Scene 43

The plane banked, circling for landing. Somewhere beneath us, Cardiff was hidden by the thick November marine layer. My thoughts had been so far away, I'd hardly noticed the miles traveled, but now, as the luggage rattled overhead, I buried my nails into the fabric of the first-class armrests.

"Not a fan," said the woman beside me. They were the first words she'd spoken since we boarded the plane.

"Same," I managed, trying not to jump as the landing gear lowered, the engines whining in their acceleration. "I hate the wind."

She didn't look up from the book she was reading. "No. Of you, I mean."

It took me a moment to understand it wasn't turbulence she was referring to. "Oh." I said. Because how do you respond to that?

I'm sorry? My bad? Fuck off ?

I'd have preferred the latter, but my press agent wouldn't. Contrary to popular opinion, all press was not good press.

"You give girls unrealistic expectations of what it is to be beautiful. My daughters want to look just like you—no matter how often I tell them your look isn't natural."

I sat silent, stunned by her accusation. Women came in all shapes and sizes. All bodies were beautiful. Living in the fishbowl of public scrutiny left me damned if I did, and damned if I didn't. I wanted to ask her if she had any idea what it felt like, being judged by millions of strangers based solely off appearance? If she had any other advice for me, aside from the recommendation to eat a cheeseburger?

But I stayed quiet. I'd long since learned that trying to get the public to view you as a person—flesh and blood, thoughts and feelings—was impossible.

The pilot came over the loudspeaker, announcing that it was a balmy 6°C in the Welsh capital and reminding everyone to remain seated and keep their seatbelts on.

I checked my belt twice. Ten more minutes and we'd be on the ground.

Well, unless the engines suddenly cut out.

Or a wing fell off.

Or the wind blew us out of the sky.

Then the landing would come a bit faster.

I closed my eyes, uncertain which was worse: reflecting over the events of the last two months or worrying about cataclysmic engine failure. My mind chose to focus on the former, though it would have been more tolerable to dwell on the latter.

Dillon had been through three surgeries since her accident in Hamburg. The most heralded surgeons in Europe had examined her case, each offering a glimmer of hope, before reaching the same conclusion: in time, she'd heal. Probably even be able to bike and swim. But she wouldn't run again. Her days as a professional triathlete were over. No amount of patching, of trimming, of reconstructing would get her back to an elite level of competition.

I'd stayed with her at her mom's the first week after she'd been discharged from the hospital. My emergency hiatus forced the studio to reschedule more than a dozen interviews in three countries.

Did I know how that looked ? I could hear Waylon MacArthur's muffled shouting when my unexplained absence had been upgraded to a call from his personal assistant.

I didn't care. So fire me I snapped into the line as the producer's rants turned to threats of recasting the final film if I wasn't back in Los Angeles, prepared for wheels-up by the following weekend.

Ten minutes later, I received a backpedaling text from the same assistant, assuring me everything was fine. To take as much personal time as I needed.

I didn't bother to reply. I had far too many other things on my mind.

Like how to deal with Dillon.

I would have known how to handle it better if she'd cried. If she'd cussed and punched walls. If she'd pointed accusatory fingers, turning her anger toward God, toward Elyna, hell, even toward me. I could have been the reassuring voice, the steady hand she could hold. I could have googled articles on how to soothe someone who is mad at the world .

But she did none of that. Instead, she just receded, shutting everybody out. She sat for endless hours in her upstairs bedroom, saying nothing, staring out the window. When she did talk to me, it was trivial. A turn in the weather. What book I was reading. What her mom would burn for dinner.

I sat helpless on the end of her bed, listening when the final specialist called, informing her he did not feel she was a candidate for further treatment.

I was sitting in the same place the following day when British Triathlon phoned to say they were withdrawing her qualification, replacing her with the next highest-ranked athlete.

We're sorry, Miss Sinclair —the formal voice droned— it's an unfortunate situation. Our best wishes for the future.

When Dillon hung up, I waited, willing her to say something—anything. Include me in her hurt. Let me bear some of the load she was carrying. But she didn't. And I didn't know the right words to say. I didn't know how to ease her pain.

At the end of the week, when I kissed her goodbye, forced to return to the life I'd put on hold, she no longer bore that subtle scent of chlorine. Her lips were soft, unmarred by the sun and the sea. The freckles on her cheeks had faded into pallor.

I crossed the Atlantic feeling more despondent than I had ever felt. And terribly, achingly alone.

I had no one I could talk to. No one with whom I could share my grief. Because there was something different about saying, "Oh, my good friend just had a serious accident," and "The person I love most in all the world has just lost everything that matters to her." They are not the same thing.

