“Then when? When will you talk to me?”
“We’ve already talked,” Jackie says, crossing her arms tightly over her chest. “I’m a terrible friend, okay? That should be the end of it.”
Jackie’s eyes get wide as saucers when Claire moves closer. Their chests are almost touching, and in the close, stuffy air of the closet Claire can feel her warm breath. “Jackie, please. Just this once, even if you never want to see me again afterwards, can you listen to me?”
Silently, Jackie nods.
“I’ve been so scattered since we met,” Claire says. “I didn’t know which way was up. But I think I know now.”
Jackie makes a tiny sound. A small, nearly inaudible expression of pain.
“You’re just confused. I shouldn’t—Ican’tdo this,” Jackie says.
There’s such an ache in Claire, one that she’s almost sure is echoed in Jackie, but something is holding Jackie back.
“I’m not confused,” Claire insists, before correcting herself. “I mean, I was. But then I talked to Theo.”
Jackie freezes like a deer caught halfway across the road. “Theo? How? What did he tell you?”
“I figured it out on my own,” Claire says firmly. “I just needed someone to set my head on straight.”
Jackie’s arms un-cross. “Whatever Theo said, Claire, you shouldn’t listen to him. He’s a meddler. I should never have—”
“The person you loved,” Claire interrupts. “The married person. It wasn’t a man, was it?”
Jackie says nothing, stunned into a silence that’s somehow more illustrative than any verbal confirmation. The moment feels still, like the heartbeats before a jump, even with the muffled music and the sounds of the party behind the door.
“It was a woman,” Claire says, in a single terrifying breath. “You loved a married woman.”
Jackie’s hands are fisted in the fabric of her own dress so tightly that her knuckles are white. It’s a deep maroon, under the navy-blue jacket.
Claire is afraid.God, is she afraid, but she can’t stop now. Not when she’s this close.
“And I’ve seen you, with other women. At parties like these,” Claire continues, barely above a whisper. She pries Jackie’s hands from her dress, holding them in her own.
Jackie swallows hard. The tendons in her neck flex, and somehow the sight of it—how it makes Claire want to press her lips there, her teeth, her tongue—makes her feel brave.
“You’re a lesbian,” Claire murmurs. “Aren’t you?”
The question hangs in the air between them, a curtain between their bodies that one word could pull down. Jackie’s jaw is so tense that Claire worries about her teeth.
Slowly, probably aware of how her answer fundamentally shifts everything between them, Jackie nods.
Claire has known it since the moment Martha told her about Jackie and Susan. Her conversations with Theo have made it clear. This isn’t a surprise. But the admittance makes it real, and it’s difficult to get her next words out.
Claire smooths her thumbs over the backs of Jackie’s hands. Just under the fingertip of Claire’s left pointer is Jackie’s tattoo, that branch of acacia flowers; it’s warm and soft, like the rest of her. Smooth. Not raised or textured at all. It’s just a part of Jackie’s skin.
“I think I might be, too,” Claire whispers.
Jackie’s breath all comes out in awhoosh. Instead of the positive reaction Claire was hoping for, she deflates like a popped balloon.
“Claire, we can’t.” Jackie’s voice cracks again. Her eyes are shiny when she pulls her hand from Claire’s, reaching for the doorknob again, but Claire is still in the way.
Jackie’s word choice is so important. Notwon’t, notdon’t want to.
Can’t.
“But you want to?” Claire says.
