When Wednesday night came around, I started to get really nervous. It wasn’t like there was a ton of pressure to have a hot and heavy evening tutorial session at Spence’s home tomorrow—probably because I conveniently left out that tidbit when I met Jade and Becca for margaritas. Not that I should feel any guilt, because I told them everything else, which mostly meant I told them about Trev’s visit and Spence’s brief moment of knighthood.
“I should make you retake my Medieval Culture midterm for what you did,” I said to Becca, who responded with round-eyed innocence before sucking on the straw in her margarita. A tipped over Corona bottle served as garnish.
“Trev’s relentless,” Jade said beside Becca, nursing a diet coke.
“Trev’s poor-puppy dedication astounds me,” Becca said once she swallowed. “What does he think he’s going to gain? I figured I’d point him to where you’re clearly moving on so he’d get the hint. Did he?” she asked me.
I drummed my fingers on the stem of my stupidly huge frozen marg. “I thought he got the hint at our dinner last week.”
“Are you being firm?” Jade asked. “Sometimes it takes being harsh for someone to really understand it’s over.”
“How much tougher can I get after saying ‘it’s over. Let me go’ and ‘I’m going to find better sex without you?’”
“Ouch,” Becca said. “Second one’s a bullet.”
“That he keeps dodging,” I muttered into my drink.
“Maybe this time it’s done,” Jade said. “For all of our sakes. I’m not sure how many more late-night knocks I can take.”
“I’m really sorry about that,” I said.
“It still keeps my interest. My drama is stagnant,” Becca said and saluted Jade with her drink. I pretended deep preoccupation in the pink slush of my cocktail.
“Hah. Because when it comes it arrives as a tsunami. I gotta go or I’m gonna be late for my study group. ‘Bye guys.” Jade collected her things, stood, and pushed in her chair. She blew a kiss over her shoulder as she turned.
“So, Spence protected you, huh?” Becca said to me once Jade was gone, grinning with the straw between her teeth.
“Hey, I defended myself, thank you very much. He was merely a back-up terrier.”
“Who cared enough to stand up for your honor. You know, the Spence you keep talking about to me sounds nothing like the Spence heard ‘round campus. I’m not even sure we’re talking about the same guy anymore.”
I set my drink down. “Probably because I’m talking about my platonic time with him, the type of association that doesn’t tend to be discussed ‘’round campus.’”
“Mm-hmm.” Becca’s denial was accompanied by a mouthful of strawberry-tequila ice. “It’s more than that. He’s attentive toward you—like walking you home—and wants to get to know you, and is cute and flirty. All things he doesn’t have to do to bag the next girl. They come flocking to him. He barely has to summon the strength to crook a finger. Ugh,” she said. “The more I talk about this the less I feel about myself as a person. I can’t believe I pursued him so hard.”
“Speaking of the chase,” I said through the plastic of my straw. Becca’s secret love life was a topic of extreme interest. Such fear of judgment could never come from her—or at least, that was what I’d always thought of the buoyant, huge-hearted woman I called my best friend. To think she was suffering in any way, there was no possibility of keeping it quiet, not between us.
The entire time we were sitting with Jade, I had to use every ounce of my patient virtue that I knew was inside me somewhere to resist bringing it up myself. Now that Jade had departed, I pounced.
“You’re really desperate to know, aren’t you?” Becca asked.
“Of course I am!” I said, trying to lift my marg to enunciate my point but failing under the weight.
“Well,” Becca said, sitting back. “What if I told you I wasn’t ready?”
“Then I would have to respect that,” I said. While she put distance between us, I moved closer. “But Becca, there’s a reason you brought it up to me and I hope it’s because you want to talk about it. That you’re not ashamed or so worried that you need to keep it covered or disguised or…”
“I’m not trying to hide anything.” She had to bend over her drink to take a sip, giving me a closer look at her expression. Pensive, tense, but not closing off. Good. “I’ve been trying to explain, and not very well I know, what’s going on to myself, never mind other people. This—” Becca pointed at herself “—this is not something I’ve ever done before. I’ve never been attracted to another female, wouldn’t think of ever making out with one or doing more…” she trailed off, looking to me, maybe to see if she was saying too much. But with me she could never be TMI. I was her friend, through everything, and I wanted her to know that.
