“Kelly wasn’t involved,” Elliot said quickly, and immediately regretted the defensiveness in her tone.
“Nice try,” Rory said. “Was she at the bar?”
Elliot laughed. “Kelly Rolen? At a local dive bar?”
“Yeah, I guess that seems a little out of character.”
“Stranger things have happened,” Elliot said, staring at her bare feet in the hopes of hiding the blush coloring her face.
“But you believed I’d talked to Kelly, or she’d talked to me about something.” Beth pulled them back to the original questions. “Something that might get you fired from your internship?”
She pursed her lips and tried to walk the fine line between not lying to Rory and Beth without revealing the truth about Kelly. “After I left the bar, I felt blood on my face where the guy hit me with his elbow, not a punch by the way. I didn’t want to walk all the way home without cleaning up. I stopped by the office to use the bathroom, and Kelly was there working.”
“Wasn’t it late at night?” Rory asked.
“About ten, I’d guess.”
Beth sighed again and pinched the bridge of her nose. “One thing at a time. Was Kelly angry?”
She cocked her head to the side and considered the question. “I don’t think so. Anger? I mean I’ve seen her pretty angry, and last night she didn’t seem … No. Not angry.”
Both of them stared at her as if they expected more, but she couldn’t give them anything without jeopardizing way too many things. She searched her brain for something benign to say. “Oh, she gave me the Band-Aid.”
“Well that was generous of her,” Rory said scornfully.
“Rory,” Beth warned, “she’s going through a lot.”
“What about Elliot? She went through a lot last night, too.”
You have no idea, she thought, but said, “I’m okay.”
“You show up to her office at ten o’clock after getting jumped by a bigot in a bar, and all she does is hand you a Band-Aid?”
“She did more than that.” Elliot defended her automatically. Given the way she’d been dismissed the night before, it was surprising how swift the urge to protect Kelly overtook her need to be cautious. “She was great, really. I mean she was tired, and I surprised her after a really frustrating day. I snuck in the back door and bled all over her office. I probably scared the crap out of her.” Saying the words aloud forced her to think about those facts for the first time. She’d surely caught Kelly off guard. After the day they’d had and the altercation with Mrs. Anthony, Elliot showed up bleeding because she got into a physical fight with a bigot. God, what must Kelly have thought?
“You know her dad isn’t doing well?” Beth finally asked.
“Yeah, she doesn’t talk about him to me, but she goes to the hospital a lot.”
“I saw her there early in the evening. I’m not sure I helped the situation. She seemed … I don’t know, worn a little thin maybe.”
“She is.” Memories came back in waves. The pallor of Kelly’s features, the turmoil in her eyes, the way her hands shook. Hell, she hadn’t jumped into Elliot’s arms, she’d fallen. The woman was so damn stubborn, so strong and capable. She wouldn’t admit needing help, but she shouldn’t have had to. She would never say she was scared or exhausted or overwhelmed. Women like Kelly didn’t just lose control. They cracked, and Elliot had let her fall apart. Her stomach roiled. She hadn’t just let her fall apart. She’d taken advantage of the situation.
She rose and ran her hand through her hair again, then looked down at the shirt she wore backwards. She looked like shit, she felt like shit, and maybe she deserved it, but if she was in this much turmoil this morning, how must Kelly feel?
“Hey,” Rory said kindly, “are you all right?”
She nodded. “I am. Really, the bar thing, it wasn’t as big a deal as I made it out to be. Just some frustration got out of hand and I made a mistake, or I might have. I don’t know. But it won’t happen again.”
“Okay.” Rory rose and placed a hand on her shoulder. “We trust you. You just worried us.”
“Thanks, I appreciate it,” she said seriously. She understood what worry could do to a person, which was why she had to cut this meeting short. “But right now I think I need to get to work.”
