by Mia Archer
Only I looked up at Kirsten and she was smiling with a twinkle in her eye. Definitely not getting upset hearing about the old girlfriend. Though Tiffany never even rose to the level of an old girlfriend really. More like a BFF that I desperately wanted to be more. And then it had all come crashing down when pastor Dan realized what was going on.
“Enough about the past,” my mom said. “Why don’t you introduce me to your girlfriend properly? No more of that sneaking around stuff and playing word games.”
“Was it that obvious?” I said.
I seemed to be repeating myself, but it was a question I had to ask. I thought I’d been so sneaky. So clever. And it turns out I’d been nothing of the sort.
Damn it.
“Honey, I’m your mother. Now enough acting surprised that I know your big secret. Why don’t you introduce me to this lovely girl the right way?”
I glanced up to Kirsten. Smiled. She gave my shoulder another encouraging squeeze. This really had gone far better than I ever would’ve imagined. I looked back to my mom.
“Okay then,” I said. “I never thought I’d say this, but… Mom. This is Kirsten. My girlfriend.”
Mom positively beamed as she looked between the two of us, and that beaming look filled me with a feeling of love and warmth that I never would’ve thought possible. It was such a relief to finally be out in the open. To have no more lies between the two of us.
“I can’t say how glad I am to finally truly make your acquaintance Kirsten,” mom said. She grinned. “Now why don’t you come with me? I have albums of embarrassing photos I’ve been saving for this day!”
I blushed and wished I could sink down into the couch as Kirsten hopped off the chair before I could think to grab at her. Damn it. I should’ve known today was going far too well and something was going to happen to ruin it all.
19: Good for the Soul
“Are you sure we have to do this?” I asked.
Savannah swung back and forth in the chair in front of my desk. She fixed me with a smirk.
“No, you don’t have to do this if you don’t want to,” she said.
I stuck my tongue out at her and flipped her the bird for good measure. I didn’t miss how she’d just taken what I told her when she was getting psyched up to break the news to her mom and flipped it around on me.
That whole heartfelt confession thing had gone a hell of a lot better than I thought it would. I figured there’d at least be a little bit of waterworks or maybe some wailing and gnashing of teeth. At the very least I thought her mom might be a little angry at her for keeping a secret for so long even if she wasn’t upset about the whole gay thing.
Still, dear old mom knowing everything about everything was still a bit of a surprise. It sure as hell had stunned me!
“I get the point,” I said. “I just wish this wasn’t so damn hard.”
Savannah’s eyebrows rose. “So damn hard? Are you seriously saying that after what I did with my mom?”
“Maybe I am?” I said.
It sounded weak even as I said it. She’d risked a hell of a lot more than I was risking, after all.
There was a knock on my office door. This was it. That knock sounded like a pounding. Though it was just a slight knock that Ethel used whenever she was trying to get my attention.
“Come in Ethel,” I said.
She stepped in and glanced between Savannah and me. It was a neutral glance. If she thought it was odd that she I was asking her in here and keeping Savannah around then she didn’t say anything. No, she just moved to stand by my desk.
“How can I help you?” she asked.
I took a deep breath. It was now or never. It was almost too bad that telling my parents hadn’t been the big drawn out thing it was with Savannah’s mom. No, they’d known about my situation for quite some time. They were just happy to meet Savannah.
It wasn’t even the first time I’d brought a girlfriend home to them, though those instances had been few and far between. Very few of my girlfriends had lasted long enough to even really be called girlfriends, let alone get to the point where I wanted to take them home. The few who had been around long enough to come home with me for a holiday or something usually weren’t interested in visiting small-town America.
Not that I could fault them for that, considering all the trouble I’d gotten myself into since moving home.
“I wanted to tell you something that’s not exactly work-related Ethel,” I said.
Ethel arched an eyebrow. “Not work-related?”
“Well, not exactly work-related, but it’s something serious I’ve been meaning to talk to you about for a while now,” I said.
Whatever reaction I might have expected from her, what she actually did was the last thing I thought would happen. Her eyes went wide with pure panic. Okay then.
“I’m so sorry,” she said.
I blinked. And for a moment I thought she knew what I was about to tell her, and she was telling me that she was sorry I was in a relationship with Savannah. Or maybe she was sorry I was gay.
Either way, there was a moment of panic on my end that I very quickly clamped down on. I was being ridiculous. That couldn’t possibly be what she was talking about. But that left me wondering what the hell she was going on about.
“Is something wrong Ethel?”
“I swear I just printed off a few recipes. I didn’t do all that much. Well maybe a few pages every couple of days, but that’s not enough to go to the board over or anything. I can pay it back, I promise.”
I frowned. “Ethel? What the hell are you talking about?”
“Well printing things off costs ten cents a page here,” she said. “I figured it wouldn’t hurt if I did it here and there, but I probably print off a dollar’s worth of stuff on a weekly basis, at least.”
