Worth the Wait

by Karelia Stetz-Waters

  Most of Avery’s conversations with DX involved DX suggesting ways Avery should enrich her life and Avery saying, No. There’s actually a lot of good reasons not to do that. Except in DX’s life there weren’t.

  “There’re no jellyfish here. And it’s not just about here.” Avery sighed.

  Avery remembered Merritt bursting through the doors of the Vale gymnasium like she had just run a long distance, and for a second Merritt had looked relieved and apologetic. Then Merritt had seen Alistair. Avery had read it in her eyes. First confusion, then hurt, then anger. Above Merritt, the disco ball had cast a snow flurry of white lights on the walls. Avery had wanted to throw her arms around Merritt. She had wished she had some excuse. She wished she could tell Merritt that Alistair had kidnapped her, that she had been drugged and had only now woken up, that her mother was being held for ransom and this dance was the price of her release. But, of course, she had no excuse. She only had a reason: She wanted to be on television.

  “We have history.”

  “You never told me about her.”

  Of course she hadn’t. When Avery had started at Vale, DX was about to go platinum. Every conversation they’d had for four years had been DX yelling over the sound of an after-party and Avery saying, You know I can’t hear you, right?

  “We were going to go to the prom together. As friends.”

  She was waiting for DX to mock her, but DX just said, “Classic.”

  “She bought me a dress. She loved antiques, and she found this old wedding dress. She said I looked like an old doll…but not the creepy kind with teeth.”

  “I kind of like the ones with the teeth. You’re just waiting for their little eyes to blink, like, Hello, Satan. Did you sleep with her back in the day?”

  A month before prom, Avery had spent a long, hot night in the sexuality aisle of Powell’s Books, perusing advice on how to make love to women, including a book by a man named Bingo Sterling. His book Cunnilingus! You Can! had recommended sticking her tongue in and out of a shot glass for practice. She was pretty sure it wasn’t going to be like that.

  “If I’d gone with her, I think we would’ve. It would’ve been my first. Hers too.”

  She had written I will! on her hand, in her notebook, on the bottom of her pumps. It was her mantra. She would not chicken out, no matter how much she blushed and stammered. After prom they were going to rent a hotel and stay up watching television, but before they turned on the TV, Avery was going to say it: I want to make love to you. If Merritt said no, at least she would have tried. She wouldn’t look back on her life and think I wasn’t even cool enough to ask. Avery had felt the anticipation in every fiber of her body.

  Then she’d done so much worse than not ask. She’d picked Alistair.

  “I didn’t even tell her what was going on,” Avery said as she finished the story.

  “Why’d you do it? Lesbians are sensitive about getting left for a man.”

  “I’d been talking to my mom about coming out. She said no one could know because it would follow me forever. Then a week or two before the prom, my mom introduced me to Alistair. I was so excited about King and Crown.”

  Avery got up and walked over to the fridge. Alistair had left her a King Cobra malt liquor. Good old Alistair. He did not understand that King Cobra was only comfort food in Stone. She cracked open the forty.

  “I just kept acting like nothing had changed. I told myself Merritt should have made a move. I flirted with her all the time, and she never really went for it. I told myself my mom was right. I wasn’t going to marry my high school crush. Should I ruin my career just to tell her I liked her? I thought there’d be other women.”

  No other woman had filled Avery with the sense of wild possibility, that feeling that she could wake up in the sunshine and grow wings.

  “I felt so bad after I saw her at the prom, I just couldn’t face her. I just left. I never explained anything. She was so alone.”

  Everyone at Vale knew rules didn’t apply to Merritt. The other kids thought it was because her parents were rich. Only Avery knew it was because Merritt’s parents were so definitively absent. Then one day near the end of Merritt's first year at Vale her uncle had learned of her existence and had trundled into the school office with empty suitcases. You’re coming with me. The other girls had decried the injustice. To move into an uncle’s spare room! With a curfew and dinnertime! Only Avery had heard Merritt lament, What if he changes his mind?

