Two
I pulled Molly’s card out of my apron before I left work and slid it into my jeans pocket.
When I got back to my apartment, which was walking distance of the café, I fed my cat—I know I am a lesbian cliché—Pumpkin, and stripped off my clothes before heading to the shower. I had to shower immediately when I got home so I didn’t track flour everywhere. I also smelled like baked goods all the time and it could be kind of irritating when you were trying to cut down on carbs.
After my shower, I wrapped myself in my fluffiest robe and sat down on the couch with a cup of tea. The card was black with white glossy font.
Molly Madison, Social Media Marketer. And PR professional. Interesting. I turned the card over and saw a phone number as well as several social media accounts. That wasn’t what I saw her going into, but it fit. She’d always been good with people and computers, so I guess that worked. Didn’t explain what she was doing back here, though. I didn’t think there were a whole lot of job opportunities in this small town in Maine, but maybe she worked remotely?
Why was I thinking about this? It didn’t matter. We were going to meet up, catch up, and then I’d go back to never hearing from her again.
What Jen said was still bothering me. Sexual tension between me and Molly? I had no idea what she meant. I wasn’t into Molly and she wasn’t into me. We hadn’t even seen each other in years, and when we’d been friends it hadn’t been . . .
I was completely ignoring what happened at that one party. It didn’t count. “Spin the Bottle” doesn’t count.
It. Didn’t. Count.
Still, I grabbed my phone and decided to do the cowardly thing and send her a text message.
Hey, this is Daisy. I’m free tomorrow night if you want to go out.
That sounded suspiciously like an invitation for a date, but I wasn’t sure how else to phrase it, so I sent the damn thing anyway. She responded immediately.
Sounds great! How about Zukos?
I couldn’t help but smile. Zukos was the pizza place that we always used to go to when we were kids. More than one pizza party had taken place under that roof. What a throwback.
Sure. Is seven okay?
My hands trembled a little as I sent the message. Why was I flipping out? I was still angry, but it had cooled somewhat. Now I was nervous and curious. Curious enough to actually go through with it.
Sounds good. Meet you there. I’m really looking forward to it. She added a cute little winking emoji that was at odds with the tone of our conversation earlier. Huh. Seemed like she was trying to mend fences or bridges or however the saying went.
Now I just had to fret about everything until tomorrow night. I even got out the photo album my mom had made. Molly was in a lot of those pictures. Birthdays and sleepovers and trips to the beach. We both smiled with missing teeth, arms around each other.
Best friends forever. We’d even had those heart necklaces.
I sighed. Funny how things could change. Lives changed. People changed.
*^*^*
I had to rush home after work the next night so I’d have enough time to shower and get myself presentable before seeing Molly. I didn’t want to look like I was trying too hard, but I didn’t want to look like a slob either. Was there something between fancy and not fancy at all? I wasn’t sure. Usually I just wore clothes I didn’t care about getting covered in chocolate and jam and baking powder. Not that I didn’t dress up every now and then, but as I looked through my closet, nothing really jumped out at me as something I wanted to wear.
Finally, I settled on a pair of jeans, my most comfortable sandals, a cute tank top, and a few silver rings. Simple. I kept the makeup light and brushed out my hair and dried it until it was straight. I wasn’t a bombshell, with my brown eyes and brown hair and average everything else, but I could clean up okay.
Why was I thinking about that? This wasn’t a date. I mentally smacked myself.
Of course I arrived five minutes early, but when I walked in, Molly was already sitting down in one of the booths, tapping her fingers on the table.
She rose when she saw me, rocking another beautiful dress. She’d always loved wearing dresses when we were kids. Guess that hadn’t changed.
Her cheeks flushed and I tried not to think about how pretty she was.
“Hey,” she said, reaching her arms out. Probably for a hug. I ended up just sort of walking into them and she wrapped them around me. She’s only about three inches shorter than me. Growing up, we’d been evenly matched in terms of height.
She let me go and let out a tiny little sigh and then sat back down.
“I thought you were going to bail on me,” she said, putting her fingers on the table and softly drumming them again. I wanted to reach out and make her stop, but I didn’t want to touch her any more than was necessary.
“I wanted to. I thought about it.” I figured honesty was the best policy, right?
“I thought that you might. I know . . . we have a lot to talk about.” The waitress came and asked what we wanted to drink. I figured why the hell not have booze, and ordered a mojito. Molly does too. As soon as the waitress left, I busied myself with the giant menu so I didn’t have to look at her and trace the sweep of her eyeliner with my eyes, or look at her lips as they moved as she talked.
The words on the menu swam in front of my eyes and she coughed. I looked at her over the top of the menu.
“So, um, what are you gonna get? I thought maybe we could share a pizza? Or something?” She was really giving this a lot of effort, I had to give her that.
“Sure. Tomatoes and olives?” I said and she smiled.
“Tomatoes and olives.” Guess that hadn’t changed either. We still liked the same kind of pizza.
“So, you’re in PR and marketing?” I asked after we shared a moment of super intense eye contact that made me blush a little.
