by Fiona Zedde
Dammit! Everything was just coming out wrong. “Did I ever tell you what happened to me when I was fourteen?”
Nuria cut her eyes at Sage. “So, you’re switching it up to story time now?”
“Come on, this is important…” Sage didn’t like to beg, but the story was right on the edge of her tongue. The moment felt too important for her not to spit it out.
“Fine,” Nuria muttered and crossed her arms over her chest. “Go for it.”
Sage swallowed thickly, the memory rising up to choke her just like it always did when she allowed it to surface. “When I was a kid in Jamaica, I was really jealous of the other kids who got to move in America.
Jealous was a mild word for the acidic resentment that burned through her guts and into her eyes when someone she knew in the neighborhood got that chance at freedom she ached for.
“I wasn’t out at home, and I was scared to death to have any friends that looked even a little bit queer. But for some reason, Clarence and I became friends anyway. He was maybe a year younger than me.
Her old friend’s face appeared behind her half-closed eyes. Skin like brown rice, a big and sassy smile.
“Anyway, Clarence got the golden ticket when his parents moved to America for work. I was glad for him, but the jealousy just about ate me alive. Clarence and I knew that you could be as gay as you wanted to be in America—lesbian, queer, trans, any of it—and the whole country turned around and embraced you.” At Nuria’s disbelieving look Sage shrugged. “We were kids on an island. All we had to go by was TV. Anyway, Clarence left, and I was mostly happy for him.
“We kept in touch by email and all that, but then one day…” The memory burned behind her eyes. “…one day, I got the news that he was dead.
“It wasn’t just any dead, though. His uncles and cousins ganged up on him and beat him like a piñata. Busted his head wide open on the streets of New York. They…they even took a picture and circulated it online for a while.” A stone ball lodged itself in Sage’s throat and she shifted it around so she could finish. “I never wanted to see that photo. But then I did.” His face kicked to a pulpy mess. Teeth scattered on the ground. So much blood.
His own family had killed him because he was gay, even in this land of gay love and acceptance where he was supposed to be safe. Where they were all supposed to be safe.
“That’s awful.” Nuria slid across the couch to grip Sage’s hand and lace their fingers together. “I’m sorry you had to deal with that as a kid, and I’m sorry for your friend.”
“I know. It’s… fucked up.”
Nuria’s fingers squeezed hers, a grounding and sympathetic touch. “I don’t mean to be an ass, sugar, but what does this have to do with you and Phil now?”
Sage licked her dry lips and said the thing she’d been hiding from herself for far too long. “Sometimes,” Sage clenched her jaw, “I feel like the thing that happened to Clarence, even though it didn’t happen to me, fucked me up real good. I mean, obviously it fucked up Clarence’s life you know it’s over but…his death…it left me so afraid of everything.”
Because of this, she was scared of telling her parents the truth. And this thing with Phil… She just felt like she was losing someone she loved all over again.
“Look… Maybe coming here wasn’t the best idea for me.” Despite her still trembling legs, Sage stood up. She scraped a rough hand over her face. She was just so damn tired.
The milk glass clicked against a wooden coaster when Nuria put it on the table. “Don’t be stupid,” she said. “Go in the guest room and rest.” Exhaustion tugged at her voice. She plucked at one of the curled locks hanging below her chin. “We can talk more in the morning.”
Sage glanced at the door, then Nuria’s face. “Okay.” A sigh rushed from her throat. “In the morning.”
HOURS LATER, Sage woke up feeling like shit. Although she didn’t drink any liquor the night before, her mouth tasted like something had crawled into it, taken a shit and died from a maggot infestation. At least her headache was gone, though.
A groan slipped past her lips as she slowly rolled onto her back in the queen-sized bed. Waking was slow and painful. The muscles in her legs ached from her long and mostly aimless walk and the bottoms of her feet felt like somebody went at them with a baseball bat.
Note to self: it is impossible to literally run from your feelings. Especially in Italian leather dress shoes.