  “She’s not going to forgive me. If I’d only messed up once, maybe. But twice? And anyway, we’re leaving. What am I going to do, leave her again? Hide her in my trailer?” Avery sipped her King Cobra. It tasted like an alcoholic tea bag. She wished she could drink straight from a bottle of vodka. “I can’t come out. Yesterday a woman wrote me and said that her daughter died of cancer and the only thing that cheered them up before it happened was watching King and Crown. It was their last special thing. They trust me. What happens when I tell people like that that everything was a lie?”

  Merritt had trusted her too.

  “Damn,” DX said. “You’re screwed.”

  That was another reason why Avery hadn’t gone down to Alistair’s room to cry on his shoulder. She didn’t want to hear that she was a good person who’d just made a mistake. She wanted DX to slap her. She deserved it.

  “Don’t worry,” DX said. “I know what you’ll do. My helicopter is getting a tune-up, but she’ll be ready to fly soon. We’ll kidnap your girl. Tony and I will fly you out to Taha’a. Forget Tahiti. Taha’a is so pristine, you’ll want to eat the sand. And there are vanilla plantations. You can take her out into the vanilla on a full moon and ask her to marry you. Tony and I can fly over with a load of cherry blossoms and dump them on you right as you go down on one knee. You love that shit.”

  Avery imagined Merritt standing beneath a purple sky, the ocean lapping at a sandy beach in the distance. The petals would drift down like butterflies. But the reality was, DX would probably have to fly so low to drop the blossoms, Merritt would think they were being bombed—as though she wouldn’t be terrified enough after being kidnapped.

  “What do vanilla plantations even look like?” Avery asked.

  “So you’ll do it!”

  “Of course not.”

  “Well, don’t worry. I’m flying up to Portland. We got to wrap up this set we’re recording, and then I’ll be there. We’ll fix this.”

  Coming from DX it was almost a threat, but it was a threat Avery was glad to hear.

  Chapter 11

  For three days Merritt told Iliana she had the flu. The old Iliana would have shoved a bottle of Sadfire Reserve at her and told Merritt to get away from her before she got Iliana sick too. Now Iliana stood at Merritt’s door, a tureen of Lei-Ling’s dumplings in hand. It was the third bowl of dumplings she’d brought, and each time Merritt had told herself she was too depressed to eat. Then she’d smelled fried green onion and kung pao ketchup and had eaten the whole pile in one sitting.

  “Not again,” Merritt said.

  “You love Lei-Ling’s cooking. She made the homemade ketchup you like.”

  “I have the flu.”

  It would be nice to have someone who cooked for her when she was sick or to cook with her on cold, rainy evenings in February, Merritt thought. Not someone like Lei-Ling, who loved taking care of everything (kittens, puppies, babies, sick people, dying houseplants), but someone who loved her first and most, someone who hurried home to see her, who would hold her if she cried. She hadn’t cried in front of another person since she was in high school.

  She remembered the exact day: her eighteenth birthday. The Vale Academy secretary had brought a package to her in homeroom. Inside was a neon pink sweatshirt and a postcard from her mother. Wish you were here. The banality of the sweatshirt and the obvious lie—wish you were here—had shocked her into tears she hadn’t known she’d felt. She’d run out the room. Behind her one of the boys said, She really hates that sweatshirt. Aver
y had caught up with her just before Merritt had raced down the path. They’d sat on the steps while Merritt cried. I wanted a family. I wanted a place. She just found a man with a yacht, and I didn’t matter anymore. A few months later Avery had moved back to California and had never spoken to Merritt again.

  “You look like hell.” Iliana’s brow furrowed with worry. “Should I take you to the doctor?” She was wearing her white linen gi.

  Merritt ran her hand through her hair. “You’ve got class.”

  “I’ll cancel class if you’re sick.”

  “I’m not sick.”

  “Don’t be tough.”

  Merritt sat down on the couch. The windows of her apartment let in an unusual light. Rare summer thunderclouds had darkened half the sky, while the other half remained bright. Portland got that kind of weather only once every couple of years. You had to stay to see it.