So when I landed at LAX, I texted my manager, Charlie—a new acquisition to my team—and told her I'd had a change of plans. I didn't care if I drove her nuts trying to rearrange my schedule. Waylon MacArthur could wait. I hopped on the first departing flight to San Jose. I couldn't bear the idea of waking another morning under the guise I'd been living. I'd had enough of the Carter charade. I didn't need to dangle my personal life out for all to see—but I needed those closest to me to know. To understand the real me.

I walked into my parents' home unannounced at six AM. The Uber driver had been too consumed with rocking out to Pink Pony Club to ever take a glance in his rearview mirror. And even if he had, what would he have seen? A red-eyed, depressed, exhausted girl who hadn't brushed her teeth in twenty-four hours.

Before my mom had the chance to set her half-sipped coffee and riding crop on the counter, or my dad fully registered my presence over the top of the San Francisco Chronicle , I stood in the kitchen and said "I'm in love with a woman. I have been since the day I met her. The one you met at Darlene's. And if you don't like it, I don't care."

And then promptly burst into tears.

Had I approached the topic with more finesse, maybe their response would have been different. Maybe they would have had time to be surprised. To dwell on the information, to suggest to me that I was just confused—after all, I'd had plenty of boyfriends.

But instead, in the ambush of information, and my immediate meltdown following, they were left with no choice other than to be consoling as I sobbed out my heartache over Dillon's accident and the devastating end of her career.

They both hugged me. My dad said he'd briefly wondered about our relationship at the Hallwells. The way I'd watched Dillon eating her cassoulet had reminded him of how he felt when he'd first met my mother. But then, I'd been so suddenly recommitted to Carter, so seemingly in love, he'd brushed the thought aside.

My mother told me her only disappointment was in herself—that she regretted any part she may have played in making me feel like I couldn't tell them. That it hurt her to think I had worried my relationship with Dillon could have changed her love for me in any way.

When I calmed down, when my mother produced a spare toothbrush and combed my hair at the kitchen island the way she had when I was a child, when I had drained two cups of coffee and was working on a third, life as I'd once known it resumed its practical course. My mom asked me to help her muck box stalls while offering advice on my IRA, and my dad dragged me to the garage to show off the remote-controlled model sailboat he planned on racing the following spring.

I left their home that afternoon feeling like a snake that had shed its skin. It wasn't exactly a revolutionary coming-out parade, but simply unburdening myself to my parents had lifted a taxing yoke off my shoulders. For the first time in years, I bid my parents farewell, and genuinely meant it when I said I looked forward to seeing them again.

Intent on completing the mission of my trip to Palo Alto, I called Dani and asked if we could meet for dinner. Grab take-out, head to one of our favorite spots along the bay where we could be alone. I'd seen her a handful of times over the course of the year, and the strain in our friendship had begun to feel as if it had self-repaired.

Still, with her, I chose to be more delicate. To attempt to handle the situation with kid gloves. She wasn't my parents. To Dani, image meant everything.

"I'm sorry?" she blinked through her eyelash extensions after I'd explained for the second time that my relationship with Carter was a sham. "What exactly are you trying to say?"

I kind of felt like: I haven't been honest with you about my personal life; I've been using Carter as a beard was pretty self-explanatory.

Apparently not.

I tried again. "Do you remember the woman I brought to Christmas Eve? She and I are dating."

Dani's mouth opened and closed once—twice—before any sound came out. "You—can't seriously be trying to tell me you're a lesbian?"

It was a fair assumption. That was generally what it meant when a woman was in love with another woman. But I hadn't really labeled it. Was I bisexual? Pansexual? I didn't actually know. I just knew I loved Dillon. But it wasn't something I was about to analyze with Dani, so I said yes.

"That—that girl ?" She uttered the word with such paramount disgust, she may as well have said dyke or fag or homo. "That runner? The blonde woman—with the hair?"

My sashimi lay untouched in its to-go container on the side of the bench where we sat—a place I imagined it would remain, given the direction the conversation was headed.

"Yes." I held Dani's stare without shrinking. "That's the one." After all, Dillon had hair. She was blonde. She was—had been—a runner. No disputing that.

"You're telling me you've been—been—," she waved her chopsticks in the air, directing an agitated symphony of exasperation, " sleeping with her? Like…like…!"

Like sex was the only part of a relationship Dani could comprehend.

She couldn't fathom the efforts we made to be together. The thousands of miles traveled with short clandestine hours our only reward. She had no understanding of being so in love with someone that their hurts and heartaches became paramount to your own.

