by AC Oswald
Her body had shown her once again that it was a bad idea to think she could hide behind this mask for much longer. What would Bethany think? Savannah had embarrassed herself. Should she call her when she got home and apologize for ending the date so abruptly? Maybe send a text? Do nothing?
She looked over to Maggie, who hummed along with the song that was playing on the radio. She had apparently decided not to talk. But Savannah needed to talk. She needed to fucking talk about this. She could call the real Loredana when she was home, but all she’d get would be a big “I told you so,” something she didn’t need to hear.
When they finally pulled up outside Savannah’s apartment, Maggie cleared her throat.
“My money?” She held out her hand.
Savannah had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep herself from yelling at Maggie. She knew she had no right to be angry. Maggie had played her part as best she could and had done everything Savannah had asked her to. She owed her.
Still, she fumbled for the money and threw it on Maggie’s lap. Then she got out of the car without another word and slammed the door shut, which took about all her remaining strength. Once inside her apartment, she made a beeline straight for her bedroom and let herself sink onto the mattress, not bothering to remove her clothes. Her hands were still shaking. She rolled over a bit and opened the drawer of her nightstand to get her medication. She swallowed it without blinking and added two sleeping pills. The knot in her throat was thickening, and tears built up in her eyes, but she hoped the drugs would kick in too fast for her to care.
Bethany still hadn’t fallen asleep. She had been staring at the ceiling for hours now as if it’d soon present her with answers to all the questions in her head.
“Why are you torturing yourself?” Amber asked into the completely silent room.
“I’m not,” Bethany said quietly.
“You are. It still hurts you. Even after all this time, it hurts, and I don’t blame you, ’cause it’s only natural. Plus, we both know that something is truly odd here.”
Amber took Bethany’s chin in her hand. Her green eyes held Bethany’s gaze until Bethany let out a sigh.
“It’s not odd. She’s with someone else. These things happen. It’s not—”
“That’s not what I’m talking about, Beth,” Amber interrupted her. “It’s not weird that she’s dating someone else; it’s weird that she’s pretending to be dating someone else.”
Bethany tried to study Amber’s face in the dark room. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she mumbled and pushed Amber’s hand away.
“Babe,” Amber started again. “I don’t know Savannah like you do, but she was really thin, Beth. Thin and pale and weak and shaky. Don’t tell me she’s always looked like this.”
“She said she was dehydrated,” Bethany replied.
“And ‘Loredana’? I mean, seriously? The girl looked like Lindsay Lohan. I’m not buying it.”
Bethany had never before seen her so emotional. “Amber, I don’t know why you’re getting angry. It’s none of our business anyway.”
“It became our business when you decided to go on dates with your ex again, Bethany!” Amber replied, her voice curt. “With your ex who cheated on you and lied to you and who’s clearly still lying to you.”
Bethany sat up in bed, turned on the lamp on her nightstand, and glared at Amber. “You’ve gotta be joking. These are all empty assumptions, Amber. This is making no sense. You’re just criticizing because it bothers you that I’m seeing her again. At least have the guts to tell me the truth.”
Her voice was higher than usual, louder than usual. Bethany paused. This was their first real fight, wasn’t it?
“Are you closing your eyes to this on purpose?” Amber continued. “It’s not that hard to see the obvious, Beth; it’s happening right in front of your nose. You could save yourself a lot of pain if you’d be willing to see people for who they really are instead of always searching for the good in them.”
“Are you calling me naive?” Bethany gripped the sheets a little harder.
“No, Beth. I’m worried, okay? Have you looked at Loredana’s car?”
“I liked it. There was a rainbow sticker on the back door.”
“Beth. It was an old Geo Metro, probably built like two decades ago. Loredana is supposed to be a doctor. Doctors have money. They can buy far better cars.”
That was it. Bethany got out of the bed and put on her clothes.
“Where are you going?” Amber jerked upward. “It’s the middle of the night!”
“I’m tired of people treating me like I’m some child,” Bethany said, “as if I can’t make my own decisions, as if I weren’t a grownup just like everybody else, able to decide who to trust and who to talk to.” The zipper to her bag closing sounded like a screech in the quiet of Amber’s bedroom. “I’m tired of people telling me what’s best for me. I can decide what’s best for me, okay? And right now, that would be sleeping in my own bed.”
When she got to the door, Bethany turned and winced at the hurt reaction in Amber’s eyes. But Amber’s words were making Bethany’s head ache. She needed to get out of there immediately. The last thing she needed right now was Amber reminding her how deep the wound of her break with Savannah had been and how many unresolved emotions, fears and insecurities she was still carrying inside of her. “You’re just jealous,” she said with a groan. “You’re making too much of all this because you’re jealous that I used to be in a relationship with Savy.” Even if she felt sorry for Amber, she knew she had to leave.
“Beth, if I’m making this all up, then why were you lying here, sleepless, staring at the ceiling all night?”
