Chapter 6
Back at home, she repeated the story Nina had made up about a tree that had been struck by lightning. She’d changed into her work clothes and was just starting to feel human again when the doorbell rang.
“Got it!” Sarah called to her mother.
It was Tyrese.
“Thought we’d talk,” he said, terse but soft-voiced. As if he could lull her into a false sense of security.
“A picture is worth a thousand words,” she replied.
He backed up from the door as if shaking off a hit, coming to lean against the side of the porch. His expression was surly. He always had been quick to pout.
“That wasn’t me.”
“It sure looked like you.”
“That’s not—” He’d raised his voice. He had to lower it again. “That’s not what I meant. I mean I’m not like that.”
“You were once. How many more times do you get? Before it counts?”
“You’re putting words in my mouth—”
“So what are your words? Why exactly am I supposed to feel so damn sorry for you?” It was the voice she’d used last night—sarcastic, quick-witted, but cutting far deeper than it had with Nina.
When he came up out of his lean, he towered over her; she didn’t bother looking up. “Because she was all over me! Sarah, she practically gift-wrapped it! She came onto me. She wanted me. There’s only so much a man can take.”
“Then I’ll get someone who can take more!”
“Baby, you’re being ridiculous. I make one mistake and that’s it? After all we’ve been through, you’re just gonna chuck it all out the window and start over? With who? Who you got that has our history? Who’s been a friend to you like me, man to you like me?”
Sarah felt her hands coil, lash out, shoving against his broad chest—only able to drive him back a step or two with her thudding palms on his collarbone. “I’m not interested! Not just in you. I’m not interested in being your girlfriend anymore. I’m not interested in being that girl anymore.”
“You don’t want to be the girl I grew up with? You don’t want to be Sarah Kay? Who else is there?”
“Someone else. Anyone else!”
“Mr. West!” Eileen spoke firmly, clearly, and when Sarah turned around, her mother was standing behind her with her arms crossed, her gaze fixed so firmly on Tyrese that she barely seemed to notice Sarah. “You’ve said all you came here to say, and it’s time for you to leave.”
Tyrese looked from mother to daughter. “Oh. Now you don’t mind her living your life for you. Hey, Moms, you know your girl hates you, right? Hates you.”
“Good day, Tyrese.”
He left, exaggerating his strut into a dance, trying to make it seem as if he cared less than zero.
Eileen graciously closed the door before she put her arm around Sarah.
Sarah let herself be hugged.
“How about a movie this weekend?” Eileen asked. “A spa? Maybe just anything with not a lot of talking required?”
“Yeah. That’d be nice.”
>~~~<
There was no escape from what Sarah had seen. It felt like she’d taken a drug. Cool metal felt as cold as the Arctic, and sunbaked concrete was the Gobi Desert. Looking at a wall had her imagining Nina pinning her against it. Work was at least a distraction.
She walked the aisles of the supermarket like some ghost stuck in a living death pattern, trying to think of nothing but making every row of product straight and smooth. She went from aisle one to aisle seven; there were thirteen more aisles, but those were other employees’ purview. Yes, they hired more than one person for the job.
And still she thought of Nina. Of herself. When Nina actually appeared, she could’ve been summoned right out of Sarah’s imagining.
“Do you want to talk?”
Sarah stopped, holding a box of Captain Crunch like it contained the secrets of the universe along with a sheaf of temporary tattoos.
Nina was there, standing close but not too close. Dressed so elegantly yet so simply: black turtleneck, white slacks, hair neatly combed. Everything buttoned down, covered up. But Sarah could see it in her eyes. Right there past all the mascara. That wildness she’d let blaze as she prepared to savage Sarah. It was still there, had always been there.
The sight of Nina, the hermit, the ghost, standing in the middle of a store as if she needed to pick up Pop-Tarts crashed right into Sarah, refused to be broken down into thoughts. For a moment, everything had the peculiar resonance of a waking dream. The thing was so strange that it wasn’t strange, like seeing a tiger in the street or the moon at midday. She had to work to believe her eyes.