“Can you tell me her name?” I asked carefully.
Becca rubbed her lips together. At first I thought she would even keep that much under lock and key, but then she said, “Sophia.”
“Beautiful.”
“Yes, and not only in name,” Becca said. “I’ve been using this private time to figure out what it is that I want. Am I pursuing a relationship with her? Like a bonafide match-up where we hold hands in public and call each other girlfriend? I haven’t had that since high school. Being taken, that’s not my thing. Or is it solely attraction? Are we just going to meet up and night and have amazing sex and have that be it?”
“What does she want?” I asked. I noticed our drinks (somehow) were dangerously close to the end, and I signaled for another round. There was no way the night could end now.
“She wants me,” Becca said. “Soph isn’t confused or scared. All she wants is for us to be happy together.”
“Has she had a relationship with a girl before?”
Becca nodded. “And guys, too.”
“Hmm.” I chewed on my straw. “And you’ve had six months to sort of see how it goes.”
“Exactly. She’s getting impatient.”
“And she might not stick around for much longer. Is that what you’re afraid of?”
Becca’s answer came out as a sigh. “Yes.”
“Honey.” I covered her hand on the table with my own. “There’s your answer.”
Becca stared at our hands, her brows drawing low. “Oh my God. I think you’re right.”
“You don’t want to lose her. Which means…” I inclined my head. “You want to be with her.”
“I do.” Becca’s mouth cracked open in a smile. “Holy shit, I fucking do.”
“Cheers!” I cried, and with perfect timing, the server set down our fresh cocktails. “To new relationships.”
“Here, here,” Becca said.
When we both clinked our five-pound sugar bombs together and slush poured down the sides, we laughed.
“One day, I hope to meet her,” I said, and I genuinely meant it.
“One day,” Becca repeated cryptically, and with the way she said it, I followed up with, “Oh my, you’re thinking of dirty things right now, aren’t you?”
“Maybe,” Becca admitted, glancing sideways.
“I’m not taking you home tonight!” I realized.
Becca pulled out her phone with her tongue nestled in one corner of her lips. “Potentially not.”
I fell back in the chair, my marg coming with me. “Do tell, Becs.”
Becca paused in her texting. “Seriously?”
“This stuff is completely foreign to me! I’m genuinely interested.”
“About the sex?” Becca pointed to my drink precariously balanced in my hand. “Is that doing something to you?”
“Shit, yes,” I said, laughing. “But take advantage. Tell me everything. You’ve been dying to, admit it.”
“Well…” Becca said her phone down. “It has been hell keeping this from you, considering I’ve gotten to hear all about your Trev-capades and now your Spence-capades…”
And so she did. We talked for an hour more, Becca laying everything out, from the moment she met Sophia to the last time she’d seen her, and I sat through it all, riveted, shocked at times, but most of all, truly ecstatic that Becca had found someone who made her this chatty and flushed in the span of twenty minutes. Eventually, our colossal drinks beat us we and decided to go home. Becca said good-bye at the entrance to the bar, deciding on a apartment of a different sort tonight. I told her to be safe, good luck, and I’d maybe see her in the morning.
When I got home, it was a quiet type of night where I set my iPad on my thighs while laying in bed, attempting research but scrolling through Instagram instead. After landing on a celebrity model’s fabulous beach photos, I figured it was a sign to go to sleep.
My nerves didn’t grow wings until lunchtime the next day, when my phone reminded me of my meeting with Spence. He texted me his address and I locked my phone before Jade could peer over and see as we sat in the communal cafeteria.
It was the last session he and I had before my make-up midterm, and the nerve-wings grew more feathers as I realized tonight was the last excuse I had to hang out with him. After my midterm, if all went well, I wouldn’t need his services anymore. I’d have to become someone who actively pursued him, like catch him after class and say hello to him in the mornings, figure out excuses to ask him out for coffee, or dear god, a date…all the things I had never, ever done before.
Not to mention, there was also the one major possibility I had to consider: Spence may not be interested.