I stared at Ethel for a long moment. A smile threatened at the corner of my mouth. Was she really going on about stealing paper? Seriously? I couldn’t help myself. That quirk at the edges of my mouth turned into a full-blown smile. That full-blown smile then rapidly devolved into uncontrollable laughter.
Ethel sniffed. “I don’t think this is that funny. Here I’m terrified for my job and you’re laughing!”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “That’s just so ridiculous. You’re worried about printing some things off on the library’s dime? Did you use your library computer or something?”
“Well, yes.”
I waved a dismissive hand. “Then I don’t really care. Why should I? You can do what you want!”
“Well I thought you might be…”
“Ethel, you really are ridiculous sometimes. But in a good way. I mean that.”
The whole thing was just so damned cute. She seemed genuinely worried that I was going to fire her over printing off pages. Even the library board, as up their asses as they could be from time to time when it came to cost, weren’t that bad.
At least I didn’t think they were. I might keep Ethel’s recipe printing to myself, come to think of it. Sure she’d been here forever, but I figured better safe than sorry.
She sniffed again. “You don’t have to go insulting me.”
“Trust me,” I said. “That wasn’t meant as an insult at all.”
“Well I thought you might be upset seeing as how the library board can get awfully persnickety when we waste resources and all that, though if you ask me…”
I held up a hand to stop her again. For a wonder she actually stopped talking. I wondered what I’d done that it actually worked this time around. Absolutely nothing like the usual torrent of words that only ended when I managed to escape into my office.
“This doesn’t have anything to do with using the printer for personal business Ethel,” I said. “Though it does have to do with something the library board might not exactly approve of…”
“What are you talking about? Are you in trouble? I can try and help you…”
I smiled. I couldn’t help myself. Here Ethel didn’t even know
what was going on and she wanted to help. Talk about reassuring and kind of cute. I wondered if Savannah felt the same way when her mom surprised her with a whole lot of love rather than the heat she was expecting.
“Actually I wanted to talk to you about me and Savannah,” I said.
Ethel looked between the two of us. “What? You mean your relationship? Are you finally coming clean then?”
I blinked. I felt stunned. I wondered if this is how Savannah felt yesterday when we did this with her mom. Ethel knowing about our relationship was the last thing I expected to hear from her.
“You knew?” I asked.
Ethel shook her head and smiled. “My dear Kirsten. Of course I knew. After all I’m the one who set you up in the first place.”
“Set us up? What are you talking about?”
Ethel sighed a long-suffering sigh of a woman who’d been on this planet for a hell of a long time and was frustrated with kids and their refusal to see the world for what it was.
She put her hands on her hips and regarded me over her glasses with a stern look that I’d come to recognize in my time working here. It was a look that made me feel like a child being reprimanded by the stern librarian even though I was the stern librarian now. Not to mention I’d never done anything worth getting reprimanded over in my younger years.
That look reminded me Ethel wasn’t somebody I wanted to cross, even if I was technically the one in charge.
“Are you dense? I’m the one who told Savannah to go back and meet you. I was the one who suggested you two go out to lunch together. I had a feeling about the two of you. Looks like I was right, too.”
I stared at her in stunned silence. What else could I do? After all, she’d just dropped one hell of a bombshell on both of us.
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I figured with the way the two of you were sneaking around you had your reasons for wanting privacy, though if it’s because you’re worried about your job or the board you needn’t have bothered with any of that sneaking.”
I paused for a moment. I had to go through this carefully. Parse everything to make sure I understood exactly what she was saying. After all, I still felt like I was walking through a potential. I needed to be careful.
In the end I came up blank though. Best to just ask her outright what she meant.
“What are you talking about Ethel?”
“Well I already told everybody on the library board about your new relationship. It was too cute not to,” she said.
The stunning hits just kept coming. I felt panic. I felt terror. I felt something clenching at my chest. Was she serious? Was this really happening? All that time trying to keep things under wraps and here she was spilling secrets I thought I’d kept pretty damn secret from the entire world!
“Exactly how long have you known about us?”
“Well since the first day you two met, of course. You were being so cute making googly eyes at each other. I think that was the first time I told Harold all about it. You two were just so cute the way you were sneaking around.”
Harold. The head of the library board. I felt queasy. Judging from the way Savannah was looking at me it was pretty obvious that I wasn’t doing so hot.
“You told the head of the library board that I was in a lesbian relationship? That I was gay?”
“Well of course I did. You wouldn’t be acting that cute about another girl if you weren’t, right? And it turns out I was right!”
Ethel was positively beaming. And yet I wanted to reach down to my desk and toss something at her. Something that wouldn’t do much damage, but still. The urge was there.
And yet at the same time I felt something different. Relief. The secret was out, and I wasn’t fired. In fact he hadn’t said anything at all, and if Ethel had said something when Savannah and I first got together then that meant they’d known about my secret relationship for several months and hadn’t done anything about it.
