Thirty-five minutes and five miles later, they returned to the car to grab their cleats and a soccer ball from the Volvo’s back seat. Then they walked down to the lawn area near the kids’ playground and started passing and juggling. For as thoughtful as she could be off the field, Jamie was a goofball on it. At least today she was. She seemed determined to make Emma laugh, balancing the ball on all sorts of body parts, pretending to trip herself as she did tricks, falling dramatically and grinning up at her from the ground. Emma couldn’t help laughing, even though she felt guilty every time she did. Her dad had only just died. She wasn’t supposed to even smile, was she? But soccer and Jamie were two things that could be relied upon to make her feel good, so she supposed it made sense.
After their workout, Emma drove them to her favorite brunch spot, a tiny restaurant that, from the outside, looked like someone’s house—mainly because it had in fact been someone’s house at one point.
The server, a girl in a Shoreline Community College T-shirt, greeted them with a sympathetic smile. “I was so sorry to hear about your dad, Emma. How are you holding up?”
“Fine,” Emma said, pretending to smile back. “Got any cinnamon rolls left?”
“You’re in luck. I think there might be a couple.”
She led them to a mosaic-topped table in one corner of the smaller of the two dining rooms and left with promises to return shortly with rolls and hot beverages.
“Is that okay?” Emma asked as they settled in kiddy corner to each other. “I didn’t even check if you like cinnamon rolls.”
“Of course.” Jamie gazed at her as if she was crazy for thinking such a thing. Then she sipped from her Gatorade bottle and glanced around the restaurant. “This is like the cutest place I’ve ever seen.”
Jamie’s cheeks were flushed from their run and her backwards baseball cap ably hid her bed head, and Emma found herself thinking that she might be the cutest girl she’d ever seen. “We used to come here on weekends when Ty and I were younger. Before the craziness of life took over.”
“I know what you mean. My dad and I must spend at least ten hours a week in the car for my travel team, and his job isn’t nearly as intense as your dad’s is—or was, I guess.”
Emma ignored her slight stumble as the server returned with the promised rolls and coffee for her (she was a Seattle native, after all, Jamie teased) and herbal tea for Jamie (typical California hippie, Emma teased back). They ordered eggs benedict and potato pancakes, both of which the little restaurant was known for, and the server left again.
As Emma added cream to her coffee, she remembered that she’d ordered potato pancakes the last time she and her dad had gone out, the weekend of Jamie’s birthday. She’d had no idea it would be their last dinner out together, no clue that in a matter of months he would be gone. A week ago at this time her father had been dying, or had possibly already passed, and she hadn’t known it yet. The first minutes had ticked past without him in the world, and then the first hour, followed by the first day. And now, somehow, it had been an entire week.
“You okay?” Jamie asked around an oversized bite of cinnamon roll.
“Yes,” she said automatically. Then she looked up into Jamie’s eyes. “Well, no. Not really.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
She shrugged. “I was pondering the nature of time.”
“Oh, is that all?” Jamie’s eyebrows rose.
“That’s right, sophomores aren’t allowed to take physics, are you?”
She didn’t often tease Jamie about her age, but she figured it wouldn’t hurt to remind herself of the manifold reasons she couldn’t reach across the table and weave their fingers together the way she’d done the night before in the darkness of her bedroom.
“Ha ha,” Jamie said, making a face.
The conversation drifted to school. Both agreed that it felt like they were playing hooky, knowing that all their friends were in class today without them.
“Do you think this is what it’s like to be an adult?” Jamie asked. “Like, going for a run and out to breakfast any time you want?”
“Yeah, and not having any homework ever?”
“I guess there is the job thing standing in the way of Friday morning brunch.”
“True. What do you think you’ll do after college?” Emma asked.
“Play professional soccer. Assuming there’s another women’s league by then.”
“Right. But after that, I mean.”
Jamie shrugged. “I’m not sure. What about you?”
“I don’t know. I kick around the whole non-profit management thing sometimes. My dad always says that if you have a little, you should give a little. And, well, we’ll have even more now.”
“You will?”
“They were planners. Besides, it’s not like the technique he patented is going anywhere. There will always be sick kids.”
They were both quiet, munching cinnamon rolls and sipping warm beverages. Emma tried to find something less depressing to talk about. What came out was the question that had been bouncing around her brain all morning: “How are things going with Amanda?”
Jamie didn’t look up from her plate. “Fine.”
“Have you been hanging out much?”
“Not really. Not with soccer and mid-terms.” She glanced up. “What about Justin? Have you seen him since you broke up?”
Emma snorted. “No, and I don’t plan to, no matter how many times he asks.”
“He’s been asking, then?”
“Unfortunately.”
“At least his persistence is consistent.”
“By now I’m pretty sure that’s not a good thing.”
Jamie toyed with her fork. “So what happened with him, anyway? You still seem pretty pissed.”
Telling Jamie the truth felt too much like confessing she may or may not have feelings for her, and that was not a road Emma wanted to go down right now. Or, like, possibly ever.
