by Karis Walsh
“I cheated on Jake. Last night.”
“Jesus,” Jan said. “What’s her name?”
“What makes you think it’s a woman?”
“Come on, you’re talking to me, not your mother or one of your prissy bridesmaids.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t ask you to…” Brooke wavered. Jan was the closest she had to a friend, but her mother had never approved of her lifestyle and would have been horrified if Brooke had asked her to be in the wedding.
“Don’t worry about it,” Jan waved her hand in dismissal. “I kind of figured your family would prefer a non-gay wedding party. Now what’s her name?”
“Andy,” Brooke admitted, feeling a little thrill at saying her name out loud. “The viola player from the quartet.”
“The quartet that’s playing for your ceremony? You do have a flair for the dramatic.” Jan laughed and shook her head. “And I’ll admit you have excellent taste. She’s beautiful.”
Brooke stared at the hands she had clasped in front of her. “I know,” she said quietly.
“So,” Jan prompted. “How was it?”
Brooke met her eyes and sighed.
“Uh-oh.”
“What am I going to do?” Brooke whispered. “It was so…amazing. I’ve never felt anything like it. But I hardly know her, and I can’t just walk away from my life.”
“How does Andy feel about this?”
“She came to see me before the rehearsal. I think she wants us to…date. To try.”
“I’m sorry it happened like this,” Jan said. “Maybe it would have been better if you had never experienced sex with a woman. Then you wouldn’t know what you’ll be missing.”
Brooke’s tears finally started to fall. “No. I’d never give up last night. No matter how much it hurts.”
Jan ripped off some toilet paper and gently wiped her friend’s face. “It’s never too late, Brooke. I know a lot of people would be hurt if you cancelled the wedding, but is it better to tell Jake now, or to live a life of regret and lies with him? Do you really think you can be happy with him now that you know?”
“It’s too hard to leave, to change.”
“It would have been easier if you had just gone out with me when I asked in college instead of trying to deny you were a lesbian.” She laughed and pulled Brooke into a tight hug. “Is this a bad time to say ‘I told you so’?”
“What should I do?” Brooke whispered.
Jan moved out of the hug but kept her hands on Brooke’s shoulders. “Do you want assurances that everything is fine the way it is, or do you want the truth?”
“The truth?” Brooke said, uncertainly.
“All right then. Drop the Maid Marian act. Stop waiting for someone else to make decisions for you. Stop trying to be rescued. Decide what’s right for you and how you want to live your life and go for it. You’re doing the same thing you did in college. So you had your heart broken, it’s happened to all of us. But instead of picking yourself up and going on, you ran away and surrendered your whole life to Mommy and Daddy. Now you’re going to marry a man you don’t love the right way, and you’re pretending to be someone you’re not. Either shut up and deal with it, or grow a backbone and rescue yourself for a change.”
“Wow,” Brooke said quietly when she could speak again. “How long have you been waiting to say that?”
“Since you packed up and left college,” Jan replied with a laugh. “And it felt good. Look, it’s not always easy to be true to who you are. I certainly know that from my own experience. But even though your family and friends may not approve of your choices, you’ll feel a lot more peace inside if you just let yourself be who you are.”
“Brooke? Darling?” Evelyn’s voice drifted in, her worry undisguised. “Are you all right?”
Brooke closed her eyes. She needed more time to choose, to decide. But she had had time. The years between her disgraced return home from college and tomorrow, her wedding day. Months of half-hearted attempts to delay the inevitable ceremony while she waited for some miraculous intervention to save her. None had come, and now it was up to her. She realized that she had already started to take charge when she went home with Andy last night, attempting to snatch a moment of truth in a life of lies.
Brooke grabbed Jan’s hands. “I may need a place to stay tonight,” she whispered as her mother knocked gently on the stall door. Jan nodded.
“I’ll be right outside,” she murmured, giving Brooke a quick kiss on the cheek. “Good luck.”
Brooke smiled faintly and unlocked the door.
