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Fiona was out front at one of the café tables, fiddling with her phone. Trick? or whatever the girl’s name was that she’d been with, had left.
“Hey,” I said, taking the empty seat next to her.
“Hey,” she said, setting her phone down. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” I asked, crossing my arms. I was on my guard because my heart was still pretty bruised from how things had ended.
“For acting like that. I shouldn’t have said that stuff while you were working. I guess I just got ahead of myself when I saw you. It’s been so long.” She gave me a tentative smile, but I was still on my guard.
“It has. What are you doing here?” I asked, even though she’d grown up two towns over. The area was so small that the high school we’d attended had served seven small towns.
“Home for the summer from school. I wouldn’t be here if I had found any other way. What about you?” I remembered how her parents reacted when we’d started dating. To my face they’d been cordial and nice, but I could tell under the surface they weren’t okay with it. They just weren’t as blatant as mine.
“I’m staying with my cousin, Anna, and her girlfriend. She got me the job here.” She nodded and picked at a little rust spot on the table.
“I’m not with Trick. I know I said that, but the look on your face said that you thought we were together. She’s just the only friend I know around here who knows what it’s like to be queer. She was a few years ahead of us in school. Do you remember her?” Oh, shit. Yeah. She went by a different name then, which I couldn’t recall off the top of my head, and she hadn’t had any of the tattoos, but now she was ringing a distant bell in my memory.
“Yeah, now I remember.” She breathed a sigh of relief.
“I’m not seeing anyone. Not that you asked or wanted to know. But I’m not.” I didn’t ask and I didn’t need to know. But still. A knot in my stomach started to loosen.
“Now that we’ve gottenthatout of the way, tell me what you’ve been up to. I mean, I stalk you on Facebook, and I thought about sending you messages so many times.” I’d thought the same thing. But I’d never had the courage to actually send her a message. What would I have said?Hey, remember how we broke up and you shattered my heart, so, how’s it going?Not so much.
I was still on edge, but being with her was making me relax against my will. She had always been like that. When I had been in chaos and confusion, Fiona had been like gravity. She’d centered me and helped me focus and brought calm. It was something I couldn’t quantify or explain, and it was one of the reasons I’d become friends with her. That was before either of us knew we were queer. At the time, we’d just thought we were really good friends. Good friends who made out sometimes. A lot. Looking back, we’d both been adorably clueless.
“I’m so sorry. For what happened between us. I think . .. I think I just got scared and confused and I bailed. I bailed on us.” Oh, we were really doing this now. I looked around, but no one else was paying attention.
“You broke my fucking heart,” I said and she flinched. Good.
“I know. I broke mine in the process.” Her voice was barely above a whisper.
“I loved you. And that wasn’t easy for me, you know. I don’t love just anyone like that.” Being demi, I usually only went for people that I had a deep connection, like friendship, with before I could even begin to consider them boyfriend or girlfriend material. I had to know someone,reallyknow them, before the other feelings came into play. I honestly didn’t know how other people could just pick someone to date and be like “sure, yeah, that one.” How the hell did that work? Things with Fiona had just sort of happened, but I hadn’t had anything like that with someone since, and not for lack of trying.
“I know, I know.” Her face crumpled and she started to cry. Oh shit. Instinctively, I reached out to her and somehow she sort of fell over and into my lap.
This was an interesting turn of events.
“I’m so sorry, Cricket.” I nearly flinched at the sound of the nickname she’d given me. It was a long ridiculous story that I didn’t really entirely remember, but the nickname had stuck. I’d called her Ladybug. I hadn’t thought about those names in a long time.
She wiped her eyes with her hands and looked up at me. Her face was blotchy, but she was still so fucking beautiful that it made me ache.
“Hi,” she said in a quiet voice.
“Hi, Ladybug,” I said, pushing her hair back from her face. She smiled and sat up, as if realizing what she’d done.
“Oh, shit, I am sorry about that too.” She dove out of my lap and got back into her seat, wiping her eyes with a napkin.
“I’m just a hot mess, aren’t I?” she said, laughing. A beautiful hot mess.
That same feeling was creeping back and I wasn’t sure what to do about it.
“Do you want to go somewhere to talk?” I blurted out. Now that we’d started, there were more things to say. Stuff we needed to get out. When we’d broken up, it had felt like we’d stopped everything in the middle of a sentence. I needed to finish it and put a period on it so I could move on. And I was pretty sure I wasn’t the only one who still needed closure of some kind.
She nodded.
“Okay, sure.”
Three