  “What is it?” Iliana asked.

  “I’ve got to get out of this apartment,” Merritt said. “Take me somewhere?”

  “Of course.”

  * * *

  But there was no of course about it. They were just pulling up in front of the Sadfire bar called Tiny Sorrow when the thunderclouds broke. Rain pelted the windshield, almost erasing the sound of Iliana’s phone. Almost but not quite. Iliana’s voice rose an octave as she answered.

  “Honey Bear, what’s up?” she asked. A moment later she turned to Merritt. “Lei-Ling’s sister was supposed to run down to Fubonn and get a crate of clams, but she’s only got her Vespa, so she asked if I could…”

  The battering rain finished Iliana’s sentence for her.

  Half an hour later they were at the Golden Lucky Fortune, and Iliana was hurrying the clams through the back door. Next thing Merritt knew, they were seated in a booth near the window, Lei-Ling’s mother fussing over them and Lei-Ling’s little brother showing them a crayon drawing. Lei-Ling cuddled up to Iliana, protesting happily as Iliana shook rainwater on her.

  “Are Avery and Alistair going to put me on the show?” Lei-Ling trilled.

  Merritt had forgotten to tell her. “I don’t think so.”

  Lei-Ling’s face crumpled into a pout. Merritt hated Avery a little bit more for disappointing the Inner Child. There was probably a tipping point. One unhappiness after another and, eventually, Lei-Ling would become a normal human being who stayed up late worrying about global warming and whether lasting love was even a real thing.

  “But you asked, right?”

  “They plan these things way in advance,” Merritt said. “I’m sure if they’d known about you all along, they would have loved to have your dumpling truck on the show. I tried. I really did.”

  Lei-Ling’s face brightened. “And that’s important,” she said. “I have friends who’ll try for me, and that’s even better than being on a show. And I have my Pinyin.”

  That was her nickname for Iliana. Merritt thought it meant biscuit.

  Merritt’s phone rang. She rose and moved toward the door. “Hellenic Hardware.”

  The caller drew in a breath. “Merritt?”

  It was Avery.

  For a split second Merritt was a teenager again, delighted to hear Avery’s voice. Then reality reasserted itself like a load of shingles sliding off a roof. There was probably a term for this in Iliana’s self-help books. Childhood happiness withdrawal.

  “I got your number from our research department,” Avery said.

  “You went to too much trouble. The shop number rings to my cell phone.”

  “I’m sorry. I know you said you didn’t want to see me.”

  Lei-Ling looked over with bright eyes. Lei-Ling loved phones. She loved unexpected calls and dumplings and sunshine and rainbows and Hello Kitty pencils. She was so happy. It had rubbed off on Iliana. It had not rubbed off on Merritt.

  Merritt moved into the glass foyer between the restaurant and the gritty sprawl of Eighty- Second Avenue.

  “What part of ‘I don’t want you in my life’ didn’t you get, Avery?”

  Avery’s words tumbled out as though she were on a burner phone with two minutes left. “I was talking to DX, and she said I messed up big-time. And she said I should sleep with you on a bed of jellyfish, but that’s just weird. I want to convince you. I want to show you I didn’t do it. Even if you hate me, I just want you to know.”

  DX? Merritt thought everything felt surreal. Merritt had seen DX at the Moda Center, and now the singer of “Uber to Hell” was somehow listening to her personal problems. And Avery was talking so fast, Merritt could barely make out what she was saying with the rain hitting the glass foyer.

  Finally, Avery took a gulping breath. “That night was special.” She stopped.

  “I thought you couldn’t tell anyone. I thought it was so shameful you needed a twenty-page contract.”

  “Not shameful, Merritt. Never shameful.”

  Merritt wanted to believe her. Her chest tightened. Her heart raced. Maybe she would have a heart attack like Uncle Oli. She wanted Avery so much it was almost a physical pain, and it wasn’t just the desire for angry, emotionally unintelligent, off-brand-hotel sex. It was the longing for Avery’s words to be true. I didn’t do it. I would never hurt you. It was that longing that made her pull the phone away from her ear and, trembling, press end.

