If the Shoe Fits

by E. J. Noyes

  “Yeah, she can.” I spun my cappuccino around and around, needing to fiddle. “I guess I just imagined, stupidly, that the natural progression was to go on and introduce your new partner to your parents. And I was excited about that. But even though her dad knows she’s gay, he doesn’t accept it, so I’m basically just a friend which makes me feel kind of excluded and minimalized. And yes, I know it’s fucking idiotic to feel like that because she shows me in so many other ways that she cares about me.”

  “You’ve had excellent same-sex attraction role models.” Smugly, she buffed her nails against her chest. “And seen nothing but full family support the whole time for me, and now you.” Sabs’s voice dropped. “And now you’re unfortunately realizing that not everyone has the same great experience.”

  “I know all that. But knowing that it’s true for others, and suddenly being in the middle of someone else’s unpleasant truth are two totally different things. When I decided I wanted to jump into this thing with her I imagined that would mean I’d get the whole experience. I was excited for that and it’s not happening, and I kind of feel like it won’t.”

  “Have you told her how you’re feeling and why it’s an important thing for you?”

  “Sort of. I’ve brought it up a few times and been shut down. I just don’t want to push her and have it all go fucked up. She explained why she doesn’t want to be open with her dad, and then I kind of left it alone because she gets upset. But, is it going to screw things up for us if she’s not able to work things out with her dad?” The thought of something external like that coming between us was so overwhelmingly upsetting that I had to stop talking and rein in my thoughts. Brooke and I were still a thing, an item or a couple or whatever. We were still us. This was just a small roadblock, and it was up to us to keep it from becoming a huge roadblock.

  Sabs hmm’d. “Fear can be a huge thing, even with certainty that your family and friends will support you. Is she fearful for a reason, or just ’cause of the unknown?”

  “It’s real. She had a really hard time with it as a kid. As well as her dad not accepting her sexuality, her mom doesn’t speak to her at all because of it. How can I ask her to set aside twenty plus years of family stuff for me?”

  “Maybe you can’t. Maybe you have to accept things as they are. But it’s early days yet.” She swallowed a mouthful of coffee. “Just step back for a minute. You know how hard it was for me and Bec with Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, right? The Army wanted everything from us, but they didn’t want to know who we really were. It was soul-crushing, Jannie. And that was just our employer. Just a job really.”

  “Mhmm.”

  “Can you imagine what it must feel like for Brooke, to feel that way but instead of an employer it’s her parents. How fucking devastating it must be for her?”

  “I know,” I whispered. “She hurt herself when she was younger because of it, Sabs, like hurt herself…you know, physically.”

  Sabine’s expression changed instantly to intense concern and her voice dropped to the low, protective tone I knew so well. “Self harm?”

  “Yeah.” It was all I could say around the lump in my throat and stinging tears.

  “Fuck,” Sabs breathed. “Poor Brooke. That’s really shitty.” Her hand came to my back, rubbing small comforting circles. “How is she now?”

  “She says she’s okay, and I think she is. But all that childhood stuff is obviously still in there, coloring how she’s approaching us. I just don’t think I have any right to ask her to do something she’s not happy with, or that’s only going to cause issues for her and put her relationship with her dad on shaky ground. Especially given my history and shit. I mean, I’m not exactly the poster girl for relationships. And we’ve only just started dating. What if I push her to do this, and it goes really badly, and then later down the track I figure out I really can’t do this whole long-term thing? Right now, I feel like I can, but who really knows?”

  Sabs let out a breath, her cheeks puffing up. “Valid points. This is a tough one.” She smiled her lopsided smile. “But, you always did have to do shit the hard way and I guess discovering you’re not as straight as you thought you were would be no different.”

  We sat quietly for a minute, working on our coffees and me picking at my blueberry muffin. Sabs eventually pulled the plate away with a, “Stop massacring that.” She rescued a blueberry out of the rubble. “You know, when you said you were questioning your relationship, I honestly thought it was going to be you saying you were bailing for some random reason like Brooke blows her nose oddly. Not that she’s cautious about being open with her family and doesn’t want to U-Haul with you just yet.”