If that wasn’t a positive sign then I didn’t know what was.
“So they don’t care?”
Ethel waved a dismissive hand. “Not at all. Harold doesn’t care, at least. If any of the others do care, well they know enough not to say anything about it.”
“What are you talking about?”
Ethel gave me another one of those long-suffering looks. One of those looks that made me feel like I was a child she’d just caught running between the stacks. Ethel could be absolute murder on kids she found running through the stacks. Particularly if they didn’t have the added protection of being in the children’s section where she was more inclined towards cutting slack.
“You don’t know?”
“No, I don’t know,” I said.
Ethel shook her head. I got the distinct feeling that she was more disappointed in me than anything else. Another trick she used with wayward children who weren’t acting in a way she thought was appropriate in the library. She ran the place with an iron fist usually, where I tended to have a lighter touch. Though I figured maybe I could learn something from her bedside manner.
“Don’t you pay any attention to the laws in this state?”
“I… Um… I guess not?”
Ethel’s eyes rolled to the heavens and she muttered something under her breath that sounded almost like a prayer about suffering fools. Again that urge to toss something at her, maybe some paperclips or something, came and went. I kept it under control.
“You’re telling me you haven’t been paying attention to some of the wrangling going on down in the capital?”
“Well I’ve been kind of busy these past couple of years working on getting my degree,” I said.
“And I was busy with my mom,” Savannah said.
That finally got Ethel to pull a chair out. Though she picked one that stayed firmly still. None of the constant rotating back and forth that Savannah was pulling which was distracting. Particularly because it was Savannah who was making that movement, and it was causing her to move in some very interesting ways despite being something as innocuous as a swinging back and forth in an office chair.
“Maybe I should explain a couple of things to the two of you,” Ethel said. “Particularly since it seems you can’t be bothered to take an interest in current affairs.”
“Go ahead,” I said. “I’m all ears.”
Ethel sighed. “Remember a couple of years ago when the state tried to pass that religious freedom bill and it caused all of that backlash?”
“I guess I remember something about that,” I said.
It was hard not to remember those annoying couple of months, though it hadn’t been annoying for me in the same way that it was annoying for everyone else. At the time people were always telling me I should take more of an interest in politics, though to be perfectly honest I couldn’t be bothered.
I’d been telling the truth when I said I was busy working towards a graduate degree. Even if it was library science, it was still one hell of a time commitment. I didn’t have time to think about things like politics.
“Well after all the bad publicity the state got from that they hurriedly passed another pill the next year. Amazing how quickly they turned things around when all of the major businesses in the state threatened to leave overnight.”
“And that bill was?”
“I could go into it at length, I was actually talking a lot of it over with David and helped convince him to support the thing at the time…”
“David?”
“Reynolds?” Ethel said.
“Oh, right.”
Why shouldn’t I be surprised that Ethel was friends with David Reynolds, our state senator who’d been at it for decades. A man who was supposedly pretty powerful, which was part of the reason why he’d been reelected time and again since before I was born.
No, I shouldn’t have been surprised that Ethel was on a first name basis with the guy. Sometimes it felt like she knew everybody in this town. And suddenly, for the first time in my life, I felt the
urge to have that same rapport with the people of this town. I figured if I was going to be sticking around, living with Savannah, that was something I’d need to cultivate.
“The practical upshot is that your love life is now protected. If anyone tried to fire you, particularly from a public job like this, well let’s just say you’d be able to sue the library for everything it was worth.”
I snorted and rolled my eyes. “Oh yeah. Because that’s so much money!”
Ethel shrugged. “The library does have an insurance policy against that sort of thing, after all. You could probably become a very rich woman if they tried anything. Though it probably would bankrupt the library eventually with the increased premiums and all.”
Savannah tapped a finger against her lips. “Interesting. Are you sure there’s no one on the board that might try to fire Kirsten?”
This time I did toss a paperclip across the room. It smacked against Savannah’s forehead and she turned and stuck her tongue out at me. I stuck my tongue right back at her in turn.
I leaned back in my chair. Put my hands behind my back. Listened to the subtle creak of the leather as I rocked back and forth for a moment. It was a comforting motion that I did from time to time when I needed to think. Finally I looked back and locked eyes with Ethel across my small wooden desk.
“So what you’re saying is that everyone I’ve been afraid of finding out about my situation has known all along, and on top of that if they did decide to do something about it I could sue the ever loving shit out of them and become a rich woman?”
“That’s about the size of it,” Ethel said. She fixed both of us with a stern look, though there was a smile on her face that ruined the effect somewhat. “So the two of you need to stop sneaking around. You might as well just let the world know.”
“Old habits die hard,” Savannah whispered.
“I assume you told your mother?” Ethel asked.
