. I was caught off guard when I opened the door but I still shouldn’t have talked to you like that.”
The enthusiasm returned to his face. “It’s okay. I’m sure you’re tired.”
“Yes. It’s been one helluva day.”
“I know. I heard.” He squeezed my hand and shook it a little. “It’s all over the hospital.” He turned to walk back to the couch and pulled my arm to follow him. “I bought us some beer and pizza to celebrate. I’ve sort of already started eating and well…drinking, but I saved you some.”
“Celebrate? What on earth is there to celebrate?”
“Your ER trauma today. It’s all over the hospital.”
“People are talking about it, huh?”
“Not just some people. I mean everyone is talking about it. Damn girl…a Foley catheter? How in the hell did you pull that one off?”
I shrugged and collapsed on the couch. “I don’t know. It just came to me. I’d read about something like that a while back in a trauma journal but thought there was no way it would work. Damn if it didn’t. Did you hear how he did?”
“Hear? I was in the case. His carotid was toast but we were able to repair it with a nice-size graft. He’ll be fine,” he said, talking around a bite of pizza. “Until he goes home that is.” He laughed and handed me a slice of pizza.
“I’m not hungry but thanks.”
He held up a beer. “How about one of these?”
“One of those I can do.”
“So, where you been? I got here like an hour ago.” He started eating the piece of pizza I had rejected. “I was afraid there wasn’t going to be any pizza left for you.” He smiled as he pointed the last piece to me.
“I was pretty wound up after leaving the hospital so I stopped off for a drink.”
He looked at me with surprise. “By yourself?”
I nodded.
“But that doesn’t sound like you. You don’t really like bars much less want to go to one by yourself.”
“I know. I just couldn’t come home right after.”
He tossed the unfinished slice back into the box and turned to me. “Shit. I’m sorry. I didn’t even think of it upsetting you.” He scooted closer to me on the couch as he raised my hand from my lap to rest it on his. “Sometimes I get so wrapped up in cases and stuff that I forget about emotions. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” I squeezed his hand all the while feeling like a complete ass because it wasn’t truly the traumatic event in the ER that kept me from coming home tonight. It was then I recognized my own disconnection. A man’s life was held within my hands. His blood had soaked my scrubs. It was a haunting realization to know it was the Pineapple Post and Jazlyn to where I ran instead of Grant.
“No, it’s really not.” His whiskers scratched my forehead as he laid a gentle kiss there. He pulled away and looked me in the eyes. “I was so proud of you, Rayne. When the whole OR was talking about what you did, how you did it, and how composed you were.” He shook his head a little. “I was just so damn proud of you. I sat there in the case thinking, ‘My fiancée did this. My fiancée saved this man’s life.’ I’ve never been prouder of us.”
He leaned in and kissed me. A soft kiss. I felt guilty and ashamed of my selfish behavior where he was concerned. Yes, I had become disconnected in so many ways. I suppose that’s why I didn’t dodge the deepening of the kiss as I had done many times before. He seemed to notice as he pulled me in closer.
“I’ve missed you…missed this so much,” he moaned against my lips as he let his hand travel down the front of my T-shirt. I tried desperately no
t to flinch when he squeezed my breast. At first, I feared he had noticed when he pulled away from me but then I quickly realized he was standing for other reasons as he reached down for my hand. I searched his face until I saw the small scar in his left eyebrow. It reminded me of the little boy I had grown up with. The little boy that was now a man. I saw the freckle on his bottom lip. When we had first started dating, I used to focus on it before each kiss. Those things helped me to see the man who stood behind my questions of my sexuality. They helped me to see Grant. I did love him for who he was and who he had always been to me. He was a man who had the same drive and ambition as I did. We both wanted to return back home to care for the family and friends of the town that raised us. Our future was our goal which made it so incredibly easy to be with him. I didn’t have to concentrate on our relationship nor give it quality time as Grant and I just were. We moved in the ebb and flow of us with ease. Somewhere deep in the recesses of my mind, I knew the ease and comfort of us was my only attraction to being engaged to him. He was my friend and my companion. Now, he needed me to give to him the things he needed to stay in the comfort of us. He needed to feel we were okay. Caught in the tangled mix of those feelings, I stood and took his hand.
