Chapter Seventeen

Kit

We left the bachelorette party to the rest of the night's festivities, taking our spoils and their congratulations with pleased grins of success. Most of them were good sports, at least, which made the whole thing heaps more fun. The only one noticeably grouchy was Piper, whose dagger glare and sharp congrats punctuated with an angry period was the picture of a sore fucking loser in more than one way.

It shouldn't have made me giddy, but it did.

We hugged our Sexy Times bags all the way back on the party bus like teenagers with contraband we were afraid would be confiscated by the teacher as soon as we got to school. Every couple of minutes one of us would chuckle, clutch the bag, sometimes even share why.

"Mission Sexy Times," I said. Side-eye. "What was Coco talking about?"

Julia got immediately shifty at the mention of Coco and her insinuation. "No idea."

"She winked at you when she said it."

"That's her knee-jerk expression."

I couldn't argue with that, even if I did think there was more to this than sheer innuendo.

"The panties are, in fact, crotchless," Julia said, as light cut across her face from the moon through the window.

"And red."

"Mine are burgundy."

"Like the wine." I had to work extra hard to keep the quaver in my voice from tripping a fault line as a visual of Julia materialized in my brain without permission. The slight olive hint in her skin tone from her mom's side of the family—Sicilian—would offset the color beautifully. Her tiny waist showing through the sheer flowing fabric of the slip; her sturdy, taut thighs strapped into the garter— I clenched my fingers around the corners of the bag and looked away.

I knew that feeling would eventually subside. It always, always did. The tweak to my nipples, the pressure between my thighs, so warm and aching—I've learned how to ignore it when I feel it for other women. That particular itch was too scary to scratch, but still my brain materialized the image of the finger vibrator in the Sexy Times tote bag and how it could help. How good it would feel to think about her when I used it, if I used it before I fell asleep— That stupid train of thought only made the ache expand.

I made it through the ride back to Celestial Sands without exploding, mostly by picturing my safe place and ignoring every tap tap tap from the image of Julia trying to invade it.

We're standing outside the lobby doors now, and it feels like we're the only two people awake in the world. The compound is quiet, probably most have fallen asleep by now; even the nocturnal animals seem to have muted their late-night hums, but neither Julia nor I seem ready to make the first move away from each other.

She tugs her phone from her jacket pocket, illuminating the screen.

"I have to be up in four hours," she says. "The rest of the guests start arriving bright and goddamn early." I see an Instagram notification on the screen as she checks the time, so that confirms it. She's on Instagram and she receives at least some of her notifications. "I should be filled with regret right now." She pockets the phone again and looks up. The tip of her nose and her cheeks are pink tinted from the chilly air. "But I'm not."

Her words warm me all over and I don't want to push the feeling away. Knowing she doesn't regret the game we played, even if it's not because she played it with me specifically, makes me feel hopeful that maybe this chasm between us can be breached. I don't even know why I want that, but I don't question the feeling. It's there. It's undeniable.

"Your assistant—what's her name? Zoe?" I ask, refocusing.

"Zoe, yeah." Her brows shoot together like she's surprised that I remembered her assistant's name.

"She's sharp. I bet she could hold down the fort for an extra hour."

"She'd love the chance. She's always complaining—in the most respectful way possible, obviously—that she in fact doesn't need me to regurgitate her job at her like a mother bird feeding her young." The image of Julia standing open-mouthed over the wild-maned form of Zoe, holding a flower arrangement and table linen swatches, is a little too vivid.

"Okay." I blink, eyes tearing with exhaustion. "I just visualized that metaphor in graphic, Tim Burton–style detail. Time for me to call it a night."

She nods, stepping up to the lobby doors to swipe her key. She pulls one heavy side open, motioning for me to enter.

"Will it immediately age me if I skip skincare tonight?" I ask, yawning. The way she sways a little toward me as I pass by her and through the door could be intentional, could be exhaustion, or just my imagination. Fuck—I really have to stop reading into every single tremor of movement or look she tosses my way.

"It's morning, so maybe just go extra hard on your a.m. routine when you get up," she replies, also yawning, her tongue curling toward her teeth like a cat. My eyes fix on the move for an overlong moment—thankfully, she doesn't see the slip in my attention.

We walk through the dimly lit lobby, where the only person awake is the night clerk. She's sitting at the desk, engrossed in some game she's playing on her phone. She doesn't look up as we walk past.

"Candy Crush?" Julia asks when we're out of earshot. "Tetris, maybe?"