Sarah felt herself start to turn, start to go to her, and then she was putting the Captain Crunch neatly in the front of the shelf space it occupied. That was the most important thing in the world for her just at that moment.
“I’m working,” Sarah said.
“You weren’t yesterday. I thought that was when you were scheduled to tend the grounds.”
“I felt sick. I sent you an e-mail.”
“And now you’re feeling better.”
“No such thing as sick days on minimum wage.”
Nina nodded. “Do you get breaks?”
“Under six hours, I get fifteen minutes. Over six hours, I get half an hour. I don’t think I can spend fifteen minutes listening to you.”
“Then should I assume you don’t wish to work for me any longer? Of course, that’s your decision. I’ll understand if you stop coming by—”
“I didn’t say that,” Sarah stressed.
“Do you want to work for me or don’t you?”
“That’s not even what you want to know!”
“Ah.” Nina held herself very still as Sarah moved on. There was a box of Cocoa Pebbles that needed to be moved up. “I was like this once. I couldn’t imagine—I couldn’t imagine a lot of things. But the chief thing was being happy… I know it must feel like a bandage coming off to have this out in the open… I also know it’s killing you not hearing what I have to say. Even if you say you don’t give a damn. Even if you wish you didn’t give a damn.”
Sarah dropped her hands to her sides. “Follow me.”
Sarah led her to the meat department—the little room past the plastic-strip curtain but before the big cooler space: shelves and shelves of boxes and boxes of meat. Pedro was on duty.
Sarah told him to hit the road. “Can you drop a deuce for ten minutes?”
“Que? Sarah, we’re almost out of baloney. You know how fast baloney sells—”
“You owe me. I covered your shift two weeks ago…”
“Just so I could get fired two weeks later?”
Nina held up her hand. “A hundred dollars for—the deuce.”
Pedro pursed his lips. “Sold.”
And he was gone.
Sarah sat on a box of cold cuts, twisting her toes inside her shoes. It was always a relief to be off her feet, even in a literal meat locker.
Nina straightened out her hair, stopping with her hand twined in the tips. “Is there anything you’d like to tell me about what happened? Some…feelings you’d like to share?”
Sarah’s eye twitched. “What, like I wrote an essay?”
“I thought you might be curious.” She held her hair aside now. It bristled through her fingers.
“Curious?”
A single, solitary follicle stayed between Nina’s fingers. The rest lay limply against her scalp. She pulled at the strand of hair. Making it taut. “About me. I thought you would have questions.”
Sarah felt her jaw going slack. “I do.”
Nina pinched her lips together, looking around for somewhere to rest her weight, her attention finally settling on another box. Looking the most ridiculous Sarah had ever seen her, she haphazardly navigated it opposite Sarah’s perch, then sat down, trying to remain poised atop a cardboard box of frozen ground beef. “I’m not ashamed. I’ll tell you anything.”
�
��Tell me why we have to do this here?”
“We could do it at my home. But if you’d prefer a more neutral setting…”
“A more neutral setting and my shift being over.”
Nina sniffed. “I thought a week was a long enough wait. I…rushed into things. If you’d rather wait longer—”
“I don’t want you to go,” Sarah said quickly, before she could regret it.
“So what do you want?” Nina whispered, a conspirator. “For me to come closer?”
The word seemed incredibly small as it slipped from Sarah. “Yes.”
Nina stood. She towered over Sarah, but that wasn’t what made her feel small. Because after one moment, one breath, Nina was lowering herself back down. Straddling Sarah’s joined thighs, bringing her beauty so close to Sarah, so dangerously close. Their bodies slowly merged. Last of all, their breasts brushed together. Sarah felt Nina’s nipples against her own, as hard as hers.
“Am I close enough now?” Nina asked, the heat of her breath on Sarah’s cheek.
“Not even…a little bit…” Sarah couldn’t open her eyes. She just let the other voice, the other her, speak.
With her free hand coiling under Sarah, Nina suddenly pulled them together, crushing Sarah’s body to hers. Everywhere on Sarah’s skin, she felt Nina’s warmth.