  Without looking back, she headed out into the rain.

  “Come back,” Iliana called out, but Merritt ignored her.

  Merritt had just turned on the truck and pushed the gearshift into reverse when Iliana appeared at her window.

  “Where are you going?” Iliana asked through the glass.

  “Out for a drink.”

  “Have a drink inside.”

  “You have fun with Lei-Ling.”

  Iliana placed a palm on the window. “Stay there.” She ran around to the other side of the truck and got in. “I’m sorry. You wanted to talk.” Iliana glanced sheepishly back at the restaurant. “I got distracted.”

  Merritt leaned her arms on the steering wheel and her head on her arms. She drew in a long breath to calm herself.

  “I’ve never seen you like this. What’s going on?” Iliana said.

  No one saw her like this. No one saw her true feelings. She’d held them so close even Iliana had only ever half guessed.

  “I lost the Elysium.”

  “Shit, Meri.” That ridiculous nickname! The old Iliana would never have called her anything but 'Merritt' or maybe, occasionally, ‘slacker.’ “Were you outbid?”

  “The Historical Society is going to protect the facade. But inside who knows. Wall-to-wall carpet.” The misery in her voice had nothing to do with wall-to-wall carpet.

  “Who’s going to put in wall-to-wall carpet?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  Iliana put a hand on Merritt’s shoulder. “I don’t want to be the asshole who says you could always buy another building, but you could always buy another building. It’s kind of weird wanting to live in your dead uncle’s apartment. That’s the past.”

  “I…” Merritt’s thoughts swirled. “It was Avery.”

  “What? Avery Crown bought the Elysium?”

  “I took her there on the night of the reunion. Then King and Crown bought it.” Merritt rubbed the heels of her hands across her eyes and leaned her head back against the headrest. “I slept with her.”

  “That’s huge!” Iliana said with delight that quickly turned to anger. “She slept with you and then she bought your building for her show?”

  “I think she slept with me so she could buy my building.” It didn’t seem fair that she should be embarrassed on top of everything else, but she was. She’d let her hopes grow. She’d watched Avery get in her Uber and she’d imagined a future of hot sex and homemade dinners. “It was that night. Somehow they finalized the deal in the middle of the night. She was afraid I would find out, so she slept with me to distract me.”

  “That’s coercion,” Iliana said. “That’s assault.” Iliana hit the dashboard wi
th the flat of her hand. “I’ll kill her. Tell me where she is. I’ll kill her right now.”

  “That’s not the way of harmony,” Merritt said with a humorless laugh.

  “No, but that’s what we would have done when we were schlepping pavers for Signa Concrete down by the port. We’ll take her to Mikey’s Bar, get her drunk, and bam.”

  Now, that was the old Iliana.

  “No we won’t,” Merritt said.

  “Okay, we won’t. But I know what we’ll do.”

  Thunderclouds still darkened the sky to the north. The halogen glow of used-car lots stood out against their darkness. Portland might be gentrifying, but Eighty-Second Avenue was still a wasteland of pawnshops and Asian funeral parlors.

  “You know what I’ll do?” Iliana said. “We’ll go inside, and you’ll tell Lei-Ling every detail. Lei-Ling will have every lesbian in America tweeting that Avery Crown betrayed her lesbian lover. Avery will go down in flames. King and Crown will go off the air so fast that network won’t even save them a parking spot.”

  “I can’t,” Merritt said wearily.

  “Of course you can.”

  “That show is her life.”

  “Merritt?” Iliana tapped her arm. “Are you crazy? She stole your dream, even though—and I did say this before—I don’t think buying your dead uncle’s apartment is moving you forward emotionally.”

  “It would destroy her to lose that show.”

  She imagined Avery falling to the ground in despair as Merritt exposed Avery’s true sexuality. The thought that she could have done that filled her with a strange alarm.

  “Are you protecting her?” Incredulity spread across Iliana’s face.

  “I can’t use her sexual orientation against her. Isn’t that against a lesbian code or something?”