Amber’s voice softened, and Bethany closed her eyes, as if that was what it took to make this all go away. They had been together long enough that Bethany could recognize the plea to stay buried in Amber’s words, and she paused at the door, her fist clenching and unclenching around the handle to her bag.
“Don’t want to talk about it,” she grumbled finally.
Something in Amber’s expression closed itself off, and Bethany bit her lip to see it. “Listen,” she said, “I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”
Amber just nodded. “Beth?” she asked when Bethany was already almost out the door.
“Mm?”
“I love you.”
Bethany froze. It felt good to hear Amber say it, to hear that she was loved. It did. But Amber was jealous, and Bethany couldn’t deal with this when all she wanted to do was get some unhindered sleep.
But none of this was easy for either of them; she knew that. And what would happen if she left now? Could she really do that to Amber? And more importantly, did she really want to be alone right now?
She sighed, defeated, and sat down at the edge of the bed again.
Amber, meanwhile, looked confused, then spoke carefully: “Will you hand me my MacBook, please?”
Bethany nodded, handed Amber her laptop, and lay down next to her. She stared at the screen as Amber opened Google.
“What are you doing?” Beth whispered, but Amber didn’t reply. Her eyes were fixed on the search bar where she typed in the name of the person who had confused them most during the night, Loredana Valentini.
“Two million two hundred sixty thousand hits?” she mumbled in frustration and tapped her chin. Her cursor went back to the search bar and Amber added the word doctor.
“Two thousand three hundred ninety two hits. That’s something to work with,” she said, scanning the page before finding the first link that looked promising.
“I fucking knew it,” Amber mumbled and scrolled down the webpage she had just found. Bethany turned pale.
The woman who smiled at them from the screen was dark haired, had huge brown eyes and a friendly smile and was we
aring a white doctor’s lab coat. Same name. Same city. It had to be her.
“Believe me now?” Amber asked. “So, if this is Dr. Loredana Valentini, who was that girl we met today?”
Bethany had absolutely no answer to that. She didn’t know what to believe anymore.
Chapter 4
Savannah hugged her knees, with her chin rested on top. The blanket around her shoulders protected her from the fall breeze. The chill air brushed along the skin of her neck and sent goose bumps down her arms. She felt at peace in these moments, felt somehow connected to the beauty in this world. Not having to wear her wig in the mornings made her feel free.
There weren’t many things left worth living for, but for Savannah, these quiet and beautiful moments were the rare exceptions. They made her want to do silly things, things she used to do when she was little, such as putting on her red rubber boots with the big white polka dots on them and running through the fallen leaves, jumping into puddles, and collecting chestnuts to take home. Those were happy memories—carefree. It would be nice to relive them, to feel the childish innocence of coming back home, exhausted from all the running and laughing, to her mom helping her out of her muddy clothes. Savannah would put on her most comfortable pyjamas and drink the hot chocolate her mom had made for her, always with extra marshmallows. The kitchen would smell of freshly baked muffins. It smelled like home.
The thought made her smile, and she wrapped the blanket closer around her.
Savannah didn’t know if she was sad that she was going to die. Once she was gone, she’d simply disappear, and it would be okay. It was worse for the people left behind, much worse.
She had often tried to imagine how she would have felt if her and Bethany’s situation had been reversed, how she’d deal with losing her girlfriend to some terrible disease. The idea alone was almost too awful to take, even though Savannah knew she was much stronger than Bethany. Bethany lived in a happy place. The world had always been beautiful in her eyes. Who was she to take that away from her?
She took a deep breath. The clear, fresh air filled her lungs, but she was scared. Why? Was she scared to die? Was she scared that it’d hurt? No. She wasn’t scared of pain anymore; she’d experienced enough of that in the past months.
Maybe she was scared of leaving this world alone. Of course, she’d most likely have doctors with her, but they didn’t count. She wouldn’t have family, she wouldn’t have a partner like Bethany. This was something she’d be facing all by herself.
She was tearing up.
She knew she could leave this world a little happier if Bethany’s face—those blue eyes she trusted, those tiny freckles on her nose, that loving look so pure and full of honesty—was the last thing she saw. She knew it’d be easier to leave this world if she had Bethany’s hand to hold.
But no. This was not going to happen. She needed to get herself together and face that. She was getting weaker every day, and as weird as it was to admit, she had given up. If another chemo could keep her alive for a few months longer, it wouldn’t change a damn thing about her situation. She wasn’t strong enough to do the things she enjoyed; she had lost the woman she loved. So why put herself through this miserable procedure again?
She had made her decision. She’d let her body decide when it was time to go, and until then, she’d try to enjoy these peaceful mornings on her balcony and the wind caressing her bare head—these beloved moments without her wig. These moments when she could just be herself.
She still had her memories, memories she could be thankful for, and those had to be enough.
Bethany sat up all night, brooding over the information Amber had dug up.