“Turns out he’s an asshole and I should have listened to my instincts to begin with. Hey, did I tell you I was thinking of taking a couple of community college classes?”
Jamie blinked but didn’t comment on the abrupt subject change. “No. Why would you do that?”
“So I’d be ahead credit-wise at UNC in case I ever need to take time off for the national team.”
“Talk about being a planner…”
“I have camp and World Cup qualifiers at the end of May, though, so I don’t think I can take on anything extra this semester.”
“This might not be the best time to take on extra things, anyway,” Jamie said.
Emma glanced up at her, trying to read her meaning in the serious lines of her face. Was she including herself in the category of “extra things,” or was that in Emma’s mind only?
“You might be right,” she agreed, and reached for her coffee mug.
Afterward, Emma couldn’t help but feel that brunch had passed too quickly. By the time they finished she was enjoying Jamie’s company so much, her stomach full and her limbs heavy from the almost pleasant exhaustion that comes after a good workout, that she’d almost forgotten why Jamie was there. But as much as she wanted to stay away from home, more relatives were due to arrive shortly. Probably they should get back.
At least their generation was cool, she thought later that afternoon, watching her Minnesota cousins greet Jamie with easy acceptance. Maybe someday when she came out to them… Gagh. That was the last thing she wanted to think about right now.
Compared to her morning with Jamie, the rest of the day dragged. But finally, somehow, night was falling, and after another exhausting round of remembering her dad with the extended clan, she couldn’t wait to go upstairs with Jamie and close her door on the rest of the world. The second night went much like the first—they got ready for bed and turned out the lights, and only then did the words they’d been holding in come trickling out, a little at a time.
“Is it hard hearing your mom tell the
story over and over again?” Jamie asked. They were lying on their sides again facing each other, and her features were barely visible in the greenish glow from the alarm clock.
Emma shrugged. “Not really. I think she needs to tell it. Obviously it can’t have been easy.”
“Obviously. But is it something you and Ty need to keep hearing?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted, frowning. “I wasn’t there, so no matter how many times she describes it, I can’t actually imagine what it was like.”
This was what she had told herself numerous times this week, but was it really true? Her mother had shared the details of her father’s final hours with so many friends and family members that by now Emma knew the story by heart. How her father wasn’t feeling well the morning of the boat ride, but he thought he had indigestion so he popped some Tums and they decided to go on the charter trip anyway because he loved the ocean and they’d done a similar trip on their honeymoon.
“Might as well be sick on the ocean as sick in the hotel room,” he’d apparently joked.
Her mom kept checking in throughout the morning, but he kept insisting he was fine. They’d already snorkeled with one pod of Spinners and were on their way to the next site when he reached for her hands.
“Something isn’t right, Pam,” he’d said. “I can’t seem to catch my breath.”
“What do you mean?” she’d asked, noticing how cold his hands felt, how pale his face was. Then she realized that even his lips were pale, and she knew before he said it.
“I think I’m having a heart attack.” Her mom reported that the last intelligible thing he said was, “I love you. Tell Emma and Ty I love them too.”
He’d rambled then, stuttering out a few sentences that didn’t make sense, and then he turned gray and slid off the seat onto the floor of the boat even as Emma’s mom shouted for help. The boat turned around immediately and the crew radioed the Coast Guard for assistance. Another passenger that day happened to be a trauma surgeon, and between the two of them they’d confirmed his heart wasn’t beating. The boat’s defibrillator had been taken off a week earlier by a cleaning crew, so Emma’s mom and the doctor had administered CPR for the entire twenty minutes it took to get to shore, checking frequently to see if his heart had restarted. It never did.
A helicopter was waiting to take him to the nearest hospital, but even there he couldn’t be successfully resuscitated. Too much time had passed without blood or oxygen to the brain, and his advanced directive clearly stated that he didn’t want extraordinary measures to be taken. The ER doctors had officially declared him dead, Emma’s mom had had his organs donated, and the hospital had helped her arrange transport home to Seattle. She’d changed her ticket to be an escort ticket because, “We came to Hawaii together, and we were damn well going to leave together,” her mother had said each time to signal the end of the story.
Now Emma closed her eyes and sighed. “Do you really think he said he loved us? I mean, honestly, what are the odds those would be his last words?”
“Pretty strong odds, I’d say.”
And then she felt it—Jamie’s touch on her cheek, slow and tentative. And before she could stop herself, she moved closer, pressing her body against Jamie’s. She needed her. She needed what only Jamie could provide—the feeling that everything might someday, maybe, possibly be all right.
This time, Jamie didn’t flinch away. She wrapped her arms around Emma and tugged her closer, their bare legs slipping together as they hugged under the covers. This was how it had felt to be close to Tori, too, only that was different because while Tori was attractive and exciting to be around, she wasn’t her best friend who would do anything for her and vice versa. She wasn’t a friend at all, really.
Emma felt Jamie’s breathing quicken, and she pulled away. She’d done it again. She’d freaked her out. She had to stop doing that.