“Uh, yeah. I ended up going to the University of New Hampshire and majoring in communications, and then got more into advertising and social media when that started taking off as a marketing tool. I guess I’m pretty good at it.” She shrugged one shoulder. Modest. Always modest Molly.
“That’s great. And you like doing it?” I asked. She nodded.
“I do. I know some people see it as superficial, but it’s a lot of hard work. It’s a lot of figuring out why people click on the things they click on and how to get them to click on something.” That made sense. She asked me how long I’d been working at the café.
“Well, I went to college and tried out a few majors, when I started working in a grocery store bakery doing the graveyard shift and I found that I liked it better than I liked going to school. So I dropped out and I’ve been bouncing around ever since.”
She stirred her drink with her straw.
“Your mom must be happy to have you around.” I laughed a little.
“That’s an understatement. I have never seen a parent so thrilled that her daughter was dropping out of college.” I was an only child, so all the burden of succeeding was on my shoulders. Fortunately, my mother set the bar pretty damn low. Basically all I had to do was have a regular job and stay out of jail and she thought I was the greatest kid ever.
“And yours?” I asked. Molly had never really been close with her parents. They’d been so wrapped up in her brother, who was four years older and a super high achiever. Not that she wasn’t. She got good grades and did a lot of activities, but since she wasn’t a National Merit Scholar, she couldn’t compete with him.
“They’re fine,” she said, sipping her drink. Oh. There was definitely a story there. I’d seen her parents a few times over the years when they’d moved back. They’d never liked me, so we didn’t even exchange a hello, despite me having been under their roof almost as much as I’d been under my own.
“And Jason?” I said, asking about her brother.
She smiled, but her lips twitched just a tiny bit.
“He’s good. Married. Has two little boys. He lives in Minnesota now.” Oh, wow. I didn’t keep track of him, but I knew he’d moved away.
She pressed her lips together and I could tell that this was part of the catching up that she definitely wanted to get past. Okay, then.
“So, are you working a lot here or . . .” I trailed off. I was pretty terrible at this whole situation. Hopefully that meant we could end it sooner. I was starting to regret coming. And I needed another drink. I sucked down my first one and rattled the ice a little to see if the waitress would hear and bring me another one. She did. I’d have to take it slow on the second one because I was a bit of a lightweight.
“I’m trying. Things are a little up in the air right now,” she said. She hadn’t even finished half her drink yet. Always the more moderate of the two of us.
“Yeah?” I said.
She nodded. Our pizza finally arrived and we busied ourselves with chewing and trying not to burn our tongues on the melted cheese. This was going so well.
“Do you remember that sleepover when we ate one pizza each?” she asked as I worked on my second slice. I couldn’t hold back a smile.
“My mom was convinced we’d hidden it somewhere or threw it in the trash.” We could both put away our share of pizza, even when we’d been kids.
“And then we polished off the garlic bread in the middle of the night,” she said and I laughed. “So much garlic breath.”
That made me think of another night and I could feel my face getting red.
“Are you seeing anybody?” I blurted out. Why. Why was I like this?
“Not anymore,” she said, her face falling even more than it already head. She put down her slice of pizza and looked off into the distance.
“I’m sorry,” I said. I was really fucking this up.
“It’s okay. It happens. What about you?” Her eyes landed back on me and I felt myself blush again.
“Oh, um, no. Not for a while.” I’d dated here and there but couldn’t seem to keep a girlfriend. I’d get into something and then I’d find something wrong with her and then sabotage things. My last relationship had only lasted two months. I’d sort of given up on dating, to be honest. At least for right now. There were plenty of queer girls that came into the café, but since it was a small town, I’d either dated them, or dated girls who had dated them. New, shiny girls didn’t come around that often. Except now, but Molly wasn’t into girls.
“Here’s to being single and ready to mingle? Or however that goes,” she said, holding up her drink. I clinked my glass with hers and it finally seemed like we were going to be able to converse without it getting too awkward. She asked me about where I’d gone to college and that was a pretty safe topic, so we talked about that for a while until we finished most of the pizza.
“Guess I can’t put it away like I used to,” she said, looking forlornly at the last two small pieces that neither of us could cram in our mouths. I was pleasantly buzzed by this time, so I was feeling a little less on edge about the whole thing.
“Shame,” I said. The waitress came to ask us if we wanted dessert and we both declined. This night was going to end soon and I still didn’t have answers.
“Do you . . . do you want to get coffee or something?” I asked, and I sounded just like her the day before.
“Oh, okay?” She didn’t seem sure, but the waitress split the bill and then Molly ended up telling me that I should take the rest of the pizza, so I reluctantly did.
“I can drive,” I said, nodding to my car.
“Sure,” she said, getting in the passenger seat. I was glad I’d recently cleaned. Not that it would matter. She had to remember I was kind of a slob.
I ended up taking her back to the café. Sometimes I came in extra early to start on the bread and rolls and so forth, so it wasn’t unusual for me to be in the bakery at all hours.
“Is this okay?” she asked as I punched in the alarm code and turned the light on.
“Of course,” I said, walking through the back and turning on lights here and there. I went out to the front and turned on the lamp next to one of the couches.
