by Mia Archer
Amy sighed and shook her head. Then she surprised me by burying her face in her hands. “Claire, Claire, Claire…”
“What?”
I was fully expecting the beginning of one hell of a pity party. I was thinking we might break out the ice cream, my mom always kept a stash of the stuff in the freezer for emergency situations, and maybe even break into some of the booze, my dad always kept a stash of the stuff in the pantry for emergency situations.
“You’re a fucking idiot, Claire.”
I blinked. “Excuse me?”
“You’ve been carrying a torch for Allison all these years, and that’d despite what Allison did to you. That’s despite her trying to keep everything you did hush hush, not that she did a very good job of it.”
I know I was latching onto the wrong thing, but that last bit was too juicy to pass up. “What are you talking about? I never told anyone.”
Amy shrugged. “I don’t know if she said something to somebody or if someone saw the two of you running off into the sunset together after you were getting way up close and personal by that bonfire and put two and two together.”
I opened my mouth to protest but she held up a hand to cut me off. “People saw that. It’d be impossible for people not to see it. Remember you were a never ending fount of cheap gossip back then. I’d probably be able to piece together most of what happened that night from rumors even if you hadn’t told me everything. God knows I’ve had enough people pestering me about it over the years thinking I knew something, which I did but I’m not telling.”
I leaned against the counter, stunned. I figured people talked about me, but this was the first I’d heard of people knowing about that night. Or thinking they knew about that night. Trying to piece together that night based on a couple of eyewitnesses and then years of the telephone game. I knew no one had a direct account because Allison and I were the only witnesses, I’d only ever told my sister, and I knew for sure that nobody who was in the know was blabbing for their own reasons.
Not that I gave a fuck if people knew. Let them think I ran off with Allison and had some fun. I was already out and proud. It’s not like it was any skin off my back. Allison, on the other hand, well that was a delicious thought knowing that everyone suspected that about her when she’d been so terrified for so long about that very thing being revealed. It seemed like the ultimate poetic justice.
“You’re welcome, by the way,” Amy said.
“What for?”
“For keeping your secret all that time. Do you have any idea what it was like being the younger sister who was left behind while you went off to college? I still have people asking me about that,” she said.
“Still? You’d think people would be over that. It’s ancient history,” I said.
Amy rolled her eyes. “We live in a town where the “new” part of the bowling alley was built in the mid-’80s. There’s no such thing as ancient gossip ‘round these here parts.”
“Right. I guess I hadn’t thought of it that way,” I said.
I’d gotten used to life in the city. I’d gotten used to the rumor mill at the bar where relationships were made and broken fast and gossip ran at very nearly the speed of light. There if it didn’t happen ten minutes ago then it was already ancient history.
I guess the pace of life was a little different here. I’d just never noticed because I didn’t have to live here as an adult and I’d done my best to avoid the place since breaking free from the tyranny of small town America.
“Don’t think that gets you off the hook, by the way,” Amy said.
“What are you talking about?”
“You’re still an idiot.”
“You keep saying that. How am I an idiot?”
Amy rolled her eyes. “You need to figure out how you feel about this girl. Do you want her or not?”
“What does that have to do with anything? She’s got a boyfriend. She’s made it pretty damn clear on two occasions now that she isn’t interested in anything more than a roll in the hay with me.”
“That wasn’t the question I asked. Do you want this girl or not?”
I looked away from Amy. I didn’t want her to see the conflict plain on my face. Did I want Allison? Hell yes I did. I wouldn’t have thought of her with every other waking thought over the past five years if I didn’t want her. I wouldn’t have compared every other girl I’d ever been with to her, to that brief shining moment of pleasure on that lounge chair, if I didn’t want her. I wouldn’t have allowed myself to fall head over heels for her all over again last night despite my better judgment telling me it was a terrible idea if there wasn’t a part of me that hoped for something more than a one night stand with my former best friend and now recently former lover.
I just didn’t know how that was going to happen. She was confused. She was with a man, for chrissakes! I could sympathize with her. I could understand her situation, but I didn’t want to be in that situation. She was just figuring things out and I had things all figured out. I knew who I was and what I wanted out of life and I didn’t want someone who was going through all the bullshit I’d put behind me six years ago dragging me down.
“I do want her, but I don’t know how it’s going to be possible. I know who I am. She’s still afraid of who she is. I don’t want to deal with that.”
Amy let out a disgusted noise. “Listen to yourself. This is exactly what I’m talking about! Fucking! Idiot!”
I winced as she raised her voice. Then some of the anger I’d been feeling towards Allison broke to the surface.
“I don’t know if I appreciate that tone young lady,” I said, doing my best to sound like mom. It was something I did when Amy was getting out of line, more because I knew it irritated her to no end than because it actually worked.
“Nope. That bullshit isn’t going to fly. Think of that poor girl. Just like you said, she’s where you were when you were coming out. She’s confused. She’s probably a little terrified. Think about how you felt! Are you forgetting the night you told me? The night I found you curled up in a ball on your bed sobbing?”