Chapter Seven
Brooke knocked twice on Andy’s apartment door even though she had seen her empty parking space in the lot below. After two days of explanations and arguments, Brooke had an overwhelming need to see Andy again, to get some sort of confirmation that she had done the right thing, no matter how painful it had been for everyone involved. Her night with Andy had felt amazing, but it had gone far beyond sex, beyond the joy of being with someone who knew how to touch her, to make love to her. The feelings had gone deeper than her skin, and for that reason alone Brooke had been able to find the strength to face Jake and her parents and call off the wedding.
Or postpone the wedding, she thought with a pang of guilt. She had told Jake she needed time to think, to make sure of what she wanted, but she hadn’t been able to tell anyone about Andy or her questions about her own sexuality. She prevaricated partly because it was enough of a nightmare to go through the horrible task of explaining the situation to friends and relatives. But the real reason she couldn’t admit she might be a lesbian was that she wasn’t completely sure herself. Had her night with Andy really been so earthshaking, or had she been looking frantically for an excuse to escape the upcoming wedding? Brooke had to see Andy again, to spend time close to her and discover if her feelings were genuine or imagined.
Brooke sat on the hall’s rough carpet, determined to wait for Andy. She knew so little about this woman she was waiting for. Where she worked, how she spent her time. For all Brooke knew, Andy was on a date right now and wouldn’t even come home tonight. Or, worse yet, she would bring the date here only to find a desperate Brooke loitering on her doorstep. Embarrassing as that would be, Brooke couldn’t leave now. Jan had been silently supportive over the past two days, even when Brooke’s mom launched into her “What did you do to her?” attack, but she had returned to her home and job in Spokane. The thought of a lonely hotel room was too depressing, and most of her friends were Jake’s as well, so Brooke would have to answer their endless questions with less than complete honesty. She didn’t want sympathy or pity or another night of hiding her true feelings. She wanted Andy. Still, when she heard footsteps approaching, she wished there was someplace to hide in the bare hallway. Or at least that she had called Andy herself yesterday, when she went through the exhausting chore of cancelling vendors, instead of making Jan do it.
*
Andy wearily climbed the stairs to her apartment, wanting nothing more than a long soak in the tub. She had hardly slept the night before, and it had taken all of her concentration to stay awake during the Sunday matinee performance of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. She had put in a few extra hours of practice last night and this morning, mostly to help push images of Brooke out of her mind, and her shoulders ached from the added work.
The past couple of days had reminded Andy why she tried to keep drama out of her life and relationships. Brooke had managed to shake her carefully maintained sense of equilibrium, throwing her from one emotion to the next without time to process any of them. She had felt a sense of awe Thursday night when she and Brooke seemed to come together so effortlessly, but the following days had tossed her into chaos. She had survived the gut-wrenching realization that Brooke was determined to go through with the wedding, only to have it replaced by confusion when some unidentified woman called and said the quartet wouldn’t be needed Saturday night. She had spent the afternoon wondering whether Brooke had called off the wedding o
r whether she didn’t want to see Andy again and possibly have a repeat of their confrontation before the rehearsal. She had tried calling once but hadn’t left a message, and finally she drove to the church and sat in the empty parking lot. Relief because the wedding was obviously off warred with hurt and sadness since Brooke clearly didn’t want to talk to her. Whatever was going on with Brooke, Andy knew she needed to stay far away from her if she wanted to keep her sanity.
It took her tired mind a few seconds to process the silhouettes clustered in the dim hallway outside of her apartment door. She closed her eyes for a moment, but when she opened them again she still saw Brooke, sitting and leaning wearily against the wall with two large suitcases next to her. Brooke rolled her head to the side as she approached, watching her in silence. Andy didn’t know what to say. She was foolishly glad to see Brooke again, but now that she was here, there were so many questions Andy didn’t know how to start. So she stepped over Brooke’s outstretched legs and unlocked her door, picking up one of the suitcases and taking it into her living room. Brooke got up and followed her, hauling the other case and dropping it just inside the hallway.
