by SR Silcox
Luke walks in like he owns the place. He walks up to the rows of suits and starts checking them out. He pulls a red jacket off the rack, holds it up against himself and says, “Is red my colour?”
I laugh. We’ve already decided we’re both wearing black suits, but among all these men’s clothes I’m feeling like I don’t belong.
A sales assistant comes over and asks if we need a hand. “My friend and I are after a couple of suits for a dance on the weekend. And we want to wear them to the formal at the end of the year too.”
“Wait—” I start to say, but Luke waves me away. We’ve had this discussion before. I am not going to the Valentine’s dance next weekend because there’s no way I can watch Bridget and Josh cosying up together all night, pretending to be something they’re not.
The sales guy nods and I can tell he’s sizing me up. “It’s a bit late notice to get a suit for the weekend, don’t you think?” Why is he directing that question at me instead of Luke.
“Oh, I don’t need it for this weekend,” I say, giving Luke the evil eye.
“Yes, you do,” Luke replies. To the sales guy he says, “You’re a suit shop. It’s not like you’ll run out, right?”
The sales assistant sniffs. “Running out isn’t the problem. Sizing, however…” He lifts his chin and then turns and says, “Follow.”
“I’ll just watch while you get yours,” I whisper to Luke. “I’ve got plenty of time to get mine before the formal.
“No you don’t,” he says, and drags me off with him, following the assistant and his fog of aftershave into the back.
A few minutes later, Luke and I are both in black pants and white shirts, having jackets fitted. Typically for Luke, he fits the standard sizes and looks like he would be right at home on a red carpet. I, on the other hand, have to have my pants taken in at the legs and waist, and the jacket needs to be re-fitted. I feel a bit like Charlie Chaplin, except without the moustache.
“We don’t normally fit ladies here,” the sales assistant informs us as he pins my pants in.
Luke, of course, thinks this is hilarious. “I don’t see any ladies here, do you Quinn?”
“Not me,” I reply, managing a smile. As much as I love Luke, he doesn’t realise how easy it is for him. He’s always been popular and good grades come easy for him. People just like Luke. I don’t begrudge him that because he’s the best friend anyone could ever have. I love that he’s so open with people and what you see is what you get. He just fits in no matter where we are and what the situation.
I’ve never really understood where I fit in. I’ve spent most of my time lurking on the fringes, not wanting to draw too much attention to myself. I’m not confident like Luke is, and if it weren’t for him, I’d probably have spent my whole entire time at school sitting in the library. I’d have been one of those people that at the ten year reunion, no-one would even invite me because they didn’t realise I even attended in the first place.
That’s why coming out was so hard. It was easy to tell Luke because Luke and I tell each other everything. But since I’ve come out, I feel like I have “Lesbo” stamped in bright red letters in the middle of my forehead. Especially when I’m shopping in the mens section of the department store. I’d never really worried about what I wore before. I’ve always been a tomboy, preferring shorts and t-shirts, but for some reason, when I came out, I became overly conscious of what I looked like. Do I look too boyish? Not boyish enough?
The sales assistant leaves us to serve someone else, and so we can have a look at ourselves and make sure we look alright. Luke comes over and stands beside me and we both turn to look at our reflections in the mirror. He stands just a bit taller than me, and he’s broader by half. Typical footballer physique. He runs his fingers through his thick black hair, pulls his jacket down at the front, turns side-on, and then nods. “I think we get the jackets, but just wear the pants and shirt and a tie on the weekend. Leave the jacket for the formal. What do you think?”
“I told you I’m not going this weekend.”
“Yes you are,” Luke says. “I already bought your ticket.”
“I’ll just pay you back.” I tug at my collar. It’s making me feel claustrophobic.
Luke pulls my hand away and grabs me by my shoulders. “You can repay me by coming to the dance and enjoying yourself.”
“Do I have a choice?”
Luke grins. “Nope.” He takes a step back and sizes me up. “You know,” he says, “If I were a lesbian, I’d totally go for you.”