  “Believe me, the irony is not lost on me. My first yes I can do this response to a person, and the person I’m falling in love with is the one who’s relationship-phobic.” I gave Sabs a bare-bones outline of Brooke’s dating history and some of our conversations about it, and the issues I thought were stemming from that.

  Sabine laughed long and loud. “Oh this is so great. How’s it feel, Jannie, now that the shoe’s on the other foot, hmmm?”

  “Oh fuck you. For the record, it feels like shit. And you know what? This is way different. I’ve always been upfront about my feelings and intentions.”

  “Upfront the way Brooke’s been with you? She never said she doesn’t want a long-term thing, Jannie. Just that she’s cautious about it, and with good reason. She’s being honest with you about her fears.”

  “Yeah, upfront. But then she goes and does something like making my lunch for me or staying over when we’d said we weren’t going to do that just yet. Total mixed signals.”

  Sabs leaned forward. “Doesn’t sound like mixed signals to me. Sounds to me like she wants a relationship with you and she’s afraid of that. She tries something, and likes it but then remembers it’s scary so she pulls away a little. Rinse and repeat.”

  “Sure, fine. That makes sense. But how much longer is this going to go on?”

  “I can’t answer that. Maybe until she knows you’re solid…” My sister’s gaze was penetrating. “And here’s where you get the tough love—given your dating history, I don’t think it’s unreasonable that she’s worried you’re going to bail on her like previous girlfriends have.”

  There was nothing to say to that except agreement. “True. Fuck.” I pushed muffin rubble into a pile. “You know what, she actually does blow her nose funny.”

  “Oh?”

  “Mhmm. She also puts her milk in the main part of the fridge, not the door, because she thinks leaving it in the door makes it go sour faster because of the door opening and closing and it getting warm and cool again. She hums off tune all the time. After she eats ice cream, she coughs for like five minutes. When she sneezes, she does at least four or five in a row, and I once counted seven sneezes. And the way she pronounces assume like azz-youm is so fucking weird and I don’t like it.”

  Sabs groaned. “Oh, for…fucking…shit. So those are the deal breakers you’re going to hoard so you can throw them out as excuses in case you change your mind and run for the hills.” She pinched my thigh. “Goddammit, Jana. I actually like Brooke. This is bullshit, grow up!”

  I shoved her hand away. “Actually, no. And thanks for the vote of confidence. Those things? They bug me a little, and other things too, but they don’t bug me enough to want to not be with her. They aren’t deal breakers, nowhere near it.” With anyone else, I’d likely have run a mile for that sort of thing. And had in the past. But with Brooke, they barely rated which was why I hadn’t bothered mentioning them when she’d asked.

  Sabs gaped, her mouth working open and then closed before she spluttered, “Who the fuck are you, and what have you done with my sister? My sister who once pretended to have food poisoning to leave a first date because she didn’t like the way the guy used his knife and fork.”

  “Not a clue. Is this it, Sabs? Is this the forgetting about all the little things that you’d usually hate, the things you
’d use as reasons to say no, but you still say yes because you’re in love?”

  She blinked. “Shit. Love?”

  “I think so? It’s definitely more than liking and there’s lust and stuff there too. I hate not being with her, I think about her pretty much most of the day whenever my brain isn’t doing something else, the sex is…mind bogglingly incredible. I’ve had great sex but this is next-next level stuff. She’s hot, funny, sweet and caring, she’s as weird as me and has all these adorable anxious quirks and stuff. She even likes my bizarre jumping around from point A to F to L and back to A blathering.”

  “Sounds like love to me.”

  “Yeah…maybe. But is that enough to overcome the other stuff? Especially if I’m ready to commit to something more, and she’s not?”