I snort, flicking my eyes behind me. "No, look at the swipe. That bitch is catching Pokémon for sure."

"Gotta catch 'em all," she singsongs, her voice raspy with exhaustion.

We're outside in the courtyard, which has brightly colored lanterns that light the way toward the paths leading off to the bungalows and my Airstream. It takes every ounce of courage I have to hold eye contact with her in this warm, low, romantic lighting.

My brain is screaming, This is her! This is the only girl you've ever kissed. This is the girl you ran away from. This is Julia, she's right FUCKING HERE—FREAK OUT ABOUT THIS, PLEASE!

"See you tomorrow"—my tongue trips but doesn't stutter—"Julia."

"Later today," she corrects, her nostrils flaring as her eyes drop to my lips for a blistering second.

I walk in the direction of my Airstream trailer before I lose my courage, or worse, say one of the ardent, rambling thoughts breaking out all over my brain like tiny wildfires. That didn't happen. We didn't just play hide-and-seek in the dark. We didn't just look at each other with so much yearning we can't possibly ever abate it. We didn't just exist in the same space for hours and not implode from the closeness.

Twin Flames always find their way back to each other.

Can that be what's actually happening right now?

Madame Moira can't have known we were both queer when neither one of us knew it ourselves, but maybe the cards somehow did. Saw into the deep, dark corners of the closets in our hearts and illuminated it for that split second we sat side by side at the tarot table.

The cards never lie, but neither do rom-coms.

Or, at least, that's what I've always wanted to believe.

Movies about blissful, unmarred Happily Ever Afters between men and women were selling fantasy instead of the truth. Romance is mostly messy. Love is dynamite, not a bouquet. My parents have proven as much.

I want to hold on to the ideal I've tried so hard to embody my whole life, but with every second I spend in this desert, it gets harder to pretend.

I shove through the gate and up the path to my Airstream trailer, fumbling in my bag for the keys. My hands are shaking with adrenaline, so I struggle to fit the key in the lock; when it finally goes in, I twist the handle, drop my bags onto the floor and my body onto the bed. My shoes slip off one by one; I unbuckle my belt and roll out of my coat. My eyes drift closed and she's right there in my imagination.

Long, tan neck, the gold chain winking at me as the heart dips into her clavicle.

Her eyes are bright oceans.

Her lips are small, with a deep m and plump pout. They would fit so well between mine. I could work my tongue inside for a taste. I could run my fingers over her jawline, touch the gold hoops, the diamond-studded cuff in her earlobe, before losing my grip in the soft, dark waves of her hair.

I roll over and grab my purse, yanking out the phone. I ignore the notifications from Mom. A few texts, a missed call. Nina also texted, probably to lovingly check in on my ongoing freak-out about being in Julia's presence. I open the Instagram app where notifications from other verified accounts that I follow pop up, and the message icon is lit with a bunch of DMs. I go to the search bar and type in Julia's name.

The top hit is @jak_lovealways, which features a headshot of Julia as the PFP. There's another one @foreverbyjak, but it doesn't have a photo or any details in the profile so I click the top hit instead, going in for a closer look. The profile picture is also one of her pinned posts, which is captioned with information about her agency acting as a static pitch. In the photos, she's dressed in a green power suit, her hair tucked up in a low chignon, her expression fierce. She looks every bit the pro she wants to be, but nothing like the actual Julia Kelley that I used to know. Or even got glimpses of tonight. It's as if all the personality that made her a target for Karen MacMillan, that later turned her into the person I never got tired of, who always surprised me, has been smoothed out. Combed back into that bun, wrinkles ironed out with dry-cleaning.

Her grid shows how good she is at her job. Perfect, pristine, unique, dynamic wedding scenes play out in little squares of glossy color, but what I don't see in the shots is her —her mark on the scene. Maybe I'm not supposed to. What she does for a living is so different from my job. I've had to play up the manic pixie dream girl, boho goddess energy that exists in much smaller doses within me just to land jobs and carve out my own little corner of the internet.

The rom-com ideal is more than my daydream for a happy ending, it's my living. A vivacious, appealingly quirky ingenue is what people want. Men and women alike. It's fuckable and fragile; it's how they know for sure that they are the main character and I'm just there to inspire their greater appreciation for life. Clients and boyfriends, subscribers and followers, everyone succumbs to the fever dream it offers. I guess we're both playing a game of pretend, and I wonder if it's as much with ourselves as with everyone else.