They stood and looked at each other. God, I barely know this woman, Andy realized. “I didn’t expect to see you,” she finally spoke.
“I left Jake,” Brooke said quietly, her eyes icy blue and unrevealing. “I spent the last two nights with a friend, but she had to leave this morning for Spokane. I have nowhere else to go.”
“So you want to stay here?” Andy asked in disbelief. She was torn between a rush of desire to drag Brooke to her bedroom for a repeat of Thursday night, and an instinctive impulse to get away from this situation that seemed destined to be messy and disruptive. In just two days, Brooke had managed to upend her emotions, her sleep, and even her practice schedule. Andy didn’t want to imagine what damage a full-time relationship with her could cause. “Wouldn’t you be better off with your parents or a friend?”
Brooke laughed derisively. “My parents won’t speak to me, and most of my friends are Jake’s, too, so I’m not comfortable staying with any of them.”
“So you want to stay here?” Andy repeated.
Brooke crossed her arms over her chest. “After Thursday night, I figured you owed me at least that much.”
“I have to let you move in because the sex was great?”
“No, because you ruined my wedding,” Brooke answered.
“I don’t know about that,” Andy said with a shrug. “A lot of people complimented us on the music.”
“Very funny,” Brooke rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean.”
“No, I don’t. You’re the one who seduced me, then ran away so you could marry a man for God’s sake. How exactly is this my fault?”
“You came to me Friday. You said you wanted us to have a chance to get to know each other,” Brooke spoke quietly, her voice wavering slightly as if she was close to tears. Andy unsuccessfully fought the urge to comfort her, to touch her.
“I wanted you to stop the wedding,” she admitted, moving toward Brooke and gently brushing at a strand of honey-blond hair. “I wanted us to be able to start from scratch and get to know each other, to let you figure things out about yourself. But moving in together while you decide what you want is too big a step. I don’t want to spend another night with you only to have you leave again. You should go home.”
“No,” Brooke whispered, closing her eyes as if to block out those words. “I can’t go running back again.” She met Andy’s gaze again. “I don’t expect us to…” she gestured toward the bedroom, ignoring the faint rush of heat that flooded her face at the memory of their night together. “I just need a place to stay until I figure out what to do. I thought we could talk, be friends.”
Friends, yeah, that would work, Andy thought sarcastically. Just a simple wave toward her bedroom and both of them were blushing like infatuated schoolgirls. She casually took a couple of steps back. “Do they know you’re with me?”
Brooke shrugged. “They don’t care,” she said. “Well, they don’t know. It was hard enough to tell them I changed my mind without bringing you into it.”
“But you cancelled a wedding. How did you explain it to everyone without mentioning our night together?”
“I just said I needed to decide what I really want out of life before I settle down. And that’s true, Andy. I have to take this one step at a time, and the first was to stop the wedding. Once I have time to figure out how I really feel, I can spring the rest on them.”
And where will that leave me? Andy wondered. She kept that question to herself. “And Jake?” she asked instead.
“He gave me an ultimatum,” Brooke shrugged again. “I have until Christmas to choose between him and…”
“Me?” asked Andy with a frown.
“No, at least not you in particular. Between him and not him.”
Andy didn’t respond and Brooke tried once more, desperation growing in her voice. “I don’t have any place else to go,” she repeated. “My dad and Jake are lawyers at the firm where I work, so I don’t want to go back there. I don’t have a job, a home…”
She stopped and raised shaking hands to cover her face. It was as if in her need to make Andy understand her situation, she had finally realized the true consequences of her decisions herself. She seemed barely aware of Andy leading her to the couch and taking her into strong arms.
“Shhh,” she said softly, rocking Brooke lightly and stroking her hair, her own heart beating rapidly as she felt Brooke struggle for breath.
“I’m sorry,” Brooke finally managed, her head still pressed against Andy’s chest.
