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I wiped my face and set my burger down. I was so hungry that I had to slow down or else I was going to choke.
“They really are great people. They’re going to adore you. I mean, they do already. I might have talked you up, and they remember me mentioning you back in the day.”
Echo raised her eyebrows. “Oh, really? You mentioned me? What did you say?”
“Well, I didn’t tell them that we banged at camp, that’s for sure. I just told them I’d met a girl and we’d sort of had a thing and I might hear from her. I came out to them when I was like, ten, I think? So they’d been wondering when I was going to start dating. All of my crushes up until that point had been short-lived.” That was an understatement. My shortest crush was one week one a friend who I thought was flirting with me, but she was just being extra friendly to make another friend jealous and I got caught up in the whole thing. Being a teenage lesbian was rough sometimes.
“Do you think they’ll like me?” she asked in a soft voice.
“Yeah, I do. They like who I like.”
“So that meansyoulike me.” She bumped my shoulder with hers.
“Yes, I think it’s fair to say that I like you, Echo. I like you a lot.”
She put down her burger and wiped her hands. “Well, that’s cool because I love you.”
I almost slid right off my barstool.
“Was that too much?” she asked.
I put both hands on the table, because I needed something to hold onto.
“Did you just say what I thought you said?”
“That I love you? Yeah, I definitely said that.”
I gaped at her. Those words had caused an explosion of thoughts in my brain and I didn’t know what to do.
“You okay?” Echo put her hand on my shoulder and leaned closer to look into my eyes. “Did I break you? Kiri?”
“Sorry, trying to breathe.” I put one hand on my chest. Yes, my lungs were still doing their thing, expanding and contracting, and my heart was pumping along.
“Shit, I'm sorry. I shouldn’t have said it like that.”
I took a moment and stared into her eyes. Let myself completely get lost in their depths, and flipped through all the things that had happened in the past ten years between us. The laughs, the moments, the teasing, the fighting, the grudge, the reconciliation, the blossoming of new feelings.
I wasn’t the sixteen-year-old with a crush on a beautiful girl who was out of my league. I wasn’t the teen hiding under the sheets and hoping she didn’t get caught. I was a twenty-six-year-old woman and I was . . .
In love. I was in love with a girl named Echo.
Totally and completely and madly and deeply and all of those other words. I’d known I was falling, and I’d known that it was happening, but it took her saying the words for me to realize that there was no other word for the way I felt about Echo.
“It’s okay,” I said. “I mean, I wouldn’t have picked this location, exactly, for that kind of declaration. And flowers would have been nice.”
Echo rolled her eyes. “And?” she asked.
“And what?” I wanted to wind her up a little bit.
“And do you have anything to say?” Her face was starting to get a little red, like it did when she was riled. It was totally mean to do this, but she’d pulled so much shit on me that this was only fair.
“Oh, that. Sure, it’s great! So sweet of you. Thank you so much.”
I picked up my burger and took a bite as she gaped at me.
“Are you serious right now?”
I chewed and put my burger down again. “No, I’m not serious, Echo. I’m not that much of an asshole.”