I smile in spite of myself. “And if you were gay, I’d totally set you up with my best friend.”
Luke punches me lightly on the arm. “You look good, Quinn.” He tussles my fringe. “A bit of work on the hair and you’ll make a fine looking lesbian.”
“Are you sure you’re not gay?”
Luke grins into the mirror. “You should ask Brittany to the Valentine’s dance.”
I pull a face. “I don’t want to go with you, or Brittany or anyone else,” I say.
“Imagine running into you two,” a voice says behind us, and Luke and I both spin around. Brittany pops her head around the rack and waves.
“Speak of the devil,” Luke says out of the side of his mouth. I blanch.
“Hi,” Brittany says in her sing-song voice. “Formal fittings?”
“Something like that,” Luke replies. “What are you doing here?”
“Oh, just picking up a shirt for Matt for the dance. That guy is so painful. I told him to get the sky blue and he came back with powder blue. Can you believe it? He’s got no fashion sense. Brothers, right?” Brittany shakes her head. She turns to me. “I was so happy when Shelley told me you’d bought a ticket to the formal, Quinn. The class photo wouldn’t have been the same without you. And wow. A suit, huh?” She looks me up and down and Luke nudges me and winks. I resist the urge to roll my eyes.
“Yeah,” is all I can reply before Brittany’s off again.
“So, are you wearing a bow tie? Because that would just be so cute.” She reaches out and adjusts my collar.
“Maybe,” Luke replies. “We haven’t decided.”
“Well keep it in mind,” Brittany says, her smile so fake even a blind man could spot it. “Are you going to the dance on the weekend?”
“Yep, we’re going together,” Luke says before I can respond. “Looking forward to it.”
“Oh.” Brittany’s face drops a little. “Well that leaves me dateless,” she says.
“You can always come with us,” Luke says. “You don’t mind, do you Quinn?” He raises an eyebrow. Why do I get the feeling he’s set this up?
“Actually, I—” Luke kicks me with his foot.
“Are you sure?” Brittany asks, looking at me hopefully.
“It’s fine,” I reply, though it’s far from fine. This is what I get for lying to my best friend. I feel like throwing up.
The sales assistant returns, saving us from any more of Brittany’s not so subtle attempts at flirting.
“Well,” she says. “I’d better get going. I have to get my make up done before the party tonight. See you guys later.” She waves and then flounces off toward the counter.
“I’m going to kill you,” I mouth to Luke as the sales assistant flips through his notebook. Luke just blows me an air kiss back.
“So I’ve worked out a price,” the sales assistant says. He looks up at Luke. “For you, it will be the standard hire charge of one hundred and fifty dollars. Unless, of course, it needs dry-cleaning,” he says out of the side of his mouth. “And for you,” he says, turning to me, “it will be two-hundred and fifty dollars.”
“Why is mine more?” I ask. I only budgeted two hundred for the whole formal.
“The adjustments that need to be made. We can’t re-hire that suit once we alter it, so you’re going to need to buy it. And we have to add an express charge to get it to you by the end of the week. You really should have come in earlier.” Why do I get the feeling he�
�s admonishing me more than Luke?
“But there’ll be less material in it than Luke’s,” I protest. The guy just looks at me. I’m sure he’s gay, and he’s probably pretty sure I’m a lesbian. I thought we were supposed to stick together? A little bit of solidarity wouldn’t go astray.
“We make our suits for a standard size man,” he says, emphasising ‘man’ and indicating that Luke fits the ‘standard man’ mould. I’m just about to reply that he obviously doesn’t wear the suits when Luke steps in. “It’ll be fine. You’ll get two wears out of it anyway. At least you only have to pay once. I have to pay twice. We’ll go with the suits, right Quinn?”
Luke’s right. I can probably pick up some more shifts at work to cover the extra costs.
“Fine,” I agree, and the assistant puts on an electric smile. “I’ll need a fifty percent deposit.”
I sigh and pull out my key card. There goes what’s left in my bank account.