“How about now?” Nina demanded, bending her head to Sarah’s like a king offering his ring to a subject.
Sarah knew what she had to do. Her body was screaming it at her. Her sex was wet, her skin hot, her inhibitions elsewhere. More by touch than by sight, she found Nina’s soft lips. The kiss was slow, unhurried. Not like with Tyrese at all. At first, Nina just brushed her lips against Sarah’s, even when Sarah opened her mouth. Then Nina applied pressure, bringing their lips together with greater force so they were crushed together from head to toe, like fire meeting ice, their kiss a way for the steam to escape.
Nina made the kiss harder, harder, harder, demanding more from Sarah, forcing her body to respond down to the innermost core. Sarah gave willingly, opened herself as far as she could. Nina plundered her mouth, not letting Sarah up for so much as air, and Sarah felt Nina’s hands hovering over her body, almost touching but not, tracing from her moist cunt to her quivering breasts, finally stopping at her face, holding her still for more of Nina’s passion. Hands kneaded Sarah’s temples as Nina kissed her, twirled her hair, until Sarah started making sounds. Weak, needy, hungry sounds deep within her body. She knew Nina could hear them; she smiled against Sarah’s mouth and went on kissing her.
It was several long minutes before Nina pulled away slowly, with one last suck at Sarah’s swollen bottom lip. Then she licked her own lips.
“Fuck,” Sarah mewled, still as water with no ripples and about to come. She was so aroused, so goddamn horny, and yet there was a serenity to it, a safety. Nina had her. She was Nina’s. Nothing to worry about.
“Do you want me to kiss you again?” Nina asked.
“No, no, I…”
Nina was backing away, giving her space—and just when Sarah didn’t think she could be any more grateful to her. She was burning up, on fire, and Nina was all gasoline.
“I have to go. I have to get back to work.”
“Sarah, I didn’t mean to upset you…”
“Yes,” Sarah interrupted—she realized it must’ve been the first time she had talked back to Nina, because she could see the woman’s face fall. “You did.”
She left before she had to think of whether that was good or bad.
>~~~<
Of course she had a hard time going through with the rest of her shift after that. She got maybe twenty minutes of actual work done, which was still better than Stoner Bill, the manager’s nephew. Before she could clock out, her mother texted, asking her to grab toilet paper. Her name tag off, her logo’d shirt inside out, Sarah picked up a pack and waited in line. The things she did for an employee discount.
With her body in stasis, her mind had permission to wander, and it went back to her encounter with Nina like a dog scrambling after table scraps. She thought of how Nina had licked her lips after their kiss as if she could taste Sarah on them and felt an unpleasantly pleasant sparking between her inner thighs. The last thing Sarah needed was to get wet in line at the checkout. She looked over the tabloids, trying to distract herself, but it was all celebrity gossip. She missed the days when there were Bigfoot sightings and UFO abductions instead of Jennifer Aniston baby bumps. Who the hell cared?
That’s good, Sarah told herself. What could be less arousing than the slow death of print media? She glanced ahead to be sure she wasn’t holding things up and caught Beck’s eye just as her former friend was looking back from the neighboring line. This was why she hated living in a small town.
“Sarah,” Beck said. “Hey.”
“Hey,” Sarah replied, draining any possible joy from the word. The least gay pronunciation imaginable.
“I was kinda hoping we could talk.”
“You have my number.”
“I wanted to do this face-to-face.”
The cash register drawer dinged open and drawled shut again. Beck was next in line; she broke away from Sarah to quickly exchange pleasantries with the cashier. It set Sarah’s teeth on edge. How could she be so phony? Then Beck was facing her again as she took out her credit card.
“I’m really sorry about what happened, I am, and I’m not trying to excuse it, but I think you’ve got the wrong idea.”
