Chapter Twelve Clover

Chapter Twelve Clover

Thursday morning, December 14, 2023

The caller ID displayed a number she didn’t recognize, but Clover had already pulled herself out of bed. Preemptively annoyed,

she cleared the sleep from her voice and answered with a deep and hopefully menacing voice. “Hello?”

“Hello?” the caller responded, and Clover thought she could recognize the unnecessarily dry huffiness. “Is this Clover?”

“Who’s calling?” Clover asked, suddenly feeling shy.

“This is Bethany, Bee’s sister. We met the other day.”

Clover ignored the rapid beating of her heart and threw herself back onto the bed. “Hi, yes,” she said. “I remember you saving

me from sudden death.”

She thought she could hear Beth smile, even on the phone. “Something like that,” Beth said. “Bee said it would be all right

if I stopped by. Did she let you know?”

“Yeah,” Clover responded, though honestly, Bee could’ve told her a marching band was scheduled to perform in the living room, and she wasn’t sure she’d remember. A lot had happened over the past three days.

“Great. I’m almost there. I should be up in about ten minutes.”

You have got to be kidding me. “Sure thing,” she said, and then groaned out loud when the line cut out. Ten minutes—that was barely enough time to fix her

hair, let alone find something halfway decent to wear.

Not that she needed to look halfway decent. She didn’t care what Beth saw her in—not really. It’s just that, well, Beth was so put together.

Clover didn’t want to appear like she was a slob in comparison, or worse—just some girl from a farm in the middle of nowhere.

That was all. Well, at the very least, I can brush my teeth, she told herself. She rolled out of bed and made her way to the bathroom. When she was done, she fluffed out her hair and

examined her outfit. She was in a white tank top and a loose pair of black sleep shorts that were... well, they weren’t

that short—if she stayed like that, would it be inappropriate? Too risqué? Maybe risqué was the right vibe today.

What am I even thinking? she scolded herself. She took a few more minutes looking in the mirror, then decided that she didn’t want Beth to think she’d

been waiting for her. She turned on the TV in Bee’s apartment for the first time since she’d arrived and quickly flicked through

the streaming options. The Best Man Holiday jumped out at her, and Clover tossed the remote down triumphantly. It was her favorite movie, and the perfect distraction

for when Beth’s intimidating presence filled the room.

A second later, there was a knock at the door. Damn, she thought, and quickly double-checked the mirror to make sure there wasn’t anything stuck in her teeth. Then she strode

over to the door with a frighteningly giddy sense of anticipation.

Unsurprisingly, Beth was wearing another glamorous outfit, this time a deep purple blouse over a fitted pencil skirt. Gold

studs sparkled from beneath her chic bob, and when she looked at Clover’s morning attire, her eyes seemed to widen. Clover

leaned against the door and tried for a casual smile that didn’t reveal her nerves. “Hi,” she said.

“You don’t have work?” Beth asked, and Clover tried not to slam the door in her face.

“I’m on vacation,” she said. “Which is... why I’m here.”

As usual, Beth didn’t respond. She had turned her attention back to her phone, and then she took a step forward.

“Yes, please do come in,” Clover said, her sarcasm hardly masked. She sat heavily on the bed as Beth’s heels clicked against

the hardwood floor toward Bee’s closet. Clover allowed herself just one second to follow the seam trailing up Bee’s tights

through the slit of her skirt, before mentally smacking herself upside the head and doing the one thing she never did: grab

her phone to distract herself.

“Oh,” she muttered.

Beth turned to look at her, her fingers lingering on the fabric of a purple dress. Clover didn’t know why she cared, as she

clearly wasn’t talking to her, but Beth seemed to be waiting nonetheless.

“My... friends texted me. The ones I met yesterday. They invited me out tonight.”

“You’re going out with people you just met?” Beth asked, an eyebrow raised. “Is that what you’re going in?”

“No,” Clover managed through a tight smile. “They just texted me.” She gestured to her bag on the floor. “I’m sure I have...

something to go out in. I think. Although I didn’t really plan to go out.” She mumbled this last part to herself, now staring hard at her luggage and thinking through the potentiality of

her outfits. She’d bought a couple of nice shirts and that dress from the thrift shop...

“You can wear Bee’s clothes,” Beth offered casually.

“I’m pretty sure that’s against the rules of my stay here.”

“Half of them are mine anyway.” Beth sighed as if Clover were the one imposing ridiculous suggestions on her. She paused and

glanced at the TV. “You like that movie?”

Clover frowned. “What’s wrong with it?”

“Nothing,” Beth said. “It’s not exactly my favorite.”

“It’s a classic,” Clover asserted.

“Even when all the men lip sync to New Edition for some strange reason?”

“ Especially then.”

Beth chuckled and turned back to Bee’s closet. “Got it,” she said. Then, much more quietly, she said, “You’re cute,” and it was so low, Clover would’ve sworn she was hearing things. Maybe she was. She wasn’t really sure what to say in response, so she just sat there, on the bed, while Beth spent the next few moments flicking through coats and dresses. Then she pulled out three options and laid them on the bed, all without putting down the dress she’d come for. “These will fit you, I think, and they’re pretty cute. Feel free to grab any of the coats. Bee won’t care. It gets cold here at night.”