Kelly awoke to the sound of someone coming through the back door. Sitting bolt upright at her desk, she looked around frantically until she realized she’d fallen asleep on a pile of client files. Horrified, she took her only solace in finding she didn’t appear to have drooled on any of them.
“Hey,” Elliot whispered from the doorway, but even the gentle sound sliced through the silence and caused her to jump. “Sorry. I’m sorry,” Elliot said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
Kelly blinked at her, trying to process her presence, so unexpectedly close, so vibrant and commanding in dark jeans and a hunter green sweater that made her eyes seem even deeper and more expressive than usual. She had to take a moment to decide if she could trust herself to speak. She finally said the one thought that seemed to dominate all the others: “What are you doing here?”
“I work here,” Elliot said, with a smile that showed more nervousness than she probably intended.
Kelly nodded slowly, letting the implications of the statement sink in. Elliot had shown up for work, or at least she wanted to work. She hadn’t quit. She hadn’t run to the dean to report her for sexual harassment. She hadn’t even called in sick to prolong the torture. Despite everything that had happened last night, she’d come back.
“I do still work here, right?” Elliot finally asked.
“Yes,” Kelly answered quickly, her relief rushing out completely on that single word.
“Okay,” Elliot said in a similar tone. “I really need internship hours, and I would hate to think that anything I did would have jeopardized—”
“No.” Kelly cut her off. She didn’t want to have this conversation. She didn’t want to rehash anything or unearth any emotions. “You’re a good intern. There’s no reason for anything to change.”
Elliot’s lips quirked up as the hint of something cocky returned to the set of her shoulders. “You think I’m a good intern?”
Kelly rolled her eyes, unsure whether or not she liked giving Elliot something to brag about, but if they could focus on her accounting skills instead of her talents in other areas, a little well-directed bravado might be a fair trade. “You’re a very good intern. Or at least you have been so far, and I wouldn’t want anything to change. We’ve still got two months left of tax season.”
“Point taken,” Elliot said seriously, “but if everything’s business as usual, why are you here so early? You didn’t sleep here, did you?”
“I did,” Kelly said with as much dignity as she could muster. “But I keep a spare change of clothes here. I’ll be fine to work this morning.”
“I didn’t doubt your ability to get work done. I just … I know you have a lot going on, business-wise, and with your father being sick … and then I interrupted you last night and … caught you off guard.”
She didn’t like where this was going, but she felt powerless to stop the replay of events she didn’t want to remember.
“You were really, um … wonderful. With my face.” Elliot hung her head. “That’s not what I meant to say. I just wanted to say thank you for cleaning me up and bandaging the cut, and not freaking out about all of that.”
“You’re welcome,” she said, her voice tense.
“I appreciate that you’re in a tough spot, and I didn’t mean to make things harder for you.”
Oh, for the love of everything holy, why is she still talking? Kelly’d said they could both go back to work. Why did they have to drag out the awkwardness? Were they destined to eight more weeks of dancing around each other and what they’d done? If so, maybe she needed to put them both out of their misery. A few moments ago she’d thought the most awful outcome involved having to explain what happened to someone else, but
now she wondered if having to face the living reminder of her weakness every day might constitute a worse punishment.
“You were good to stick up for me yesterday, for whatever reason, and to not throw me out last night. Maybe you only did it because of other things going on in your life. Or maybe you weren’t thinking clearly.”
Her head spun as she tried to follow Elliot’s logic or read between the lines. Everything about her tone and her body language had changed from proud to guilty or shamed. She recognized those emotions. She’d wrestled them all night, and yet at no moment had they stripped her bare the way seeing them on Elliot did.
“If you felt like I took advantage of the situation,” Elliot said softly, her voice more tentative than ever. “Or if I pressured you into something when you were not in a position to say no, I would go away. Quietly.”
“What?”
“I know you probably don’t believe this, but I’m not that way. I mean I never have been before, but if I forced, or pushed too hard, or coerced you—”
Something in her broke as she finally understood what Elliot was saying. “Elliot, no.”
