Chapter 18: I’ll show you my General Custer if you show me yours.
Guys & Dolls party, Sigma Alpha Epsilon house, next-to-last week of Amy’s freshman year
It’s the last week before finals when Amy sees Quinn again, this time at a Guys & Dolls-themed party at a different frat house. Amy loves costume-themed parties; she arrives in a perfect 1920s flapper dress, complete with a fringe at the dress’s bottom, a headband adorned with a peacock feather, and a black boa draped around her shoulders.
She bumps into Quinn at the edge of the makeshift dance floor, where she hangs on the arm of her beefy Sigma Chi boyfriend. He’s wearing a fedora cocked at an angle and a bowtie, but Quinn’s wearing the same silver dress as the last time Amy saw her at a mixer, the only change to her outfit a long necklace of fake pearls. Quinn twists the pearls around her index finger listlessly, gazing out at nothing in particular with a slight crease in her brow.
The boyfriend says something into Quinn’s ear, pecks her on the cheek, and walks away. The crease in her brow gets deeper.
Uncomfortable again. Clearly.
Amy, who’s already had one strong mixed drink and is feeling extra cheery and extra social, bounces over to her.
“Quinny!” she exclaims. “You’re back from Indiana! Did you win?”
“Yeah,” she says without enthusiasm. “We won. It was a good game.”
“You don’t look like you’re having a very nice time,” Amy observes.
“I’m not.”
Amy jerks a thumb over her shoulder to the dance floor behind her. “Then dance with me.”
“I don’t dance.”
“Pssh,” says Amy. “I’ve seen you dance.”
“I don’t dance, Amy.”
Amy pouts, sticking out her lower lip. “Not even for me? You’re not going to leave me all alone on the dance floor, are you? What if I get you a drink? Will you dance after a drink?”
The crease in Quinn’s brow softens; the corners of her mouth twitch into what doesn’t quite amount to a smile.
Amy gets her onto the dance floor a drink and a half later.
They dance to a song. They dance a little closer on the second song. They grind together playfully on the third, much to the hooting delight of the nearby frat guys.
A drink and a half after that, they’re stumbling up the stairs towards the bathroom, laughing about something they’ll forget by the next day, if not the next hour.
Before they make it to the line for the bathroom, Quinn grabs Amy’s wrist, pulls her into the shadows of an alcove.
“Thank you,” she says.
Amy’s laughter dies down. “For what?”
“For getting me to dance. For… rescuing me down there.”
“Rescuing you?” Amy asks, confused. “From what?”
“From these awful parties.”
Amy starts giggling again but trails off when she realizes Quinn isn’t laughing with her. Quinn reaches out, pushes some of the hair that’s escaped Amy’s headband away from her face. Amy stills.
“You’re a beautiful girl, you know that?” Quinn says.
Amy is too stunned to speak. And she’s afraid that if she does speak, Quinn might stop touching her.
“You’re not a natural blonde, are you?” Quinn asks. “What’s your real color?”
“Brown,” Amy answers, barely managing to breathe. “Just… plain brown.”
Quinn smiles — perfect, bright white against tawny skin. “There’s nothing plain about you, Amy. I’d like to see your natural color one day.”
She leans forward, and her lips brush Amy’s tentatively. Amy remains statue-still, afraid that the slightest movement might break the spell, savoring the sensation of such soft lips against her own. No boy she’s ever kissed has been as soft or smooth or gentle as this.
But Amy’s stillness has the opposite effect from what she’d hoped for. Quinn pulls back a moment later, shakes her head like she’s angry at herself.
“I’m sorry,” she says to Amy. “I guess I’ve had more to drink than I thought.”
Amy grabs her wrist before she can pull away completely. “Don’t be sorry.”
Their eyes meet; a moment pulled as taut as a thread on the verge of breaking passes between them. When Quinn leans in to kiss her a second time, Amy’s ready. She grabs at the silver dress with both hands, bunches the sheer fabric in her fists. She pulls Quinn forward so hard that the soccer player loses her balance, snakes out a steadying hand to brace them both before they crash into the wall behind Amy. They kiss like it’s the last kiss they’ll ever have, they kiss like it’s what they’ve been waiting for their entire lives.
When they break apart this time, they’re both panting for breath.
“I’ve never kissed a girl before,” Amy whispers.
“I have.”
Quinn pushes Amy back, pinning her against the alcove’s curved back wall. It occurs to Amy that something was meant to be in that alcove other than them — a potted plant, maybe, or a bust of a famous fraternity member on a pedestal. Even as Quinn kisses her again, reaching under the fringed hem of her skirt, Amy finds herself wondering where the bust or statue or plant is.
She thinks, Frat guys. Somebody probably broke the statue during a kegger a long time ago. And as if the thought is the conclusion of a long-standing inquiry, she realizes her time with men — dating them, kissing them, accepting their flowers and laughing at their jokes — is over.
Quinn’s hand slides up the outside of Amy’s bare thigh. “I want you,” she breathes into Amy’s ear.
Amy reaches down, moves Quinn’s hand from the outside of her thigh to the inside. Quinn’s fingers dance upward, push the crotch of Amy’s underwear to the side. Amy lets out a soft moan when Quinn’s fingers press against her. Amy’s thoroughly wet. She’s probably been wet since the dance floor.
“You can have me,” Amy whispers, and pulls Quinn into another kiss.
#
Back to the present
“Long story short,” Amy says, swallowing the last of her coffee, “one of my roommates caught us in bed about six months later, right at the beginning of my sophomore year. I didn’t stay a Pi Phi for very long after that.”
“The fuck. They didn’t kick you out for sleeping with a girl, did they?” I ask. “I mean, you could sue them or something, right?”
Amy shrugs. “They didn’t kick me out for being gay, no. Not directly, anyway. Officially, they kicked me out for telling my sisters a collection of mistruths and half-truths. They found out about my relationship with Quinn about the same time my dad showed up on the doorstep in full fatigues. I moved out of the sorority house a month or two later. It was fine, though. By then I was way over being a sorority girl.”
I fiddle with the wooden coffee stirrer, dragging it through the pools of frothed milk at the bottom of my empty cup. “Whatever happened to Quinn?”
“She broke my heart,” Amy says simply. “I should’ve known better. She stayed with her boyfriend even after we’d started sleeping together. Took her months to finally break up with him. But I was in love and insecure and twenty.” She shrugs. “We’re all stupid back then, right? Not long after we were finally an official couple, she cheated on me with a girl in the sorority house next door to Pi Phi.” Amy smiles, but there’s a sadness in her face when she looks down into her coffee. “But anyway. It’s ancient history. First gay relationships pretty much always crash and burn in the most tragic and dramatic way imaginable, right?”
I roll my coffee stirrer between thumb and forefinger, thinking of Jenny. Thinking of the halfway decent conversation we managed to have over lentils and cornbread earlier this afternoon.
“More or less,” I agree at last.
“What about you?” Amy asks. “Tragic first girlfriend story…?”
A couple seconds pass, and based on the way Amy’s face changes, I guess my silence says a lot more than I wanted it to.
Before she can follow up with another question, I point with my chin towards the plate glass window at the front of the coffee shop and the falling sun beyond it.
“Do you want to take a walk before it gets too dark?” I say. “I could show you that General Custer statue.”
She scoffs. “Dead mass murderer on a bronze horse. That’s so romantic, Anika.”
My cheeks get hot, but my skin’s coffee with a good dose of cream, and it’s stuffy in the crowded shop, so I doubt she notices my blush.
“I know. But the park’s nice,” I say lamely. “Especially at sunset.”
She gestures towards the door. “Lead on.”