She was trying hard to find an explanation or indeed any reason to still trust Savannah, but she couldn’t find one. She was left only with a burning need to know; she couldn’t just ignore this.
She would have let it go if it hadn’t been that this mysterious, confusing Loredana—this person who either had two existences or no existence at all, Bethany had no idea—had been the source of her breakup with Savannah.
There was nothing for it. Confronting Savannah was the only way she would ever get any answers. Bethany grabbed her coat and headed to the place she once called home.
It was hard to stand in front of her old front door after all this time. Why hadn’t Savannah moved out? Wasn’t this what couples usually did after a breakup, move into new places to rid themselves of the many memories still lying like grease marks in the old walls?
How could Savannah live her life with a new woman in these same rooms she had decorated with Bethany, in the same kitchen in which they had always cooked together? They probably had sex in the same bed she and Savannah had shared for years.
Maybe it had all been easier for Savannah. Maybe removing some pictures from the wall had been enough for her. Maybe this was none of her business, since Savannah had paid for most of the apartment by herself anyhow. Bethany’s job as a hairdresser had never earned her that much money, and Savannah had always taken over the biggest part of the rent without complaint, without problem, without even a question.
She rang the bell with shaking hands. The times when she used to have a key to this door were long over.
She rang a second time, then a third, about to leave when she suddenly heard the crackle of the communications system.
“Who is it?” Savannah’s weak voice asked through the speaker.
“It’s me, Bethany.”
Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. What would she do once Savannah let her in? If Savannah let her in. Would she confront her right away? Savy was most likely going to switch to her defensive mode once Bethany started asking her questions. Even if the real Loredana was not the person she had met the other day, she suddenly doubted that Savannah would just admit it like that.
There was a moment of silence before the static returned. “What are you doing here, Beth?”
Bethany bit her lower lip, deliberating her next words. “Can I come in?”
Silence again.
“Give me a minute, okay?”
Bethany rubbed her arms over her jacket as she waited. She stepped from one foot to the other. It was a cold day, a typical fall day, and she could see her own breath in front of her face when she talked. Three minutes felt like thirty, and she was relieved when she finally heard the buzzing sound of the door being unlocked.
She stepped inside and wiped her shoes on the old familiar doormat in the hallway. Why change a doormat, right?
The door to the apartment was left ajar. Savannah hadn’t waited in the entrance to greet her.
Entering the room felt like an uncomfortable path down memory lane. It felt like coming back home from a long vacation, the moment when you step inside a familiar building and take in its particular smell, when everything looks the same yet feels different.
Savannah had changed some pieces of furniture and changed the pictures on the wall. But there was still the rug they had picked out together at IKEA back in the day. The same sofa was still there. Even the coffee stain she had once left on their armchair when Master Purr had jumped on her lap remained.
Poor old Master Purr. She missed him.
“I’m in the bathroom!”
Savannah’s voice shook Bethany out of her memories. She tugged at her shirt and smoothed it down a few times before sitting down on the couch. She tried not to look around too much, to not take in too much more of that familiar feeling. She was only here to get answers, to clear things up. If Savannah had really lied to her for some weird reason, then she could get the truth and finally move on. She could accept that Savannah had a problem being honest with her. She’d leave Savannah alone and go back to her stable relationship. She’d apologize to Amber. Maybe she should have listened to her in the first place.
But then Savannah came out. Her old swe
atpants were hanging loosely around her legs. Bethany knew those sweatpants; they were Savannah’s favorites. Her Sunday pants, she’d liked to call them, although it was Wednesday today. The white T-shirt seemed to be three sizes too large for her now. Her arms swam in the sleeves.
“Why didn’t you call first?” Savannah asked. Her voice betrayed exhaustion and just a streak of confusion. She sank down on the armchair on the other side of the coffee table. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t offer you anything to drink.”
“It’s fine, I’m good,” Bethany reassured her. How on earth should I start this conversation?
“I’m sorry I didn’t call, it’s just…I was in the neighborhood and…” She sighed. “Are you lying to me, Savannah?”
Now, that was a start. A very direct start.
Savannah’s eyes widened at Bethany’s words. Her face had already been pale; now it lost its last bit of color.
“Excuse me?”
“I’m sorry to come to you like this; it’s probably stupid and probably nothing.” Bethany cleared her throat. “Savannah, if you didn’t want to see me anymore, you could just have told me, you know? I wouldn’t be mad. I managed to get over you. I’m not planning to stalk you or whatever, so there’s really no need to lie—”
“Why am I hearing the word ‘lie’ so often?” Savannah folded her arms across her chest. “Who said anything about lying? I don’t even know what this is about!”
“It’s just…” Bethany closed her eyes for a second before she grabbed her iPhone and opened the link to the real Loredana’s webpage. She offered Savannah the phone.
“What the hell is this?” Savannah said. “All I see is some person who happens to have the same name as my girlfriend. Whatever you’re trying to tell me, there are probably tons of people with the same name, I—”