“I’ll make some coffee,” I said, motioning for her to sit down. She did, heaving a little sigh.
“Is there anything else you want? There’s a few pieces of cheesecake back here from today,” I said, going back to the bakery section.
“I wouldn’t object to cheesecake,” she said, and I couldn’t help but smile at that too. She looked so pretty in the low lamplight.
Don’t fall for a straight girl, Daisy. That was literally the first rule of being a lesbian.
I filled the coffee pot and pulled out the cheesecake, adding two slices to one plate and then dolloped some whipped cream on top with shaved chocolate pieces. I couldn’t half-ass anything that I’d made myself.
“This is a really cool place,” she said and I realized she’d gotten up from the couch and was checking out some of the vintage posters and pictures. It was pretty damn obvious from the walls that this place was gay as fuck. I wonder what she thought about that, but she hadn’t asked any questions yet.
“Yeah, I like it,” I said, wondering if I should just break down and tell her that I was also gay as fuck. I hadn’t really figured it out until college, so there was no way she could have known when we were kids. Unless I’d been broadcasting lesbian-ness, but I was pretty sure I hadn’t been.
The coffee spit into the pot and I filled two mugs, set them on a tray, and added forks and the plate of cheesecake.
We sat on the couch together, sipping coffee and eating the cheesecake. I couldn’t deal with the silence, so I got up and put on some music, shuffling through the station that the café subscribed to. It had a lot of Tegan and Sara on it. I skipped to something a little less gay.
“I missed you,” Molly said when I sat back down. She wasn’t much for blurting things out, so I was taken aback.
“You did? I must have missed all those phone calls and messages,” I said. I sounded like a bitch, but I thought I had a right to be.
“I know,” she said, putting down her fork. “I tried. So many times, and I know that’s not an excuse, but I did miss you. I did. I begged my parents to let me come back and see you, but . . .” She trailed off. Oh. I got it.
“They didn’t want you staying friends with me,” I said and her face got red as she nodded.
“I know that’s not an excuse, but ugh!” She put her head in her hands.
“We were kids,” I said. Why was I comforting her?
“I know, I know. I tried. I tried and my parents messed with my head and then I thought that you hated me because I’d moved and I got all wrapped up with all these thoughts and then I felt like it was too late.”
It pretty much was. I stabbed a bite of cheesecake and shoved it in my mouth. Not my best, but she didn’t need to know that.
She reached out and grabbed my hand.
“Is it too late?” My fork clattered to the floor in surprise and I looked down at our hands, clasped together.
“Is what too late?” I said. I’d completely blanked out and lost all sense of what was happening because her touch was making my skin buzz. As quick as she’d made the contact, she whipped her hand back and folded her fingers together in her lap.
“Is it too late to fix things with us?” Her voice was so quiet I almost couldn’t hear it.
I opened my mouth to answer. But what was the answer? Could we fix things? I had no fucking idea.
“I don’t know,” I said, because it was the truth. I couldn’t give her an answer. This was all too much. My brain was scrambled and I couldn’t get rid of the feel of her touch. I reached down and picked up my fork. I’d have to get another one. Molly hadn’t touched her cheesecake yet.
“Well, can we try at least?” Her eyes were big as she looked up at me and I saw echoes of the girl I’d known, grown now into one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen. And she just kept getting prettier the longer I sat with her. This was going to be a problem.
“I guess so? I don’t really know. Can I think about it?” I asked. I could see the hurt in her unbelievably blue eyes. Had they always been that astonishing color? Yes. They had. I remembered trying to mix paints and capture the color in art class, but I’d never gotten close.
“Sure,” she said, putting on a shaky smile as she picked up her fork. I got up and grabbed another one as I tossed the floor fork in the dishwasher.
“This is really good,” she said when I sat back down. I was glad I’d put music on, because if it was silent it would have been even worse. We finished our cheesecake without talking anymore, as if neither of us was sure what to say or how to move on from everything. So many years of silence.
“Thank you,” she said as she set her fork on the empty plate. She’d always been graceful as a kid, probably due to her ballet classes, and that hadn’t changed. God, she was so beautiful. We stood and she leaned forward, as if she wanted to give me a hug. I guess I leaned too because then her arms were around me and my arms went around her as if they’d been waiting to do that for hours. Maybe they had. I breathed in the scent of spicy perfume. Not quite cinnamon, but similar. Shit.
I pulled back as fast as I could because I just didn’t want to let myself melt into a hug with her. Too much. Too soon. I couldn’t handle it.
“Thank you for tonight,” she said as I tidied everything up and then set the alarm before we left so I could drive her back to the pizza place to get her car.
“You’re welcome,” I said and she gave me another little smile that made my heart flip over in my chest. We stood together in the parking lot and stared at one another. I wasn’t sure what to do, so I just waited and then she leaned in and hugged me again. It was just as powerful. My arms wanted to hold her and didn’t want to let go. But I forced myself to unclamp from around her and let her go to her car.
“See you later?” she asked as she unlocked her door.
“See you later,” I said.