I thought back to that night. I remembered it well. That had been a bad night. I’d just gotten cleaned up after giving myself a little treat with my vibrating pal, but the problem was no matter how much I tried to think of a guy the thing that kept popping into my head was the pretty face of some girl from my chemistry class whose name I couldn’t even remember now.
I’d cleaned up in shame, gone back to my room, and promptly broke down in sobs because that was the night I’d finally admitted it to myself. That was the night I’d finally broken through all the bullshit, all the assurances that Jesus was going to hate me if I was a lesbian, all the social stigma that told me people were going to hate me if I came out. That was the night I finally admitted who I really was after years of denial and telling myself it was just a phase. Amy happened to be walking by and came in to comfort me. That’s when it all came spilling out.
It was a hell of a thing to dump on a twelve year old girl, but then again it was a hell of a thing for a sixteen year old girl to deal with too. For that matter I figured it was a hell of a thing for a twenty-three year old girl to deal with.
It was a hell of a thing to deal with no matter how old you were.
I fixed Amy with a baleful glare that I hoped conveyed just how annoyed I was. “Y’know I really hate it when you actually have a point.”
“Of course you do, but it must really suck to be so full of hate all the time.”
“All the time?”
“Because I’m never wrong!”
I groaned and rolled my eyes. Great. Here I was dealing with big important issues that could potentially affect my love life in a major way and I had the amateur hour comedienne here in front of me trying to get a laugh. She was a lot more likely to get a good smack upside the head than a laugh if she kept that shit up.
Amy stopped me before I could get close enough to give her a good smack though. She pointed her
finger at me and I went cross-eyed because it was right in front of my nose and I couldn’t focus on anything else. I definitely couldn’t focus on getting in a well-deserved hit on my smart ass little sister.
“Think about how you felt that night, and remember that’s how that poor girl is feeling right now. Is it really fair for you to go all drill sergeant on her laying down ultimatums?”
“That still doesn’t mean I’m going to get with her if she’s not going to come out,” I said. “I spent my time in there and I’m not going back.”
Amy shrugged. “I’m not saying you have to. I’m just saying you should have a little sympathy for the girl. Particularly considering how you feel about her.”
“How I feel about her?”
Amy let out a frustrated groan. “Is it really not that obvious? Everyone knows it, or everyone thinks they know it. It’s obvious to me you’re head over heels for the girl, and you need to stop finding excuses to run from her and start chasing her damn it!”
I blinked. What she was saying actually made sense, as much as I hated that it made sense. We’d just had that wonderful night together, everything felt so perfect when I was with Allison, and here I was throwing all of that out because I was afraid of being pulled back into the closet with her, something that really struck a nerve with me considering what happened when I came out of the closet in this one-stoplight town, when what I really should’ve been concerned with was what this was doing to her and how I could help her.
I suddenly felt like a selfish bitch for the way I’d been acting. I suddenly realized that maybe I hadn’t been entirely fair to Allison. Maybe I’d been riding her harder than I should’ve when what I really needed to do was provide a sympathetic shoulder for her to cry on the same way that my sister helped me out all those years ago when she heard me crying and found me curled up in the fetal position on my bed wondering how I was ever going to make it in the world after realizing I was gay.
It was tough stuff to deal with, and it was time I started thinking about how I could help Allison rather than thinking about how I could continue burying an ax in a grudge that I definitely shouldn’t still be letting control my life.
“You’re right,” I said. “Man I’ve been acting like a first rate ass this weekend.”
“As long as you can realize what you’re doing. That’s the first step to recovery and all that,” Amy said.
I fixed her with another dirty look, but it rolled off of her like oil on water. She’d long ago grown an immunity to my irritated looks. Especially when it became apparent that it would take something really terrible for me to even consider laying a hand on my precious baby sister. I suppose she figured the same held true today even though she was anything but a baby these days.
“So what do I do to make this better? She’s out there at her house with her boyfriend, damn it. She has a boyfriend!”
“Yeah? Has she done anything to make you think she actually wants to be with that boyfriend? I seem to recall the rumor mill back in the day talking about how she had a reputation as the ice queen with her fellas. Did it ever occur to you that maybe she was the ice queen because she couldn’t find someone who melted her parts until she met you?”
“Her fellas? Melted her parts? Did you seriously just say that?”
Amy grinned. “What can I say? I might be a college girl now, but you can take the girl out of the small town but you can’t take the small town out of the girl and all that.”
“Right. And I guess you have a point,” I said.
Amy sighed and opened her mouth but I held up a hand to stop her before she could get it out.
“I know, I know. You always have a point. You’re always right. You’re always wonderful and perfect in perpetuity and I hereby acknowledge that here and now.”
“Damn. I wish I had my phone out to record that. Something tells me you’re going to disavow all knowledge of saying that in the pretty near future.”
“I can neither confirm nor deny, baby sister.”