“What idea would that be, Beck?” Sarah asked, pulling at Beck’s attention as she navigated the card reader, which was trying to decide whether it wanted her to slide her card or insert it. And of course Beck was all over it, paying attention to the stupid machine instead of her friend Sarah—
“Ty and me. We’re not dating, we’re not hooking up, we’re not anything. It was just a stupid kiss, okay? We do stupid shit all the time!”
“So because we used a dirt bike to spin a merry-go-around, that means you can kiss my boyfriend?”
The cashier cleared his throat, hesitant to interrupt as he handed Beck her bags. She took them but hung around until Sarah completed her transaction.
“I’m just trying to fix things, okay? I don’t want you out of my life because of some dumb mistake.”
Sarah picked up the toilet paper like a weapon. “Well, I don’t want you in my life. You or Tyrese. So don’t worry about it, because there’s nothing you can say that can fix it. You’re a slut.”
This was the point in the movie where everyone watching would ‘ooh’ or clap or cheer, but in real life, they just looked uncomfortable and quietly paid for their items. Sarah walked away.
Beck let her walk for a few moments, then chased after her. They walked almost side by side as the automatic doors parted and room temperature gave way to the evening chill.
“You know what? I don’t even think this is about us. I think you just wanted an excuse to ditch us. I think you only hang out with us because it’s something to do, but deep down, you think you’re better than us. So this is just some great opportunity for you to look down on everyone else, but the truth is, you’re here too. And whatever reason you couldn’t hack it at college, you couldn’t hack it.”
Sarah jammed the toilet paper into the trunk of her car. “Yeah? How long have you been waiting to tell me that, huh? Tell me how you really feel.”
“Yeah, I should’ve! Maybe I would’ve been a better friend if I gave you some real talk. Honestly, I have no idea what you’re doing here—besides getting your mom a five-percent discount on toilet paper. But if you don’t want to figure it out, why should I?” She left.
Sarah slammed the trunk closed. Then she opened it again to slam it back down, harder.
“Yeah, you’d better walk away,” she muttered.
Chapter 7
Sarah looked her father in the eye.
“Dad…I’m gay.”
As she’d suspected, it was easier telling him than Eileen. And he seemed t
o be taking it well. He sat right where he was on the pedestal, his notepad still in hand.
Not that she thought Bobby would’ve had a problem with it if he were still alive.
Eileen certainly didn’t hate gay people either. She seemed to find them cute on some level. But it was different when it was your daughter.
Hell, Sarah had nothing against gay people, and it was different when it was her. She felt like she’d been drafted into some big, nebulous cause, suddenly weighted down with all this stuff…or it’d always been there, and now she’d been forced to acknowledge it, and she both resented that and appreciated finally having a name for it.
Her father hadn’t replied, so it was up to her to keep the conversation going. “I know, right? Came as a shock to me too. You know her—Nina Rose. I guess you always liked her… I wonder if you’d like her more as a daughter.”
The sculptor had done a good job, and the town had put the statue in a good place—quiet, peaceful, lots of trees around to give him shade as he sat and thought.
She couldn’t even remember what his voice sounded like, but sometimes, she could imagine that she felt his presence. That kind of warmth, it took away pain.
“I’ve never felt this way before. I really want her—I want to be with her. At first, I just liked spending time with her, and I thought it was because she was so smart and cool, but now, all I can think about is…doing stuff. And don’t get all judgmental about it, because I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t… Eww, now I’m thinking about it. Aaand we’re both grossed out.”
Sarah stood up and set about pacing. “So here’s the thing: Should I go to Nina? I haven’t been back there since—I mean, I know what’ll happen. I feel like if I spend just one more minute with her, I’ll explode. And I mean, I’m twenty, and I’m not a virgin, so what’s there to wait for? Like anyone would care if they caught us together…”
She started pacing again as if she couldn’t control herself, as if her legs were determined to bring her back to that house and she could only divert them. “Do these things ever stay secret? Would I even want that? I mean, maybe someday I’d like to go on a date at a fancy restaurant, hold hands…tell her I love her. Do we ever get that? Because people would talk. Wouldn’t they?”
The Woman at the Edge of Town Page 9