“I’m sorry,” she said miserably. “I didn’t mean—”
But Jamie was shaking her head, squinting at her in the dark. “No, I wanted to. It’s okay, really. I want to.”
Wanted to what? But she knew. She’d seen the way Jamie looked at her, recognized her own feelings reflected in her eyes. All at once she understood that the multitude of reasons she’d come up with for why she and Jamie couldn’t be more than friends was utter crap. The only reason that mattered was that Emma had seen the way other girls looked at Jamie, and she knew that one day soon Jamie really was going to start breaking hearts. And in all honesty, Emma couldn’t bear the thought of hers being the first.
She turned her back to Jamie and scooted closer, feeling the other girl stiffen for a moment before her arms came slowly, almost reluctantly around her.
“Can you hold me?” she whispered, hating her own need. But she did need Jamie. She needed her touch and her comfort, and most of all she needed her friendship for as long as Jamie was willing to offer it.
“Of course,” Jamie said, her voice quiet.
Emma relaxed into her arms, holding tight to Jamie’s hand. She remembered their conversation over brunch about being adults with jobs and lives of their own. In reality, though, they weren’t on the same timeline. Even if something happened between them now, how would they ever hope to make it work?
Really, she told herself, blinking back seemingly ever-present tears, having Jamie as a friend was better than not having her at all. Because right now, she didn’t think she could take losing one more person she loved.
Chapter Nine
JAMIE LEANED AGAINST a stone pillar inside Seattle Center’s Fisher Pavilion, watching as Emma stood with her mother and brother greeting people streaming in from the grassy lawn just outside. It was another sunny day in Seattle, and the flowers along nearby pathways waved gently in the summer-like breeze. Even the weather seemed determined to celebrate Emma’s dad that afternoon.
She couldn’t believe how many people were here. The inside seating reserved for family, friends, and hospital colleagues was filling up fast while the lawn was still packed with well-wishers. They stood in small groups talking over the classical music playing softly on the speakers set up both inside and outside of the glass-walled pavilion built into the hillside near the Seattle Science Center. Behind the crowd in the near distance she could see the arced jets of the International Fountain rising and falling in time to some pre-determined choreography.
As Jamie watched, Emma glanced over her shoulder and caught her eye for a moment before turning back to smile at yet another well-dressed adult who pressed her hand. Emma looked like an adult herself, clad in an LBD, as she had called it—a little black dress that still managed to retain a slightly conservative air with its high collar and knee-length skirt. Jamie, meanwhile, was feeling distinctly out of place in her dressiest black pants and a dark gray dress shirt paired with black Doc Marten wing tips. She’d considered bringing along her favorite clip-on tie but had decided ultimately that an open shirt collar might be the more respectful choice.
And yet when she had emerged from Emma’s bathroom a couple of hours earlier, her hair freshly pomaded into a slightly neater version of its usual fauxhawk, Emma had turned from the window to stare at her.
Jamie thought she recognized the look. “I’m sorry. Maybe I should borrow something of yours?”
But Emma shook her head. “No, you don’t have to change.”
“Are you sure? I thought maybe I looked too…” She trailed off, unwilling to say the word out loud: queer.
Emma moved closer and took hold of her arm. “Don’t worry. You look great. You look beautiful, okay?”
“So do you.” Jamie’s gaze swept over Emma’s black dress, gray tights, and chunky heels, focusing at last on the spiral sun pendant at her throat. “You’re wearing that?”
“I always wear it.”
Jamie became aware of the warmth of Emma’s hand on her arm, the slight hesitation in her hazel eyes that today looked more gray than green. “Me too,” she said, nodding at her wrist where the leath
er bracelet Emma had given her was clasped.
Unfortunately, Emma’s brother had picked that moment to bang on the bedroom door. “Yo, ladies, you better not be naked in there!”
Emma had scowled and stalked to the door. “What the hell, Ty?” she’d demanded, throwing it open.
He was leering at them from the hallway, but when he saw Jamie, he started laughing. “Dude, we look like twins.” And they did, except that Ty was wearing the clip-on she’d omitted.
As he held up his fist, Jamie stepped around Emma and bumped it with her own, smiling back at him. “Totally twinning it.”
Ty was okay for a kid his age. They’d bonded over skateboarding the previous day, practicing ollies and kickflips in the driveway while Emma was otherwise occupied. As they’d kicked back afterward playing with the dog and watching the older cousins shoot baskets, Ty had told her she was cooler than he’d expected. “You know, for a girl.”
Now as he stood with his mom and sister in the receiving line near the entrance, he looked like he wished he could be anywhere but here. Honestly, she couldn’t blame him.
“This crowd is wild, huh?”
The voice came from behind her, and Jamie glanced back to see Emma’s closest friends, Dani and Sian. Their outfits matched Emma’s almost perfectly down to the ankle boots and subdued jewelry. They were giving her the same slightly doubtful look they’d worn the day before when they came over to the house after breakfast. That look was why she’d asked Ty if she could borrow a skateboard. Hanging out with him had suddenly seemed more attractive than being a fourth wheel with Emma and her ultra hetero school friends.
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