“So what’s the plan, Claire? How are you going to win the girl back?”
I shook my head and suddenly I felt the urge to raid dad’s emergency supply of liquor, but I resisted the urge. I had a feeling I was going to need all of my wits with me as the day went on, and the last thing I needed was to get into the drink this early, no matter how much I desperately wanted to.
“I don’t know. I guess I’m going to go to the lake party this afternoon and see what there is to see. If what you said is true about how she feels about the boyfriend then I’m guessing an opportunity will present itself, assuming she isn’t still pissed off about the messages.”
“Messages? What messages?”
I blushed and looked away, but it wasn’t going to keep me safe from Amy. She moved around until she was in my field of view again, which looked like it was kind of an awkward position considering she had to contort herself so that she was looking up at me with a stern look on her face.
“What messages, Claire?”
I sighed. I really was an idiot for sending those messages last night. I should’ve told Felicia and everyone else to fuck off and let me have my fun. I should’ve told them I was feeling more than a revenge bang. Basically I should’ve done anything but what I actually did, but then again I could say the same about a lot of the decisions I’d made the night before.
“I might have been getting messages from some of the girls at the bar back in the city, and I might have maybe been leaving them with the not-quite-true impression that I was just out here for a revenge fuck, and Allison might have gotten her hands on my phone this morning and maybe sort of read some of those messages before her boyfriend showed up and ruined her chances at blowing up at me for what I said.
Amy sighed. “Claire, Claire, Claire…”
“What?” I said, perhaps a bit more defensively than I intended.
“You’re a fucking idiot.”
I didn’t say anything. What was there to say? I’d dug my hole, and now it was time to try and dig myself out. Assuming Allison was even interested. Assuming Amy was even right, which she wasn’t always despite how confident she seemed as we sat here chatting.
I’d just have to go to that stupid party by the lake, do the very thing I’d been promising myself I’d never do again not twenty minutes ago, and see what happened. Hope I hadn’t screwed things up too much.
22: What Are You Doing Here?
I sat at the breakfast bar in the kitchen steaming about how there was absolutely nothing in the house to eat. You’d think my parents would leave something that wasn’t perishable behind in case I decided to visit. As it was the only thing in the house was some takeout in the fridge that looked highly questionable and my half finished soda from yesterday that definitely didn’t make for an appetizing breakfast.
Damn it. That was just making me even more irritable, and this was already a morning where the irritability was off the charts. The things I’d seen on Claire’s phone, those hurtful messages, getting ready to give her a piece of my mind only to have Kyle show up which was one hell of a surprise.
Yeah, I was not a happy camper this morning. It didn’t help that I could already hear an intermittent bass thump coming from down the beach where they were setting up for the party that would start this afternoon and go into the night. A party just like the one five years ago where this entire fucking thing had started in the first place.
That thumping was another reminder of all the screw-ups that had happened in the past twenty-four hours. As though I needed another reminder.
Of course there was one hell of a reminder sitting on the other side of the island from me smiling with no idea anything was wrong. He was still completely oblivious even after the way Claire had stormed out of the house. Just about anybody would’ve picked up on that, but Kyle sat there with a goofy smile on his face that I hated even as I hated myself for hating it.
It’s not like it was his fault that he had no idea I’d just had a night of
passionate sex with another woman. That I’d thought I was going to be ending my relationship with him right up until the moment that I was looking at her phone and realized this might not be the beginning of a beautiful new relationship so much as it was the end of a very ugly old grudge.
And he’d shown up right at that moment and ruined all that anger I was getting ready to unleash on Claire because what were a few texts to some of her friends back in the city next to my fucking boyfriend showing up and making it clear he existed and I was still in a very heterosexual relationship even as I was preparing myself to leave that world behind and finally take a step into the world where I actually belonged?
Yeah, I could see why she would be upset with me. I’d fucked up big time. What she’d done was nothing compared to what I’d done. Even if those texts had been a real thing, well what I’d felt for Claire last night was real too. What I’d felt for her that night five years ago when things got so wonderfully complicated was real. I was also pretty sure what she felt for me was very much real even if she was bragging to her friends about a revenge bang.
We could recover from a couple of silly texts she sent to her friends in the heat of the moment. I wasn’t sure how we were going to recover from what I’d done, though.
“So do you want to go into town for breakfast or something?” Kyle finally asked.
I sighed. I wanted to lash out at him, but I stopped myself. It’s not like that was very fair to him. He had no idea what he’d stepped into even if it was sort of his fault for stepping into it in the first place after I’d made it clear that I didn’t want him out here. It was like he was a laser-guided drama bomb that had landed with precision right at the spot where he could do the most damage.
I could focus on that. On why he’d decided to come out here when I’d specifically asked him not to. It’s not like it was the first time he did something infuriating when I asked him not to. Sometimes it felt like the man had no sense of boundaries if he thought he could get away with making some sort of grand romantic gesture. It was exhausting even when he wasn’t thrusting himself right into the middle of a major life changing event.