“I—thank you?” Clover could barely hold her surprise, though Beth was already walking out of the apartment. “Bye?”

But Beth had gone, leaving three expensive-seeming cocktail dresses and a bewildered young woman in semi-risqué pajamas in

her wake.

Though the outfits Beth had suggested were all well and good, Clover could dress herself, thank you very much. In the dress

she’d bought earlier that week, with hoop earrings she already owned, Clover stepped into the cool night air, an electric

feeling already thrumming in her skin.

She hadn’t been out on the town in a very long time. Visiting tourist attractions and holiday markets was all well and good,

but it was something else entirely to be dolled up with a group of friends. And while, yes, they were all people she’d only

just met, Clover felt oddly comfortable with them. They felt like a different sort of home.

When Clover entered the swanky, brightly lit one-room restaurant, it didn’t take long to find Dee and Leilani, who were with

Gillian, the crochet vendor she’d met the night before. They were seated around the little bar carved out in the middle, with

a familiar face at the center.

“You made it,” Mo said as they twirled two bottles of liquor in both hands and then took turns pouring them in a neat row of glasses. Dee and Leilani pulled Clover into one warm hug after another, while Gillian reached out and shook her hand. Mo reached over last, their tall frame bent nearly in half over the bar.

“Yeah,” Clover said, sounding as surprised as she felt. “I guess I did. Thank you for inviting me.”

“Our pleasure. It’s only, like, your fourth night here, right? Figured you’d want to visit the hippest bar in the city,” Dee

said, gesturing to the finely dressed people all around them. It seemed to be an all-ages crowd, from college kids clearly

on their first date behind them to an elderly group of friends having a raucous ball somewhere to their left.

“Is... this your bar?” Clover asked Mo, after they’d handed water glasses to a new set of patrons who’d just sat down.

“Nah,” Mo said. “Just my night gig. My friend runs the place, though. She just got back from out of town, so she’s busier

than usual tonight.”

“I’m her supplier,” Gillian chimed in. “For the vegetables and stuff, anyway.”

“Oh, right,” Clover said. “You’re a farmer too.” That was sort of nice, actually, to meet someone in her line of work in a

city so different from her own. She wanted to ask Gillian how she liked it, but she was distracted by Leilani whispering something

into Dee’s ear. Dee pulled away to look into Leilani’s eyes, and then they rubbed their noses against each other, like lovers

in their honeymoon stage.

“Gross,” Mo cut in, slamming a shot glass down in front of them. “Get a room.” They winked at Clover, who found herself blushing—although she wasn’t sure why. She was used to couples being cute. Up until a year ago, she and Knox had been just such a couple, the one everyone had said would last until old age and beyond. In that moment, Clover felt a tug of sadness, her fondness for the man who’d once been her fiancé grasping at her heartstrings and threatening to thrust her back down memory lane.

“How’d you two meet?” Clover asked instead, but Mo shook their head, lifted the shot glass in their hand, and nodded to the

ones they’d put in front of Clover, Dee, Gillian, and Leilani.

“Shots first, personal questions next—unless you don’t drink, in which case I apologize for the temptation.”

“I drink.” Clover laughed. “Trust me.”

They said cheers to that, and then Dee and Leilani launched into their love story, which involved lust at first sight across

a crowded lesbian bar in the heart of Oakland. “We’ll have to take you there,” Leilani promised, as Dee nuzzled her ear and

the two giggled into their drinks. Mo took Clover’s order, while Gillian then shared her version of events, which included

Dee crying at her apartment at four a.m. over a personal pizza because her ex had posted something searing on Instagram.

Lei cut in to include an anecdote about pet-sitting and morning bagels at the local queer café, which then tied into how Mo

had run into their ex who’d just started working there. By the time everyone’s food had arrived, Clover felt as if she’d learned everyone’s romantic

history, which felt far messier and more exciting than her own.

“What about you?” Gillian asked between bites of her dinner. “You got someone back home waiting for you?”

“Or excruciating details we can trauma-bond over?” Mo shouted as they shook a tumbler of liquor and crushed ice for a couple beside them.

“Well,” Clover said, “I broke up with my fiancé at the end of last November and then my mom died a week later.”

The four of them went silent, looking at her and then exchanging looks with one another. Then Dee pulled her into a bone-crushing

hug, and Gillian called out, “More drinks! Unless you don’t want them!”

“Oh, I think I could do another one,” Clover said. “Or two.”

Clover insisted she could hold her liquor, but Mo cut her off at three, and that only made Clover like them more. As it happened,

Clover could shoot whiskey with a gang of truck drivers if anyone wanted to bet money on her, but she was happy to be buzzed

and feeling high-spirited as she, Dee, Gillian, and Leilani waited for Mo to grab their coat and clock out for the night.

“Okay, how are we feeling, fam?” Dee asked as she draped her arms around Leilani and Clover and led the five of them down

the street. “Tired? Wired? What’s the plan?”

Gillian bent her head toward Clover. “We can walk you home if you want, Clover.”