She rose from her desk without thinking. The urge to comfort that particular torment overrode every instinct for self-protection. “You did nothing wrong.”
“Really?” Elliot lifted her worried eyes. “Because consent is a really big deal for me. And not just ‘no means no,’ but that only ‘yes means yes.’ I don’t want you to think I’m some sort of lesbian predator.”
“You did not force yourself on me.” It hurt to assume responsibility for something so damaging to her sense of self, but it would hurt even worse to let Elliot take the blame. No matter how much she wanted to avoid this conversation, she wouldn’t do so at the cost of letting Elliot consider herself a rapist. She touched her arm gently, tentatively, afraid of where these feelings might lead. “I kissed you.”
“I know, but you’re dealing with so much, and you’re exhausted and probably not thinking clearly. I mean, obviously you’re straight.”
“I’m straight.” Kelly repeated the phrase, hating the way it grated across her lips. How many times had she let that assumption stand? Had it ever hurt anyone the way it tormented Elliot now?
“I know,” Elliot pushed on. “And I’ve never done anything like that before. I mean even if you were gay, or questioning, not that I’m saying you are, or trying to recruit you or something, but if you were, I wouldn’t want your first time with a woman to happen like that.”
“My first time with a woman?” Kelly felt like a parrot, but she couldn’t think of anything else to say. Elliot thought she’d taken her lesbian virginity in a bathroom, then left her to deal with the implications of those events alone. God, she’d been so afraid of what Elliot might tell someone she hadn’t stopped to think about Elliot’s own fears, or even that she might have any. She’d simply assumed someone like Elliot had women throw themselves at her on a regular basis. How much had it taken for her to face those fears and to come check on her this morning?
“Kelly?” Elliot asked softly, “do you want me to go?”
“No.” She didn’t. Maybe she should have. A clean break would be easier, but they’d passed that point hours ago. She had made this mess. She couldn’t let Elliot carry the weight of it forever.
Her whole life had been a string of putting her own desires last in order to save other people. Doing so now wouldn’t be anything new, except this time she wouldn’t be able to protect Elliot with silence. For the first time in years, not saying the words would cause more damage than saying them would.
She took a deep breath and steeled herself for what had to be done, then in one swift exhale, she said, “Elliot, I’m gay.”
Chapter Nine
“Yeah, I’m gay,” Elliot said, then replayed the phrase. “‘I’m gay.’ That’s what you just said, right?”
Kelly sighed. “I said, ‘I’m gay.’ ”
“And by ‘I’m … you mean ‘you’?”
She rolled her eyes. “People generally use the pronoun ‘I’ to refer to themselves.”
“Okay, then,” Elliot said, nodding like a bobblehead. “I’m … well, I think … do you mind if I sit down?”
“Mind if I join you?”
“Please,” Elliot said as she flopped down into one of the client chairs opposite Kelly’s desk. Kelly took the seat next to her in much more graceful fashion, crossing one elegant leg over the other and folding her hands in her skirt-clad lap. She still wore her clothes from last night, which suddenly struck Elliot as intimate. Oh crap, would she find everything about her sexy now? Had she only maintained her professionalism on the tenuous premise of Kelly’s heterosexuality? Maybe she was a predatory lesbian. Would someone revoke her women’s studies degree? No. She needed to back up a bit, or a lot, all the way to the point where Kelly came out to her.
“You’re gay?”
“Yes,” Kelly said emphatically.
“So many things don’t make sense anymore,” Elliot said, “and yet some things that didn’t make sense before suddenly seem a whole lot clearer.”
“Like last night?”
“Well yes, a lot of things that happened last night are much less confusing now, and yet not all of them. I mean the middle part. I get where that came from, at least hypothetically, but other than the main event, there are still so many questions.”
Kelly sighed. “I don’t really want there to be any more questions.”