The tears were silent as they fell on my pillow. Grant’s slumbering breath was against my ear. He had been soft and tender during our love making. Love making. There’s a fitting description, although the full meaning of the description to me is probably far different from those when they describe the act he and I had shared. For most, I would think it to be a connection filled with expressions of being in love with one another. For me, it was a way for me to show how much I truly did love the man lying behind me. It was no longer a feeling of being in love with him but more a feeling of not wanting to see hurt or rejection in the eyes of a man who had always treated me well. A man who had his whole future planned around sharing a life with the woman he loved. The tears began to fall readily as my heart screamed at the pain of knowing this was a future I no longer thought I could live. I loved him but even in the height of feeling this emotion with him, the act of expressing that love left me crying silently against my pillow. These were nights I knew I could not live for the rest of my life.
Perhaps the questioning of my sexuality had actually led me here. I pulled his hand away from my chest and studied it. Wasn’t there a part of me that needed to feel him against me again to help know the answers? It had been so long since I had given myself to him. It had been since Sam. The mere mention of her name in my thoughts crushed me as I lay next to him with nothing between our bodies. I interlocked my fingers with his and sighed at the difference of the two. When I held Sam’s hand, we fit. We just fit. Our fingers. The softness of them against one another. I started to feel as if it were Sam I had just cheated on. As if I had been unfaithful to her. But then it hit me. I had been unfaithful to myself. I had cheated on my true feelings. I let his hand fall back against my chest, listened to his gentle snore, and wondered if this would be where I would ever let myself be again.
“I wasn’t sure you’d be back.”
“You asked me what brought me out the other night,” I said quickly so as to get the words out before they became lodged within me.
Jazlyn paused in mid-circular swipe of the bar. She tossed the rag to hang over her shoulder, rubbed her fingers in its end, and motioned for me to continue. I think she knew my strength dangled from a delicate thread. I walked slowly to the bar. My hands were buried deep into the front pockets of my jeans. I had practiced what I wanted to say in my head but it was still a jumbled mess as I approached her. She stood behind the bar, frozen and waiting on my next words. I pulled the heavy barstool away from the bar and climbed up to sit. I let out a deep sigh and pinched the bridge of my nose.
Jazlyn took two beers from the ice-filled tray. She clasped her hand over mine as she handed me the bottle. “On the house. Looks like you may need one.”
“Or a hundred but who’s counting?” I took a long swallow of beer. “I think you’re my only friend. How pathetic is that?”
“Hey now. I may take offense to that.”
I snapped my head up to look at her. “No, I didn’t mean it like that. I…I meant…”
She tapped my hand with hers. “Sister, I’m only joking. Now spill.”
“You asked me why I had come in that night.”
“Mmm hmmm.” She hummed over the neck of her bottle as she took her first sip.
“It wasn’t the absolutely crazy trauma I had earlier in the evening but the conversation I had around it.” I picked at a knot left rough in the otherwise smooth bar. “I was asked out. A nurse…a female nurse asked me out to dinner.”
“Ah.” She took another sip as if to give me the pacing I needed.
“She had pulled me into a supply closet to talk to me. That’s when she did it. When she asked me out on a date.”
“And? How did you feel about it?”
“It scared the hell outta me at first. Inside, I was freaking out because I wondered what she saw. What was I doing to make her think I was that way? It scared me on so many levels.” I remembered the sickening swirl I had felt in the pit of my stomach when Angie had asked me out. “But then I got this other feeling.”
I looked at her and hoped she would fill in the blanks for me or that she would ask more questions so I could answer those instead of continuing to pour my thoughts out across the bar.