Luke turns down the stereo as he pulls in to my driveway. “I told you Brittany likes you,” he says.
“Did you set that up?” I ask, not answering his question.
Luke lets out a breath. “I’m trying to help,” he replies. “I know the whole gay thing’s hard for you.”
“While I appreciate you trying to be my wingman, I don’t need your help to find a girlfriend.”
“I wouldn’t have to be your wingman if you’d ask girls out yourself,” Luke replies.
“I’m perfectly capable of asking girls out,” I reply, though that’s mostly a lie.
“I just put an opportunity in front of you and you still couldn’t do it,” Luke counters.
“Maybe I’m just not ready for a girlfriend,” I reply. “I have other things to concentrate on.”
“Like what?”
“Like, finishing school.”
Luke lays his head back on his seat. “I was just trying to help,” he says.
“I know.”
He blows out a breath. “It’s hard for you, isn’t it?”
“What is?”
“The whole gay thing?”
I shrug. “It’s okay, I guess.”
Luke turns to look at me again. “I mean, I can just walk up to a girl and ask her out. The worst thing that can happen is she says no. You have to try to work out whether she’s into girls or not first.”
I snort. “You could just as easily ask a girl out and she rejects you because she’s not into guys.”
Luke smiles. “Yeah, but it’s not that common, is it?”
I shake my head.
“You know, I think I always knew that you were gay,” he says out of the blue.
It takes me by surprise. “Really? You never said that when I told you.”
“I know. I guess thinking something and hearing it for real are two different things. I never really thought about how I’d react if you ever told me.”
“You reacted pretty well for someone I was meant to marry,” I say.
Luke laughs and turns off the engine. “You know Quinn, if you ever need to talk, I mean really talk, you know you can count on me.”
“I know.” This is the Luke that no-one else gets to see except me. Everyone else gets to see footballer Luke. The tall tough guy. The guy that smashes the opposition on the football field.
I get the sensitive Luke. The guy who tells me he wants to be a vet instead of a doctor like his dad wants him to be because animals need people caring for them more than people do.
“Hey,” he says all of a sudden. “You’re coming tonight, right?”
“It’ll just be a bunch of people getting drunk and acting like idiots.”
“And?”
“And, it’s stupid.”
“Brit’s going,” Luke says, wiggling his eyebrows at me.
“Is she?” I ask. I definitely do not want to go then. “I told Mum I’d stay home and watch a movie with her. The anniversary’s coming up, and you know how she gets.”
Luke nods but he still pushes. “You could come after the movie and let your hair down. Stay for an hour or so and if you’re over it, I’ll take you home.”
I sigh. “I’ll see how I feel later.”
Luke grins. “I’ll call you later.”
I get out of the car. “Whatever.”
FOUR
Luke and I have to park a block away and walk back to Josh’s house. His is the last place I want to be and if Luke had told me he was the one having the party, I would’ve flat out refused. In the end, Mum was the one who convinced me to go instead of staying at home with her. She pulled the ‘Dad would want you to go out and enjoy your final year of school’ card, so I really couldn’t say no without upsetting her.
Luke and I walk in and straight away he’s accosted by his football mates. There’s a lot of backslapping and secret handshake stuff. You wouldn’t know they’d finished at the bottom of the table last year the way they carry on with each other. They’re all just heroes in their own minds. Always have been.
“Come on,” Luke says, grabbing my hand and pulling me through the crowd. We weave our way past dancing, sweaty bodies. I don’t recognise half of these people but I’m not surprised. It would be just like Josh to have an open house party. I follow Luke through to the kitchen, where there are empty bottles all over the island bench and eskies and kegs shoved in wherever they’ll fit.
“What do you want to drink?” Luke asks, sifting through the ice in one of the eskies.
“Surprise me,” I reply. “Just nothing alcoholic.”
“Suit yourself,” he says. He scrounges around and hands me a Coke and opens a beer for himself.
Some girls stumble in in search of more drinks. They pull open the fridge door and take out a bottle of wine.
