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I let Eliza go first.
“Gin martini, dry, filthy. Two olives.” She looks tired when she says it, like it’s desperately needed to give her a little pick-me-up.
“Um, I would love an unsweetened iced tea, please. Green, if you have it.” As good as a real drink sounds right now, I have to stay as anti-bloated as possible for an upcoming show.
The waitress walks away with a huge grin on her face, and Eliza sighs. “I honestly don’t know how you do it. It must be excruciating not getting to drink when you feel like it.”
I give her a shrug. “Maybe sometimes. But I also love my job and don’t want to do anything to jeopardize it. So, if I have to be sober, so be it.”
I kid you not. I stare at her and watch as her eyes flutter to my lips, down the front of my torso, up to what she can see before the table, and then back to my eyes. I’m pretty sure Eliza just checked me out.
And I’m pretty sure I liked it.
We go about our lunch; I order a boring salad with no dressing, and Eliza gets herself a healthy-looking meatless sandwich. We both nibble and talk about only the casual stuff. She whines to me about work. I joke around with her and get her to smile. One smile from Eliza makes my entire day. Always.
But of course, we couldn’t just stay on simple conversation topics forever. Eliza wipes her mouth with her yellow cloth napkin and looks at me with an expression I can’t quite determine. But there’s still a small smile on her face, too.
“So, I must say, I am very happy for you and your mystery boyfriend, whoever he may be.”
I would’ve been a fool to think that she would never bring this up. No matter how much I don’t want to talk about it.
I tuck some loose hair strands behind my ear and look away from her briefly. “Oh, yeah… Thank you. He is—he’s great. This is just what I need right now.”
I didn’t want to say it, but I had to. It’s the truth. Thisisfor the best. I could never be with Eliza, and Eliza could never be with me. I don’t want the public to know I like women because I don’t want to lose my fans, and I don’t want to lose my job. I don’t want to go back to being a nobody.
Do I want a boyfriend? Especially the one I don’t have?
No.
She takes a sip of her martini, and that sip slowly turns into her draining the rest of it and waving our excited waitress back over to get her another one. After that, she crosses her arms on her lap and leans back against her chair. “So, I don’t suppose you’re ready to tell me who he is yet?” she asks.
That is exactly the last thing I want to do.I don’t want her to know. Ever. But I know I’m being ridiculous. I know it’s inevitable.
I cringe. “Not yet, if that’s okay. It’s not that I don’t trust you, I just don’t know if it’s even gonna last, so I don’t want to talk about it too much yet until I know it’s real.”
I pulled that excuse right out of my butt. Maybe I should take up acting, too, because this performance is miraculous.
Eliza nods her head, but her eyes have a faraway look in them, like she’s thinking about something deeply.
“Liza?” I ask. “Is everything okay?”
It’s a terrifying question to ask because I have no idea what her answer is going to be. We didn’t exactly talk about what happened in the stairwell that day. Not once. Not after she told me it would never happen again. I don’t know if this is the moment that she’s going to bring it up again. Or if she is going to bring up something worse. I don’t know how I’m going to react to whatever it is she’s about to say to me.
All I know is I’m suddenly terrified.
She looks back at me, and for a second, it almost seems like she forgot that I was even here. “Oh, yes, I’m fine.”
But I know Eliza well enough now to know when she’s not being honest with me.
“No, I don’t think you are.” I put my hand out on the table, but I don’t reach out to her, as much as I would love to. “You can talk to me. You know you can.” I almost want to pull my hand back away because I don’t want her to notice how it has suddenly gone all clammy and jittery with my nerves. I can just sense that something is off.
She tenses her jaw and seems to be deep in thought again, clearly contemplating over whether she can confide in me with whatever it is she wants to get off her chest. Then her martini arrives, and she takes two sips. When she sets it down, she seems ready.
“I guess I’m still just having a really hard time with Shawn,” she begins. “He pushed away his kids because of his disease. He doesn’t want them seeing him like this. He doesn’t want to be remembered this way by them. I guess I always wondered why he wasn’t doing the same to me, but with his recent doctor’s visit, I’m beginning to think he might finally be doing so.” She puts her elbow on the table and rests her temple on her pointer and middle fingers.
“What’s he been doing?”
I feel horrible. All she does is spend most of her day when she’s not at work at home taking care of him. Whatever Shawn may be going through, it doesn’t make it okay for him to push her away. He needs her, and he knows it.