She stood motionless except for two quick blinks of her eyes as she said, “Please continue.”
“Afterward, I felt exhilarated. It was exciting to have her ask me out.”
She took a swallow of beer. I had very nearly forgotten about my own and took a large swig.
“Did you accept her invitation?”
“No.”
“Did you want to?”
“No. I didn’t want to accept. I don’t want to accept.” I put my face in my hands and grunted, “Ugh. I don’t know what I’m saying.”
“I’m not sure you’ve said much of what you really want to say.”
“I guess mainly I’m trying to say, I don’t look at her in that way. I’m not attracted to her physically.” I lifted the bottle and drained the last of the beer. Apparently, I had made up for lost time. “So, when you asked me if I was a lesbian—if I’m a lesbian—I don’t know how to answer. Wouldn’t I have been attracted to her and wanting to go out with her if I was?”
Jazlyn gave me a low chuckle as if it had started deep in her chest. “Oh, honey, no, not at all. You don’t have to be attracted to every woman to be a lesbian.”
“And if I’ve only ever been attracted to one?”
“Well, my friend, that just means you’ve got a hurting lesbian heart.”
“I’ve tried to call her. I’ve text her.”
“But she’s not answering?” Her voice was soft.
I sucked in a breath and tried to force back the lump in my throat. “No, she’s not.” I couldn’t hide the sadness in my voice. I looked up at the ceiling to try to stop the trail of tears that seemed to believe they belonged upon my cheeks. “I’ve lost her. She doesn’t ever want to hear from me again. She doesn’t even want to know I exist in this world.”
“I can’t say necessarily if that is true or not. I think time is what’s needed here.” She reached across the counter, squeezed my hand, and took the empty bottle from me. “Time for both of you. You both need to figure out what your experience together meant to you. Why it happened. Rayne, some people come into our life to change it. Maybe they stay. Maybe they don’t. But their reason for coming into it is still met.”
“I guess she was meant to come into and then go out of my life?”
“I don’t honestly know. But think about this. Are you really ready for her to be in it now? Don’t you have some things you need to work out for yourself before you try to save or salvage a relationship with Sam?�
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I nodded my head because I knew she was right.
She handed me a fresh beer. “Then hold the worry for what will or won’t be until you get those things worked out. Okay?”
I felt like a bobble head doll as I sat on the stool constantly nodding my head up and down in agreement with her. I knew she was right. I did. Yet all of the things she talked about seemed so very hard to do. I wanted to be with Sam again. In her arms, I felt a happiness in life I had not known before. I ached to feel it again but there were so many obstacles between me and that dream. Two of them had little to do with Sam. One was centered around a man who had held me in his arms the night before and the other around a town that had held me in their arms my whole life. Letting go of both of them pained my heart. I didn’t want a life where I didn’t know Grant. It hurt to think of living special events in my life and not being able to share them with my friend. It hurt me to think of how badly all of this would hurt him. We had been taking the biggest step of our lives together. What would happen to our dreams if I changed our course? The town was something else altogether. I couldn’t even begin to think of what all of this could mean to my core foundation.
“Hey, Jazlyn?” I looked up from staring at the wooden bar to see she was already looking at me. My guess is she had watched me the whole time I had been sitting silently.
“Yes,” she said soothingly.
“You left home, didn’t you?”
“I did.”
“Why? Did you have to? Were you not welcome any longer when you came out?”
“No, not exactly.” She leaned back against the opposite bar and tossed the rag behind her shoulder. “Of course, it was hard with Zach and his family after I filed for divorce. It was hard on all of us. I missed them. I missed him.”
“Is that why you moved away?”
“Maybe a part of why but not all of it. There wasn’t really anything there for me any longer. Not anything that brought me happiness. Vi was what made me happy. Shortly after the divorce she got this great opportunity with a large OB group. I moved with her and the rest, as they say, is history.”
