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“Is this okay?” she asked as I punched in the alarm code and turned the light on.
“Of course,” I said, walking through the back and turning on lights here and there. I went out to the front and turned on the lamp next to one of the couches.
“I’ll make some coffee,” I said, motioning for her to sit down. She did, heaving a little sigh.
“Is there anything else you want? There’s a few pieces of cheesecake back here from today,” I said, going back to the bakery section.
“I wouldn’t object to cheesecake,” she said, and I couldn’t help but smile at that too. She looked so pretty in the low lamplight.
Don’t fall for a straight girl, Daisy. That was literally the first rule of being a lesbian.
I filled the coffee pot and pulled out the cheesecake, adding two slices to one plate and then dolloped some whipped cream on top with shaved chocolate pieces. I couldn’t half-ass anything that I’d made myself.
“This is a really cool place,” she said and I realized she’d gotten up from the couch and was checking out some of the vintage posters and pictures. It was pretty damn obvious from the walls that this place was gay as fuck. I wonder what she thought about that, but she hadn’t asked any questions yet.
“Yeah, I like it,” I said, wondering if I should just break down and tell her that I was also gay as fuck. I hadn’t really figured it out until college, so there was no way she could have known when we were kids. Unless I’d been broadcasting lesbian-ness, but I was pretty sure I hadn’t been.
The coffee spit into the pot and I filled two mugs, set them on a tray, and added forks and the plate of cheesecake.
We sat on the couch together, sipping coffee and eating the cheesecake. I couldn’t deal with the silence, so I got up and put on some music, shuffling through the station that the café subscribed to. It had a lot of Tegan and Sara on it. I skipped to something a little less gay.
“I missed you,” Molly said when I sat back down. She wasn’t much for blurting things out, so I was taken aback.
“You did? I must have missed all those phone calls and messages,” I said. I sounded like a bitch, but I thought I had a right to be.
“I know,” she said, putting down her fork. “I tried. So many times, and I know that’s not an excuse, but I did miss you. I did. I begged my parents to let me come back and see you, but . . .” She trailed off. Oh. I got it.
“They didn’t want you staying friends with me,” I said and her face got red as she nodded.
“I know that’s not an excuse, but ugh!” She put her head in her hands.
“We were kids,” I said. Why was I comforting her?
“I know, I know. I tried. I tried and my parents messed with my head and then I thought that you hated me because I’d moved and I got all wrapped up with all these thoughts and then I felt like it was too late.”
It pretty much was. I stabbed a bite of cheesecake and shoved it in my mouth. Not my best, but she didn’t need to know that.
She reached out and grabbed my hand.
“Is it too late?” My fork clattered to the floor in surprise and I looked down at our hands, clasped together.
“Is what too late?” I said. I’d completely blanked out and lost all sense of what was happening because her touch was making my skin buzz. As quick as she’d made the contact, she whipped her hand back and folded her fingers together in her lap.
“Is it too late to fix things with us?” Her voice was so quiet I almost couldn’t hear it.
I opened my mouth to answer. But what was the answer? Could we fix things? I had no fucking idea.
“I don’t know,” I said, because it was the truth. I couldn’t give her an answer. This was all too much. My brain was scrambled and I couldn’t get rid of the feel of her touch. I reached down and picked up my fork. I’d have to get another one. Molly hadn’t touched her cheesecake yet.
“Well, can we try at least?” Her eyes were big as she looked up at me and I saw echoes of the girl I’d known, grown now into one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen. And she just kept getting prettier the longer I sat with her. This was going to be a problem.
“I guess so? I don’t really know. Can I think about it?” I asked. I could see the hurt in her unbelievably blue eyes. Had they always been that astonishing color? Yes. They had. I remembered trying to mix paints and capture the color in art class, but I’d never gotten close.
“Sure,” she said, putting on a shaky smile as she picked up her fork. I got up and grabbed another one as I tossed the floor fork in the dishwasher.
“This is really good,” she said when I sat back down. I was glad I’d put music on, because if it was silent it would have been even worse. We finished our cheesecake without talking anymore, as if neither of us was sure what to say or how to move on from everything. So many years of silence.
“Thank you,” she said as she set her fork on the empty plate. She’d always been graceful as a kid, probably due to her ballet classes, and that hadn’t changed. God, she was so beautiful. We stood and she leaned forward, as if she wanted to give me a hug. I guess I leaned too because then her arms were around me and my arms went around her as if they’d been waiting to do that for hours. Maybe they had. I breathed in the scent of spicy perfume. Not quite cinnamon, but similar. Shit.