  Sabine stared at me, utterly silent. After a shrug, she said seriously, “That’s something only you can figure out, Jannie. And I really hope you do soon.”

  So did I.

  * * *

  Unfortunately the next night turned into a last-minute-having-to-work-from-home evening because of an inconsiderate attorney who’d been screwing around with an annulment asset-division proposal I’d been asking for all week. Given we had a meeting the following day, I had no choice but to suck it up and take work home after the draft arrived late that afternoon.

  Brooke, bless her, showed no hint of annoyance at having to cancel our evening’s plans. And they’d been fabulous plans. We’d decided that we’d go straight from work for a sunset walk along the Potomac, spend some time watching the night sky and boats cruising the river and then find somewhere for a nice quiet dinner before coming back to my place.

  Instead, Brooke had ducked out to pick up dinner while I sat with papers spread over my kitchen table and my laptop while I wondered if my opposing counsel was completely out of her mind and had actually attended law school, or even read the pre-nup. Brooke ate her dinner at the coffee table and I distractedly picked at some very good Chinese takeout with one hand and picked apart the proposal with the other. Romantic. At least my apartment was open plan so I could see her and have a conversation, albeit a disjointed and distracted one.

  “For fuck’s sake,” I mumbled to myself. “You must think I’m a real fucking idiot, Mary Elvins, if you think I’m going to agree to this bullshit. Nope, nope, hell nope,” I said, drawing a line diagonally through a paragraph and making a note about how I wanted the clause updated.

  “What was that?” Brooke asked from the kitchen where she was putting leftovers in the fridge.

  “Nothing, babe. Just me throttling someone in my head.”

  I didn’t realize she’d moved until I felt the heat of her behind me. She kissed my neck, slipped a hand through the neck of my baggy tee and gently cupped my breast. “God you’re hot when you’re pissed off like this.”

  I turned the document facedown and leaned my head back to look up at her. “Then I must be the sexiest thing you’ve seen, because I am mightily pissed off.”

  “That you are. Sexiest thing, that is,” she said against my skin, her thumb stroking my nipple, which hardened under her knowing touch. “Why don’t you have an office at home?”

  She pinched my nipple and I inhaled sharply at the sensation. “Because I like being out here where I have a nice view, am right near the kitchen, and can stick my feet up on the other chairs. Plus if I had an office here, I’d be tempted to bring work home more often.”

  “Mm, makes sense.” Gentle teeth on my neck accompanied a pleasing pinch of my other nipple.

  I stifled a groan. “Brooke, I can’t right now. Sorry, I really have to get this done.” Even as I said it, I sighed inwardly, waiting for the irritation and passive aggression or even pushiness that would accompany my no. I was already preparing my conciliatory speech, the one I’d always used when declining sex, and wondering what sweetener or compensation I’d have to offer to placate her.

  Mix and match a genuine excuse with a reward as needed.

  I’m: too busy/too tired/crampy/plain not in the mood now, but if you can wait a bit I’ll reward you with: a striptease/role play or dress up/any fantasy you want/a whole lot of really good oral sex.

  But the expected response never eventuated. Instead she carefully withdrew her hand, kissed my temple and took a step back. “Oh, sorry to distract you. Can I make you some tea? Water? Do you want some dessert now or later?”

  I turned around on the chair. “You’re not mad?”

  “About what?”

  “That I don’t want to go to bed with you. Actually that’s wrong, I do want to go to bed with you but I’ve got so much to do and I don’t think billing a client for a sexy recreation break will endear me to the Bar Association. Nor will fucking this up because I’m not focused.”

  Brooke’s eyebrows scrunched together, her expression utterly perplexed. “Of course I’m not mad.” The brows crinkled even more. “Really? You thought…I’m not, we…Jana, there’s no obligation here. You never need to give me a reason for not wanting sex.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure. If you suddenly decided you don’t want to have sex for the rest of the time we’re together, then that’s your prerogative and okay too. I mean, personally devastating, but okay.”

  “Well that’s never going to happen. I enjoy you far too much.”