But in an attempt to connect with her surface-level grasp of our relationship, I shrugged the affirmative: yes, I was having sex with Dillon.

Her microbladed eyebrows continued to climb up her forehead. "I—I don't understand. You're not gay. I mean, you got caught by my mom giving Carter a handjob in the jacuzzi."

On second thought, maybe it was better to have friends who didn't know you when you were sixteen .

Dani stabbed a chopstick into her unagi. "How, even? Why?"

I skipped the how —I didn't imagine she actually wanted to know—and focused on the why . Because Dillon made me laugh. Because the dimples in her smile made my legs weak. Because she was uniquely brilliant. Endlessly talented. Charming. Witty.

Because in two short years, with oceans dividing us in every direction, she'd taken the time to learn everything about me. She loved me for exactly who I was, with every fault and idiosyncrasy. And because when I was with her, my world felt complete.

Dani didn't hear any of that.

"You've seen me naked," she blurted instead, as if she'd stumbled across some deep epiphany. "Did you—have you ever—did you have the hots for me?"

"What?!" I jerked backward. Was she even fucking serious? That was her concern? That I'd been jonesing for her since we started changing in the PE locker rooms in 7 th grade? "No, Dani." The words ground through my clamped teeth. "I certainly did not."

She shook her head, still not hearing me. "I just don't get it. How do you even have sex with a woman?"

Clearly, I'd been wrong. The why? —not important. The how? —everything.

How did a woman have sex with a woman? I daydreamed about the answers I could give her. I could clear my throat, channel my inner Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Ahem, Let me count the ways :

Wholly. Completely. Consumedly. Passionately. Sometimes fast. Sometimes slow. In the middle of the night with the Celtic moon shining through a childhood bedroom window. In the afternoon sun amongst the reeds of the sea. Laughing, smothered against the steering wheel in a crowded underground Los Angeles parking structure. Quietly, on a riverfront balcony, soaking in the glow of the London Eye.

They were things she would never understand. Feelings she would never know. I would have felt sorry for her if she hadn't still been gawking at me like I'd escaped the confines of a freak show.

In my silence, Dani continued. "I mean, just—," she shuddered, "gross. I couldn't do it. I know it's in vogue with your set, but still."

I stood, gathering my untouched tray of sashimi. "I think it's about time for me to get back to LA."

"Oh, come on, Kameryn. You're overreacting. It's fine. Whatever. Love whoever you want and all that. It's just not my thing."

I dumped my dinner in the trash can, feeling guilty about the wasted fish. "I wasn't actually seeking your approval, Daniella," I returned the favor of her full name. "I just..." Just, what? Hoped she'd be someone different than she was? It was my fault, expecting her to change. "Look—I hope you respect me enough not to betray my confidence. It's not something I'm ready to share with the world. But if you just can't help yourself, so be it. I can't stop you."

"I'm not going to say anything!" For a moment, she looked hurt, and I almost felt bad, but then her upper lip curled. "I mean, it's obviously just a phase you're going through."

I stared at her, turning over the dozen friendship-ending words that flew to my tongue, and then decided she wasn't worth it. I kept my mouth shut and walked away. Back to life under the bright lights of Hollywood. To flashing cameras and waiting cars. To private airline terminals and last boarded, first disembarked. Back to being managed in and out of public spaces. To twenty-hour days on set and lonely trailers marked VIP .

And then, finally, a few days of respite, allowing me to get back to Mumbles. Back to Dillon.

And back to the bitch in the seat beside me.

I gave my seatbelt one final tug and held my breath until the wheels touched the runway.

And then my anxieties drifted in a new direction.

I wondered how I would find Dillon. What mood she would be in.

These last two weeks there'd been a change. Over the phone, I began to notice some of her anger, her sullenness, her hopelessness was waning. For the first time since her accident, she made the effort to reach out to me, instead of me always contacting her. Her conversation expanded from one-word answers to some of the humor and teasing I loved. The future began to exist again. When we did this. If we did that . She almost sounded content.

It gave me pause about the pitstop I'd made in New York City on my way to Wales. About the surgeon's personal number I now had stored in my phone.

I didn't know if it was the right thing to do for her—to offer hope that might not pan out. I'd sought the consultation with the innovative specialist without telling her. After listening to what I had to say, he said felt he had a procedure that might help.

But now, with her brightening attitude, part of me wondered if I should have left well enough alone.

Stepping onto the passenger boarding bridge, I came to the conclusion it wasn't my choice to make. It was her life. Her future. I may have been the one to open this can of worms, but it was now up to Dillon to decide.