She blinked blearily at the ceiling and strained to hear what was going on in the rest of the apartment. But everything was quiet.
After what she said last night, did she still have Nuria as a friend?
Sage winced, remembering the pain on Nuria’s face when she’d spewed her frustration. The last thing Sage wanted to do was hurt her friend. In hindsight, she felt stupid saying those things to Nuria, a woman who accepted and loved all parts of herself, her bisexuality included.
Okay, enough of this.
Sage dragged her tired body from the bed, took a quick shower, and grabbed a change of clothes from the stash she kept there. Determined, she strode into the living room ready to talk everything out.
But the condo was empty. The spare key to Sage and Phil’s place sat in the middle of the kitchen island. Next to it was a note written on a hot pink Post-it.
HAD to run off to work. My client is acting a fool today. We’re not done talking.
Call me later. - N.
WHEN SHE STEPPED out of the cab and walked up to the home she shared with Phil, it was barely 9 o’ clock in the morning. The garage doors were closed down tight. No cars were parked in the circular drive. Just like at Nuria’s place, everything was quiet.
The long-limbed palms shielding the front yard from the street swayed in the breeze, and the half dozen crepe myrtle trees lining the drive shed their purple blossoms all over the green grass and gray pavement. A squirrel chattered and jumped between palm trees.
Inside the house, she dropped her keys into her pocket instead of the ceramic bowl by the door as she normally would. Nothing felt normal today.
During the last few months, she and Phil had been waking up together, having slow morning sex then sitting on the back verandah with their morning drinks, talking, or just sharing the quiet. A far cry from their usual drug-fueled fuck fest parties when they’d lived in Wynwood. The new house in Coral Gables with its quiet neighbors, fenced-in pool, and massive yard had been a sign of their changed lives, their willingness to change even more for the next step.
A baby. Marriage. Despair rolled over Sage in a chilling wave. All that was gone now.
She moved toward the bedroom.
“Phillida?” she called, her voice low.
No answer.
But the bedroom door was closed. She pushed it open with worry gnawing at her belly. The bed wasn’t empty. And Phil wasn’t alone.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The bedroom floor was a wreck of discarded clothes. A pair of high heels tumbled onto their sides near the door. Phil’s yellow dress turned inside out. Her purse. Black tuxedo pants and a jacket also lay crumpled nearly. The bedroom itself was dark, shades pulled to keep out the disgustingly cheerful sunlight. But Sage didn’t need light to see the couple entwined on the bed.
Phil looked ravaged, even in sleep. Her face, normally at its most peaceful while she slept, was swollen and tinged with gray. Her thick hair was still pulled up to the top of her head in a dark corona of coils and curls. She hadn’t bothered to take off her makeup or her underwear. Mascara smudged around her eyes and the pillow under her cheek was dusted dark with her foundation. The remainder of tears stained Phil’s face and, though trapped in sleep, she twitched like she was in pain. Guilt twisted in Sage’s stomach as she watched. Along with a sick satisfaction.
Good, at least she wasn’t the only one suffering.
Phil’s underwear, a matching bra and panty set in deepest gold, showed off her body to perfection. But that perfection was easy to overlook with the grief that ravaged he
r face. She was a woman in pain, and it showed. Low on her belly, the platinum chain with its infinity charm winked mockingly at Sage. A present she’d given Phil years ago.
Proof that nothing was forever.
Phil lay facing her bed partner, who also only wore underwear. Their hands were loosely clasped while they slept.
Victoria. Dez’s wife.
Her jungle of pale and dark curls tumbled across the pillow and around her face, hiding her expression.
Sage clenched her jaw so hard that it hurt.
Was this what she had done? Driven her woman into another’s arms on the worse night of their lives as a couple?
You didn’t do anything wrong.
But she ignored the voice trying to grant her absolution.
Outside the bedroom, she looked around in confusion. The familiar lines of the house she’d shared with Phil for the past year felt alien and hostile. The couch where they’d had moments of intimacy, sexual and not, dared her to walk away. While the scattering of Phil’s science journal next to Sage’s music magazines mocked her. Signs of their life together that was now…now what?