“Right. I sort of got that from you, and yet I still have questions.”
“I might not be willing to answer them.”
“And you have that right,” Elliot affirmed. “Your body, your life. I’m a feminist, but the thing is, those things also kind of spilled over into my body and my life. I’m not complaining about anything, but I don’t really know how I could’ve missed something so major.”
Kelly stiffened. “It’s not major.”
“Feels kind of major.”
“It’s nothing more than a coincidence of nature. You didn’t miss anything because there wasn’t anything to miss.”
“Until last night,” Elliot added. She’d always prided herself on her gaydar, and yet she’d been so far in the opposite direction on this one. “I thought you were a homophobe.”
“You mentioned that once or twice.”
“And you could’ve told me then.”
“I didn’t want to tell you. I don’t even like you knowing now.”
“Then why do it?”
Kelly held her head in her hands, her thick, dark hair falling down like a shroud around her face. “I couldn’t let you think you’d hurt me when in reality I hold all the blame.”
Her chest constricted at the anguish in Kelly’s voice. “Hey, there’s no blame here.”
“You thought you’d raped me, when in reality I abused my position of power and blindsided you, then kicked you out into an alley.”
“Okay.” Elliot sucked in a deep breath and summoned her best impression of Beth’s calm voice. “I think we’re both afraid of things the other person isn’t feeling. I did not feel abused, and maybe you surprised me, but I’m a big girl. I had complete control of my decision-making facilities. I didn’t stop because I didn’t want to.” She paused. “Did you want to?”
Kelly shook her head. “I should have.”
“But you didn’t?” Elliot’s heart pounded in her chest. So much hinged on the next thing Kelly said.
She finally lifted her dark eyes. “I didn’t want to stop. Not in the moment, but it’s a moment we’ll never get back. It changes everything.”
“Not really.” She tried hard to focus her relief amid a subtle twinge of arousal. Kelly enjoyed what they’d done while they had been doing it, but they had bigger issues now. “Not everything changed, and the things that did aren’t all bad.”
“I see no silver linings here.”
“No, you probably don’t, but …” Elliot spoke slowly, trying to give them both time to let thin
gs sink in. They’d only skimmed the surface of sex and attraction and sexual orientation, and they’d found plenty of complications, but at least they’d started a real conversation. “I respect you a lot more now.”
Kelly snorted and started to push up out of her seat. “I don’t know what kind of woman you think I am, but—”
“Wait, please.” Elliot placed a hand over Kelly’s and she froze but didn’t pull away, allowing Elliot to continue. “You’re juggling more responsibility than I realized, but you’re doing amazingly. You’re finding ways to get through and get work done, and I haven’t made things any easier on you. You got overwhelmed and acted in a completely human way. You’re human, so am I, and for the record I acted in exactly the same way you did, so I couldn’t condemn you even if I wanted to.”
Kelly shrugged as if maybe she agreed with the logic or at least didn’t know how to argue against it. “But afterward …”
“Afterward, you needed space. I didn’t really want any space, but it probably turned out for the best because I had time to think before we saw each other again, and when we did you could’ve thrown me out. You could have let me take the blame. I came here prepared to accept full responsibility.”
“I couldn’t let you do that.”
“Exactly, and that’s why I respect you,” Elliot said. “I get the sense that you’d rather have a root canal than come out to me, but you did, and I’m not going to make you regret doing so.”
“I appreciate the sentiment, but you can’t really control my regrets.”
Elliot almost laughed, the comment wasn’t exactly what she hoped for, but at least it sounded more like the old Kelly. “You’re right. I can’t control them, but I want to alleviate them or at least understand them.”
“What’s to understand? We have to work together for almost two more months.”
“We do, but it doesn’t have to be awkward.”
“Oh, awkward doesn’t even begin to cover how I feel.”
Elliot did laugh outright. “I take it you’re not a big proponent of the sex positive movement.”
Close to Home Page 12