Clover thought about it, but honestly, she couldn’t remember the last time she felt this good. “Maybe,” she said, tilting

her head up at the stars and trusting that Dee was going to keep her from walking into traffic. “What else is on the agenda?”

“I seem to remember Leilani promising us a lesbian bar,” Mo chimed in. They pulled out a piece of gum and popped it into their mouth. They shook the pack toward Clover, and Clover shook her head. “I’m tryna quit smoking,” Mo offered by way of explanation, shoving the pack into their back pocket. “So that I don’t die young and shit.”

“Solid plan,” Gillian said.

“Let’s do it,” Clover said. “The bar, I mean.”

Mo whooped. “One car to Oakland, coming right up!”

And that’s how Clover found herself squashed between three lesbians and a nonbinary person in a tiny Honda Civic at eight

o’clock at night on the Bay Bridge, looking out over the expanse of inky darkness that spread out above and below them, stars

reflected from the sky to the water to the city buildings beyond.

Within half an hour, they arrived at their new destination, Clover having now learned where each of them grew up and how they’d

all arrived in San Francisco. Dee and Gillian were born there, Leilani grew up in Oakland, and Mo had traveled across “the

wasteland of the West,” escaping Tulsa and then Fresno, to wind up down the street from their two best friends “and Gillian,”

to which Gillian stuck out her middle finger and the two pretended to tussle in the car.

Clover told them her brief and simple story, which was that she’d spent her entire life in Salem, having met the man she’d

planned to marry back when she was only five. She feared that they’d judge her for that—something so basic and dull—but they

only asked more questions: What did she like about growing up on a farm? What was it like to experience snow every year? Did

she have horses? Did she like her town?

Someone asked Clover why she’d chosen to vacation in San Francisco, and it was the first time that night that her tongue turned to lead. She thought back to the night she’d signed up for Vacate all those months ago, after her mom died, after her engagement ended, when she’d thought she might as well burn it all down and start over.

If she’d told her old friends she’d traveled to San Francisco because of a girl, they would have looked at her like she was

insane. Her new friends, however, would probably understand.

“I knew a girl in high school who moved here when we graduated,” Clover said. “Our town was a little... too small for her.

She told me she thought she’d be happier here.”

Her friends exchanged looks with one another. “Were you two close?” Leilani asked.

“She kissed me on my balcony beneath the stars our junior year of high school,” Clover said. She tried to make it sound nonchalant,

but her heart was thundering in her ears. “It was before Knox and I were officially... together.” She didn’t tell them

that it was the kiss with this girl that had pushed her into Knox’s loving, heterosexual arms. She couldn’t tell them something

even he didn’t know.

Hell, she hadn’t known it—not really. It was just something that nagged at her: the kind of truth that pokes and prods at you for years

until, one day, your fiancé asks you to put a wedding date on the calendar.

This part she didn’t say out loud. The last time she’d been that honest with someone, she’d died, and Clover didn’t want to

be responsible for the deaths of four people she’d just met and their Uber driver.

“Anyway.” She cleared her throat. “I came here because I... well, it seemed like it would be... safe here.” She wasn’t sure she was making herself clear, until Mo reached over from the front seat and squeezed her hand.

“I know what you mean,” they said. “Tulsa wasn’t safe for me either.”

Clover thought she might cry, but instead she squeezed Mo’s hand back and let herself be distracted by the blast of music

and loud hum of conversation that drifted into their open window as their Uber pulled up to the bar.

Once inside, the five of them huddled on a row of low fake leather benches situated across from the karaoke screen. Two women

were singing loudly and off-key to Keith Urban’s “I’ll Be Your Santa Tonight,” while a man in a large feathered black overcoat

danced around them like a bird in a mating ritual.

“It’s lively tonight,” Leilani called over the music.

“I can see that!” Clover shouted back, confused and delighted by the scene in front of her. She was pretty sure she’d never

been around so many colorful people in all her life, and she was shocked by how comfortable she felt. She was one woman among

two dozen scrunched together under low lights and in high spirits. She could be anyone, she realized suddenly. Anyone at all.

This bar, and this city, and these people—her friends—would accept her exactly as she was.

“Dope!” Gillian said, as the dim glow of her phone lit up her face and she sipped a glass of water. “Our friend is here; she

just got out of her taxi.”

“What friend?” Clover asked.

“The one who owns the restaurant,” she said. “Oh, there she is.”

Gillian stood, and Clover watched as she bear-hugged a thin brunette wearing a green utility jacket over skinny jeans and

black wedge heels. Clover felt her throat go dry and her vision start to blur—she hoped it was the alcohol. She hoped to God

it was the alcohol, or else she was having a heart attack, or a delusion, or...

Gillian led the woman over, and she smiled politely at Clover, brown eyes glinting against smooth olive skin, pink glossed

lips parted amicably: “Hi, I’m Hailey.”

Clover’s mind flashed back a decade ago, to when she was a teenager beneath the stars on her balcony, to soft kisses and promised

secrets pressed against another girl’s lips.

Hailey’s eyes widened in sudden recognition. “Clover Mills?” Hailey said. “Oh my god, is that you?”