They felt like nothing.
Suddenly, Sage couldn’t be in the house anymore. In the garage, she took the car they’d ridden in the day before—they’d held hands on the way to the movie premiere—swallowing thickly at the hints of Phil’s scent still trapped in the leather seats.
She slapped the window controls, sending down all four windows with a symphony of electronic whines. Sage didn’t know where she was going. But it didn’t matter. Just like the night before, her friends had only provided her an escape from the scene of Phil’s betrayal. Now, she just needed to be on the move. Needed to be away.
But every place she passed, everywhere she looked, reminded her of Phil and the foundation they’d built together that was now crumbled to dust.
She wanted to howl like a grief-maddened wolf. Howl and tear things apart.
But she only drove on.
SHE ENDED up at the only place she could think of in the city that had no memories attached to Phil. Wilde’s, the bar where she and her friends met up for their last dinner. Phil had never been there. Perfect.
It was early. A few minutes to ten on a Saturday morning. And there was a crowd. Brunch gays waiting to get seated. A nearly full patio with the sound of conversation and laughter raining down to where she stood waiting on the hostess to find a place for a singleton.
“You can sit at the bar,” woman in the red blouse and black skirt chirped.
She slid onto the padded leather stood, leaned her elbows on the polished bar and ordered a Bloody Mary.
“Extra spicy, please.”
“Sure thing, sugar.”
The boy behind the bar reminded Sage of that boy Dez fucked their last year of college. Pretty and obviously gay. Clear, brown skin. A slim and supple body under clothes he wore very well.
Shit. Was she turning bi too? Checking out random dudes she didn’t give a fuck about?
Sage spun around on the stool to check out the rest of the restaurant bar. It was busy, nearly as busy as their favorite brunch place, Novelette’s, was on Sundays, a hurried collection of sights and sounds of professionals in uniform rushing between packed tables. Just about everyone in the restaurant gave off an air of carefree happiness Sage envied with a searing pain.
Stop being so fucking dramatic.
But even the harsh command from her own brain wasn’t enough to turn off the internal faucet of tears.
“Here you go, honey…”
She jerked back around on her stool in time to catch her elbow on the edge of the glass the bartender put in front of her.
“Fuck!”
With a rattle of ice and a crack of glass against wood, the Bloody Mary spilled all over the bar, all over her shirt, splashing her red and dumping freezing cold into her lap. The glass tumbled to the floor but didn’t break.
Sage cursed again and jumped up from the stool. Cold red dripped from her shirt, from her jeans.
“Oh, honey! I’m so sorry.” The bartender rushed around the bar with a cloth, trying to dab away the full glass of red cocktail with a few sparse napkins.
She wanted to be pissed at him, but it was partially her fault, so lost in her own bullshit that she didn’t hear him coming up behind her, spinning around fast enough that even the most attentive bartender would’ve been caught off-guard.
“It’s cool.” She moved back from his attempted clean-up. “Just point me to the nearest bathroom and I’ll take care of it.”
With a waving of hands and more apologies, he pointed then walked her halfway to a dark hallway where gendered signs for the restrooms dimly glowed. Walking bowlegged to stop the cold and wet from seeping any more into her crotch, she stumbled toward the bathroom.
“Oh, shit!” A slim shape coming in the opposite direction moved quickly out of her way then stopped. “You okay?” It was a woman, a young girl, who looked vaguely familiar although Sage couldn’t think of how.
“It’s cool,” she said, still making her way toward the bathroom. “It looks worse than it is.”
The girl followed her. “That’s not blood, is it? I can call—”
“Nope, just the blood of a few tomatoes.” Sage pushed the bathroom door open, looked over her shoulder in surprise at the girl following her. In the brighter light, she saw the girl wore a uniform with the name of the place stitched discreetly over the left breast.
“Oh, thank God!” She pressed a hand over her chest and blew out a breath of relief.