  “Phewww…” She slumped, shoulders sagging. “I know I just acted cavalier just then, but I’d probably have curled into a ball and cried for days. I enjoy you very much too.”

  “I’m glad we’re in agreement. And thank you,” I added quietly.

  “No problem. But just so you know, I’m going to masturbate right now to the image of my sexy, pissed-off attorney girlfriend.”

  I threw a pen at her and missed by a mile.

  Brooke grinned and wandered over to retrieve it from up the hallway. “Kidding. What I am going to do is get you whatever you need to help you work, then I’m going to sit on the couch and read and sneak peeks at you being hot and angry.” She kissed the edge of my mouth. “So what’ll it be?”

  “Tea please.”

  She saluted. “Coming right up.”

  I turned the proposal over again, spinning the pen in my fingers. But I couldn’t concentrate. Was this the sort of amazing, happy-making stuff that would balance the not-so-great stuff? Had I finally made it to real relationship territory? Was this how it felt to be with someone where I could just be me, and enjoy her being her, and be comfortable with being honest and knowing she understood?

  I twisted around on my chair again, watching her collecting my favorite tea mug and fussing around my kitchen like she’d lived in my apartment for years. “Brooke?”

  “Yeah?” she said, not turning around.

  The words fell out before I could police them. “I think my could fall in love with you is turning to I might be falling in love with you.”

  She went utterly still. “Oh.” Slowly she spun to face me, the canister of teabags gripped tightly in both hands. “You can’t say that now.”

  Fuck. Too soon. Waaaaay too soon. So stupid, Jana. But she didn’t seem annoyed or upset, just a bit like a deer in the headlights. “Why not?” I asked tentatively, trying to ignore the anxiety that’d made me feel suddenly queasy.

  “Because you’re working and we can’t talk about it. And you look so adorable right now that I kind of want to drag you off to bed.” It came out almost casually, as if her reasoning were the most obvious thing in the world.

  The anxiety fell away again, replaced by a swell of relief and predictable excitement. “Oh. Well all right then.”

  “You could take it back.” It was said teasingly, without accusation or fear. “Wait until another time when you’re not working.”

  “I can’t.”

  She grinned. “Sure you can.”

  “No I can’t, because I mean it.”

  The kettle clicked loudly. She didn’t say anything, just poured water into my mug and added milk.
Brooke kissed me lightly. “Different driving speeds,” she reminded me. Then she took a long slow breath. “But I think…I might be getting pretty close to where you are. Maybe just pump the brakes a few times and let me catch up?”

  It was almost ten thirty by the time I finished. I’d even managed to make my responses to Mary Elvins eighty percent polite and professional. Score a point for me, though I might lower the polite and professional down somewhat when I saw her face-to-face.

  I stood, stretching my arms above my head. Oh God, bliss. Was there anything better than stretching? I smiled as a decidedly naughty thought popped into my head. Actually, I could think of a few things.

  A quick glance into my living room confirmed the object of my thoughts was still reading on the couch. Every so often, I’d glanced over at her for no other reason than the simple pleasure of looking at her. Sometimes she’d noticed and raised her head to meet my gaze before smiling and returning to her book.

  Brooke’s smile started tentatively, then grew as I approached her. “This looks awfully like you being done working for the night.”

  “It does, doesn’t it.” I reached back to pull the tie from my ponytail, fluffing my hair out and massaging my scalp to release the tension from hours of being hunched over at the table. “Whatcha been reading?”

  She closed the leather case and set the Kindle aside. “Re-reading a lesrom.”

  It took me a few moments to translate the portmanteau, and I added lesrom is lesbian romance to my fast-growing WLW—women loving women—dictionary. “You’re reading a romance novel?”

  “Yep. My favorite kind.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Any sexy bits?”

  “Mhmmmm. It’s given me plenty of ideas on top of all the ones I’ve already been having about you tonight.” Brooke dropped her feet from the coffee table.