Five o’clock came up too fast, and there I was, in front of my closet again and tossing clothes on my bed. This time there was no Becca or Jade to catch the wayward fabric. For entirely different reasons, I searched for the perfect outfit. There was a red silk tank with long straps that led to the curve of cleavage, but would that be…
My face scrunched up in the full-length mirror as I held the shirt up. Did I have seduction on the brain? Is that where this was going?
“I hate being so dumb at this!” I said and tossed the shirt on top of the rest of the clothing I’d dismissed.
“What’d you say?” Jade asked through a mouthful of popcorn as she passed by my doorway.
“Nothing,” I muttered. “Merely getting dressed, a thing I’ve done since my toddler years, and somehow I’ve remained just as fashionably questionable.”
“The day you bust out a unicorn headband and green sequins, I’ll worry about you.” Jade balanced the popcorn bowl on my vanity before coming to stand beside me and peruse. “If anything,” she said, flicking through my hangers, “you’re too monochrome. Black, gray, red, oh—white, here we go.”
She pulled out a thin white cardigan. “Try this over that red number you just tossed over there.”
I fingered the fabric. “You think?”
“A little bit sexy, a little bit studious. He won’t be able to resist.” She winked.
I breathed out a laugh. “I’m that transparent.”
“You have the worst poker face I’ve ever witnessed,” she said solemnly. “Come on, get dressed, put on some lipstick, and maybe you can catch the beginning of Becca’s zombie marathon on Netflix.” Jace traced a circle around her face. “See my excitement.”
“I hate missing it,” I said while stripping off my top. “She gets so excited for these nights.”
“Believe me, there’ll be many more. Maybe one time you can bring the tantalizing tutor.”
I stepped into my jeans. “When that happens, pinch me.”
“I won’t need to.” She patted my arm before swinging by the vanity, swiping her popcorn, and heading to the door. “Don’t get sucked into the worry. The chase makes us all sick.”
Jade left, and I finished getting dressed, giving one last glance to my mirror. This is fine, I thought. It’s going to be fine. I’m only going to his house to learn.
I slipped on my leather jacket and wound an oversized scarf around my neck a few times, yelled my good-bye to Becca and Jade as I sprinted past them so I wouldn’t be pulled into Zombie Night, and was halfway out the door before I remembered a crucial step: Perfume. I did a U-turn and flew past them again, but neither were looking at me at this point, and instead learning how eating human brains could have one inheriting a corpse’s memories. As much as Jade pretended to be exhausted with Becca’s obsession, she was sucked in like the rest of us were as soon as we looked at the screen.
I circled into my room and knocked through the containers on my vanity, searching past my foundation and hairspray and serums.
“Hey, guys?” I called.
“Uh?” one of them responded, their mouth full of snacks.
“Did one of you use my perfume?”
“Nope,” they said in unison.
“Then where is it?” I asked under my breath, still searching. It was a hard to miss the vial, bright purple and unique in its design, and yet it was nowhere. Considering I never carried it around the apartment with me, it was hard to comprehend its absence. My roommates weren’t ones to steal (except for pillows). But borrow and forget? Sure.
It still didn’t make sense. We each had our own scents, and neither had expressed interest to copy my signature perfume before.
“Still can’t find it?” Becca called.
My banging around glass bottles might’ve caused some annoyance on their end.
“It’s so strange,” I said.
“Go into my room, I have a bunch of testers from my ill-advised trip to Sephora the other day,” Becca said.
I came out of my room. The two of them were perched on the couch, each with one hand in the bowl between them as I walked by.
Becca’s free samples were strewn on her bed, a tipped over shopping bag beside them. I sifted through, sniffed and cringed at a couple, but eventually found some lavender thing that was passable. After dabbing behind my ears as well as the requisite pulse points, I was ready.
“Bye for real, guys,” I said as I passed them.
“Good luck!” Becca said.
“Don’t forget your book bag,” Jade said, and crap. I almost walked out empty-handed. Wouldn’t that’ve been fun, me arriving for a lesson smelling divine but without any books.
Finally, I was out the door and outside, textbooks and pens remembered, fragrant, rushed, and windblown.
I allowed myself one moment of hesitation—one second of a belly flip—then leveled my shoulders and strode down the sidewalk.