“No, I’m the one who should be sorry,” Andy said, her desire to calm down this obviously distraught woman overriding the instincts telling her this was a bad idea. For all she knew Brooke was some off-balance drama queen who was staging this scene so Jake would come to her rescue. “Of course you can stay here.”
They remained close together in silence for a few more minutes before Brooke gently pushed herself away. “I’ll make us some soup, if you’re hungry,” Andy offered. Brooke simply nodded and disappeared into the bathroom. Andy put her viola away in the music room, feeling even that space changed by Brooke’s presence. Her sanctuary had been invaded, and she knew without a doubt that things wouldn’t be the same with Brooke in her life.
*
She hadn’t realized just how prophetic her worries were until she came into the living room to check on Brooke before she went to sleep. Brooke lay on the opened sofa bed with a book, wearing a red lace negligee, with what looked to be the entire contents of her suitcases strewn on the floor. She looked up as Andy entered the room, smiling faintly for the first time since she had entered the apartment.
“I didn’t hear the explosion,” Andy said, torn between staring at the mess or at the lovely woman in the see-through nightgown. The nightie was winning the battle, and she hoped her face wasn’t as red as the satin and lace that barely covered Brooke’s ample breasts.
“I am a bit of a slob,” Brooke admitted unnecessarily. “But it only looks this bad because your apartment is obsessively neat.”
“Yeah, that’s it,” Andy rolled her eyes. “I suppose that explains the state of my bathroom as well.”
“I don’t know how you can survive with only shampoo and moisturizer, but I’m thankful,” Brooke said with a small grin. “Otherwise there wouldn’t have been enough room for my things.” Andy realized with some dismay that the woman seemed to have settled right in and made herself at home. Once the hurdle of getting through the door had been overcome, the apartment seemed to be hers, filled with her stuff, her presence, her smell.
“Can you come and sit with me?” Brooke asked, tentatively patting the bed next to her.
“Um,” Andy hesitated, “is that what you’re wearing to bed?”
Brooke looked down at her body as if she had forgotten what she had on. “All I have is the stuff I packed for my honeymoon in B
arbados.” She met Andy’s gaze, her eyes narrowing. “I thought only guys were turned on by this sort of thing.”
“They are,” Andy lied, walking into her bedroom and returning with an old blue robe. “But put this on. I don’t want you getting cold,” her eyes ran quickly over Brooke’s body. “Or should I say colder.”
Brooke blushed and slipped her arms into the robe. Andy sat gingerly on the bed next to her and decided she really hadn’t helped the situation much. Brooke wearing her bathrobe was definitely as sexy as Brooke in lingerie. They leaned against the back of the couch and regarded each other warily.
“Have you always known?”
“That I’m a lesbian?” Andy offered. At Brooke’s nod she continued. “At first I only noticed an absence of interest in boys and dating. I thought it was because my parents fought so much that I just didn’t want any part of having a relationship.” She avoided Brooke’s questioning gaze, not wanting to go into detail about her family right now. “It wasn’t until college that I realized it wasn’t a lack of emotion I felt, but that I hadn’t found the right outlet for my feelings.”
“Who was she?” Brooke asked, feeling a surprising twinge of jealousy toward this unknown woman from Andy’s past.
“Carol. She played the clarinet,” Andy answered. She glanced at Brooke out of the corner of her eye and smiled. “Let’s just say I learned to appreciate the soundproof practice rooms in the music hall.”
Brooke laughed, and Andy asked her the same question. “What about you? Are you going to tell me that until last week you had no idea you might be a…might be a…”
Brooke pushed Andy’s shoulder playfully. “Don’t make fun of me,” she said.
“Why would I?” Andy asked, an innocent expression on her face. “Just because you can do the deed, but you can’t say the word?” Brooke blushed at the memory, and Andy decided to let her off the hook. “I do understand. What we did felt so right, so natural. But it can be hard to accept the label and what it means in your life.”