“Don’t worry, I wouldn’t sue your boss even if it was blood. This was all my fault.”
She grabbed a fistful of napkins from the dispenser and scrubbed at the front of her jeans. When they were as dry as they were going to get, she yanked off her T-shirt and shoved the whole thing under the hot faucet. Tomato juice trailed in a swirl down the drain and she quickly washed it then wrung it out as much as she could so she wouldn’t look like a homicide victim walking out of the place.
Suddenly, she was aware of the complete silence behind her. She looked up in the mirror to see the girl staring, open-mouthed, at Sage’s back and the reflection of her chest in the mirror.
When she realized Sage was looking, she snapped her mouth shut and took a few steps back. She stumbled into the wall and grunted, blushed, a subtle rise of color coming up under her pale brown skin. Not once did she take her eyes off Sage’s body and the tattoos marking her flesh.
“Uh…”
Flattering as it was, Sage wasn’t in the mood. She wrung out the shirt some more—fuck her stupid for putting on white on a day she was feeling this ruined—then pulled it back on. The wet shirt clung to her chest and arms, clearly showing off the sports bra underneath and the muscles she worked hard for in the gym.
“Do you want…” The girl’s eyes roamed over just about every inch of skin on display. “…want a shirt to wear?”
“I’m already wearing one,” Sage said, although she hadn’t planned for a wet T-shirt contest when she left home. “I’m good.”
The girl licked her lips then bit the corner of her mouth. “I have a shirt in my locker you can have.”
Sage thought about her options. It wasn’t like she could walk out of the restaurant without feeling self-conscious in the stained, wet T-shirt. She was too embarrassed to go back to Nuria’s for more clothes and going back to her own place wasn’t something she was ready to deal with.
“Sure. Why not?”
“Okay.” The girl’s eyes flickered down Sage’s body again then she backed out of the bathroom, not looking away until the door blocked her view. The sound of her footsteps outside the door told Sage she was actually running to get whatever shirt she had.
This is a bad idea.
Sage stared in the mirror but dodged her own gaze, her hands curling around the cold edge of the sink. When the bathroom door opened, she turned, expecting the waitress. But instead a trio of girls tumbled in on high h
eels, obviously tipsy.
They stopped when they saw Sage—which would have been funny if Sage had been in the mood for laughing—nearly tumbling down like dominoes as if they’d collectively run into a brick wall.
“Are you sure you’re in the right bathroom?” One of them asked with a twist of her mouth.
One of her friends shoved her shoulder. “Stop it, Mandi.” But she ruined the effect by giggling.
The last friend looked Sage up and down like she was the last piece of prime steak at an all-you-can-eat buffet. She pressed her lips together, staring with wide eyes while the other two disappeared into neighboring bathroom stalls.
The bathroom door swung open again. This time it was the young waitress. Breathless, she clutched a plaid button-down shirt to her heaving chest. Did she run the whole way there and back?
“Here.” She shoved the shirt at Sage, and the staring drunk girl looked between the two of them with curiosity all over her face and made no attempt to get into one of the other three empty bathroom stalls. On any other day, Sage would’ve offered to rock her world. But…
She took the shirt and shrugged it on. “Thanks.”
The pale blue plaid was a little tight around the shoulders and the bulk of her arms, but it covered the important parts and made her look decent enough to walk through the restaurant without attracting attention she wasn’t in the mood for.
“You’re welcome.” The young waitress shifted the backpack she was carrying over one shoulder. “You want to…?” She hitched her shoulder toward the door.
“Sure.”
Sometimes Sage didn’t know why she did half the shit she did. Shit with doors clearly marked “do not enter.” But she’d blundered with her eyes wide open and didn’t see why this time was any different.
She followed the girl out the back door of the restaurant and out into the warm day. Sunlight immediately sank into Sage’s skin, prickling up heat and sweat. Thanks a lot, flannel.
“I don’t live too far from here if you want to shower and …um…wash your clothes in the laundry room downstairs.” Her brown eyes were big and hopeful.