“Hey, Luke,” one of the girls says. “You should come upstairs later. They’re playing strip poker.”
Luke laughs. “I’ll see,” he says.
“Sure,” she replies, and busies herself trying to pour a drink from a keg. She’s failing miserably. I lean over and take the tap from her, hold her cup underneath, and pour her a drink.
“Thanks,” she says.
“No problem.” Pouring a beer was something Dad taught me. Mum would totally freak out if she knew.
Luke slaps me on the shoulder. “Come on. I’ll show you out the back. Wait til you see the pool.” He turns and heads out the back door. With nothing better to do, I follow him outside.
It’s a lot quieter outside than it is inside. I can hear the thump of the music but it’s nowhere near as loud as when we were in the kitchen. There are pink and yellow fairy lights everywhere through the garden, and the pool’s shining an iridescent blue. Luke runs over and leaps into a giant beanbag that’s sitting beside the gazebo. I wander the long way around the pool, past a couple of people I don’t know making out on deck chairs. Doesn’t anyone do that in private anymore?
I sit down on a chair beside Luke. “Is this it?” I ask.
Luke laughs. “You’re so jealous.” He’s so right. When we were kids, Luke and I used to talk about buying a place like this when we grew up. Two stories, with ten bedrooms and five bathrooms. A pool, spa and a waterfall that you can dive off. Now I wonder why anyone would want a house so big.
“So have you decided what you want to do after school yet?” Luke asks, taking a swig of his beer.
“Bumming around I guess.”
“Isn’t that what we’ve been doing for the past eleven years?”
“Speak for yourself,” I reply. “I’ve been working my ass off just to get to the formal so I can wear a penguin suit and look like a dick beside you.” Luke snorts and leans back into the bean bag.
He sighs. “It’s scary isn’t it?”
“What is?”
“Growing up,” Luke replies.
“You haven’t even had one beer Luke. You can’t be philosophizing yet.”
He laughs and then he says, “Why do our parents tell us we can do whatever we want to do, but push us to do what
they want anyway?”
A thought occurs to me. “Have you told your dad you’re applying for vet science yet?”
Luke just shakes his head.
“When exactly are you going to tell him?”
“When I get accepted.”
“Luke—”
“Hey!” he sits up. “When exactly are you going to tell your mum you don’t want to go to uni?”
“Ouch, Luke,” I say, putting my hand on my chest like I’ve been shot.
He slaps my knee. “At least we can both disappoint our parents together,” he says.
It’s a balmy night. Summer is hanging around a bit longer this year. I lay back on the chair and look up at the sky. Luke was right to call me out on not telling Mum about uni. In my defence, I’m still undecided if I’ll go or not. I’m thinking of picking something like an Arts degree and deferring for a year but even then Mum won’t be happy. She’ll want me to be doing something instead of nothing, but the hardest thing to tell her would be that I don’t know what I want to do.
I hear giggling coming from behind the gazebo, and then Brittany and a couple of her friends emerge from the bushes. They’re all holding drinks and laughing. I’d say they’ve had a few already. They stop laughing when they see me.
“Hey, Quinn,” Brittany says. She’s slurring just a bit, and her hair is mussed up. I wonder what she’s been doing back there.
“Hey.”
“I’m glad you came,” she says, smiling.
“I need another drink,” the girl in the pink dress says as she sways.
“Me too,” says the one in the yellow dress. “Coming?”
“You go in,” Brittany says. “I’ll be in soon.”
Yellow Dress raises her eyebrow, but she takes Pink Dress by the arm and they head inside whispering and giggling.
Luke drains the last of his beer and stands up. “I’m going to get another drink. Do you want one?”
“I’m good.”
“Are you sure? You look like you could use one.”
I give him the evil eye and he laughs. “Back in a minute,” he says and heads off toward the house. “I’ll bring you something back.”
Brittany walks toward me and motions for me to move over. I swing my feet around so I’m sitting sideways on the chair. She sits down beside me. I instinctively pull my hands into my lap and try to keep some distance between us without being too obvious.