My finger hovers over the follow button for a split second before I let it tap. No turning back now. I like the pic of her in the green suit for good measure since I'm not sure which notifications she receives, and I want her to see this one when she wakes up.

I click out of Instagram and am about to let the phone go dark when it buzzes. A text, not a notification. Dad is burning the three a.m. oil per the usual. He has never been much of a sleeper, claiming his mind comes alive after midnight and he has to seize the opportunity to write when he can. I have always thought his orthodontic patients would probably prefer him to be well rested when he tightens their braces, but whatever. He's set in his ways.

I check the text. It's a photo of a stack of boxes labeled with his name, Clint . My heart twists with sadness. I click on the icon of his name and tap FaceTime. It chimes to connect, and when the image comes clear he's holding his phone up so I can see his face. He's sitting in the rocking chair on the pool house porch—I can see the windows reflecting the lit-up swimming pool.

"Hey, there, cupcake." His voice is tired with an edge of pensive. His teeth are stained dark from the tannins of red wine. He lifts a mostly empty glass to cheers at me. "To the demise of love."

To be fair to myself, both my parents have a flair for the dramatic. I come by it naturally.

I scoot up to lean against the pillows at the head of the bed.

"It's shit to see you like this."

"Your mother doesn't care. She walked through the backyard before midnight in a bikini, talking loudly on the phone about vacationing in Cabo to her girlfriend." The words your mother and girlfriend so close together send a spike of adrenaline through me.

"She cheated on you, Dad. Maybe you shouldn't be pining."

"It's not that simple." He looks into the camera, the magnification of his glasses making his teary eyes look massive. "She was my true north. You and Camille—but it all began and ended with her." His voice cracks and he silences the wobble with a gulp of wine. "She was the love of my life, but I wasn't that to her."

"Don't say that. You were married over thirty years. She loved you." I rethink the past tense. "She loves you, even if she's not in love anymore."

"I'm not enough." He whimpers into his glass.

The concept of a true north, a soul your compass leads you to, is a romantic notion my dad has made as much a part of the Rom-Com Ideal as public declarations of love and the affable, good-natured male lead. Too bad that—for me—a psychic promised mine was a girl I met in seventh grade.

"Did you know about Mom?"

"Cheating on me?" he asks.

"No, the other thing," I say, nibbling my lip with nerves. "The thing where she's bi."

"Oh," he says, waving me off. "Always, always. She was with a woman before she and I got together—it was the late '80s in Laurel Canyon. I didn't think anything of it."

"Mom was with a woman before?" My voice gets all high and weird. Awesome, I sound as shocked as I feel. "I can't believe I never knew that."

"Why would you need to know? She was married, it was in her past."

"But how could it be in her past? I mean, I get it, she married you, a man, and you two were monogamous—" He groans at the trigger word. "Sorry—but that doesn't make her any less of a queer woman."

"Oh, well, sure, cupcake, of course I see what you mean," he says, shaking his head. The dismissive tone of his voice makes me wonder if he really does. "But in the end, it wasn't real love."

"Because it was a woman?" My cheeks flare with unexpected heat at the idea he'd dismiss her feelings because they were about another woman.

"No, of course not. It wasn't real love because she told me. Not every affair measures up equally." He lets out a long sigh. "I just thought she chose me. Wanted me forever." He looks defeated. Shoulders slumping forward, head dropping back to rest against the rocker. I can't imagine what it's like to have invested so many years into a life with someone only to find out they weren't as happy, or as all in, as you thought.

Even with them playing Happily Ever After perfectly, I think there was always a part of me that was afraid of falling that in love with another person, needing them more than they need me.

"I'm sorry she fell for someone else," I say.

"Me too," he says, offering a sad smile.

When I say goodbye, it's with the caveat that he go get some sleep and stop drinking merlot on the porch. I drop the phone to my side, sliding down into the covers and turning off the lamp, too tired to get up to wash my face or brush my teeth. I never thought that being attracted to women was wrong on a global scale. It just wasn't the way I had expected to find romantic happiness.

I wanted the Nancy Meyers kitchen with the rumpled button-down, floppy-haired husband. I wanted the Nora Ephron kiss at New Year's with the guy who had once been nothing more than my best friend, but over time became the love of my life. I wanted what my parents had. And all along, my mom knew she was queer and never told me. All along, I didn't have the whole story about the life I believed was the epitome of ideal.

My eyes drift closed, just as I feel my phone buzz with a notification. I let myself daydream that it's Julia following me back on Instagram, and that she took it for what it was. Me offering her access. An invitation to slide into my DMs and back into my life.