CHAPTER 22

Ashley pulled out a couple more slices of pizza from her family’s overcrowded fridge.

“I apologize,” she said, sniffing one of the slices. “I swear these are completely fine, but you can never be too careful with my family.”

“I don’t mind, really.”

Things moved slowly from there on out. They ate together, vaguely watching a movie that Darren had on in the living room from their spots in the kitchen. Mike, Ashley’s father, came back from a business meeting and said hi before grabbing some leftovers, after a quick-witted exchange with his daughter. Then he was gone, and Darren fell asleep with the movie’s credits running, and Carly and Ashley were alone again.

“How about chess?” Ashley asked.

Carly could only say yes. Ashley set up a board that looked as if it had been around for a couple decades. The paint was chipped on the corners, and one of the pawns had been replaced with a cheaper, plastic model. Carly nodded as Ashley explained the rules, but it didn’t do much. Chess was a game of strategy, and Carly’s brain felt like swiss cheese. She knew she looked utterly pitiful, as Ashley won each round but didn’t boast or brag. It took Carly a long time, about their fifth game, to realize that as Carly plotted out her next move, Ashley kept staring at her.

“You go,” Carly said once, when Ashley had seemed much more distracted than usual. Ashley nodded, but still kept her eyes on Carly.

“It’s getting pretty late,” she said. “How about we call this one your game?”

Carly wanted to argue that it wouldn’t be fair. But she slid her piece next to Ashley’s queen, and smiled.

“Sure.”

When the game was put away again, Ashley headed toward the stairs, and Carly followed easily. Darren caught them just before they went inside her bedroom.

“Ash?” he called from the kitchen. “Does anyone need a ride?”

“Nope. Thank you,” Ashley called back down to him. It took Carly another moment again to realize Ashley didn’t joke with him. She was nervous, too.

“So, uh, again, you don’t have pajamas,” Ashley stated once they were inside. She hadn’t bothered to hide any mess this time around. Carly noted a plate with crumbs on it, on top of the bookshelf, and a few socks and T-shirts on the ground. Ashley picked up her gym shorts and another T-shirt from the bottom drawer.

“They’ve been cleaned, but are these okay again?”

Carly nodded, now mute. She spotted the basket chair in the corner and had to fight the urge to sit there, out of the way. She tossed her purse on it.

“We have a couple more pages of Treasure Island,” Ashley remarked. “What do you say to reading?”

“I’d like to savor it, I think,” Carly said.

“You do that a lot, don’t you?”

“Savor things?”

“Avoid them.”

“Maybe.”

Ashley laughed. When she sat on her bed, she patted the place next to her. Carly sat down and felt the inches between them disappear. Ashley’s hand linked in hers again. Their lips were so close to one another, so close that Carly could almost feel Ashley’s breath.

“I should call Cyn,” Carly said, suddenly turning away. She reached down toward the basket chair where her purse lay. “I at least need to tell Landon where I am.”

“Okay. Sure,” Ashley said, letting go of her hand. She placed her palm on the small of Carly’s back, rubbing in small circles as Carly texted them both.

“Better?” Ashley asked when the messages were sent.

“Yes. But I still need to wait for their responses.”

“Ah. Well, that makes sense.”

“I’m sorry. I know it’s neurotic.”

“No worries. Trust me. I said I wanted to go slow, so, here we are. Taking forever. But at least we’re good to our words.” Ashley folded her arms behind her head and laid down on her bed.

“Ugh.” Carly closed her eyes, then ran a hand through her dark hair. “I’m terrible at this.”

“No. You’re just nervous, whereas I’m careful. It’s a small difference, but don’t worry. I still think you’re cute.”

“Well, that’s…” Carly’s phone buzzed. She looked down and saw Landon’s name appear.

Good! So glad. Now get what you want!

Jillian texted her next, making Carly’s sudden smile disappear.

Well, so long as you don’t lose your job. Get there on time.

Carly sighed. She folded her phone back in her purse, not wanting to see anymore.

“Now that everyone is safe,” Ashley began, “how about you join me here?”

Carly lay next to Ashley on the bed, careful to leave at least an inch between their torsos. Ashley was bolder, and slipped her hand around the nape of Carly’s neck and ran fingers through her hair.

“This used to relax me when I had long hair,” Ashley explained as she combed her fingers through the strands. “Does it help with you?”

Carly closed her eyes. She took a deep breath in. “Yeah.”

“Good.” Ashley kept her hands in Carly’s hair as her body inched closer. Carly’s body flushed with arousal and anticipation. All I ever wanted from Brooklyn was a kiss. Now, as Ashley’s hands moved from Carly’s hair to her chin, pulling her face close to hers, Carly knew that her wait with Ashley would soon be over. But Carly was still afraid.

“Are you sure?” Carly felt her lips move so close to Ashley’s and Ashley’s breath against her skin. Ashley’s nose rubbed hers as she nodded.

“I am,” Ashley said. “Are you sure?”

Carly nodded. The act of nodding itself brought their lips together, grazing one another. That should have been enough to make Carly feel better. But she recoiled, just slightly, until Ashley inched closer yet again. Soon, they were going to fall off the bed with this constant shifting. So Carly made herself stay in one place—and accepted Ashley’s lips against her own.

Ashley laughed into the embrace as soon as Carly kissed back. The laughter opened her mouth, allowing her tongue to slide forward to coax Carly a little more. Carly looped a hand behind Ashley’s neck. There wasn’t as much hair to comb with her fingers, but Carly worked her fingers through the short mane. Ashley’s tongue touched her own and their bodies pressed together, deeper and tighter. From the first meek peck, they were now making out.

Now that Carly finally had what she wanted, part of her waited for it to be taken away. There has to be a catch, a caveat, a footnote to something I didn’t anticipate. Like her mother’s backhanded compliments, Carly knew that there was a price to pay for getting what she wanted. But Ashley was silent aside from small moans. She was content to hold Carly just like this with only their bodies communicating.

And it was all too much. Carly pulled away from the embrace, murmuring an apology as she did.

“Shush,” Ashley whispered. She wrapped an arm around Carly, pulling her closer with a sigh. Her fingers combed through her hair again, calming and pleasant. “Oh, what happened to you, Carly Rogers, that made you so worried about a simple kiss?”

“You really want to hear that story now?”

“Now is as good a time as any. And if it prevents you from kissing me like you had been, then yes, let me hear it. So we can get back to normal.”

Carly smiled and then sighed again. “I fell in love with a straight girl.”

Instead of giving her a kiss to heal the wound, Ashley asked, “And?”

“And. Um. Uh.” Carly felt a prickle of embarrassment under Ashley’s gaze. “I guess I was just sad, disappointed.”

“But she was straight. If you knew that, then why get yourself hopelessly involved in an issue you can’t change?”

“I know. I just. Love is more complex than that.”

“I have to disagree,” Ashley said. Her grip was still tight on Carly, but she was no longer tracing her fingers through her hair. “I think selfish love is like that.”

“Selfish love?”

“The type of love that most books by Nicholas Sparks are based on. That most films like 500 Days of Summer are like, too. The woman has no agency. She is meant to be wanted, to be looked at. It seems like romance, but it’s really…consumption. Not all romance novels do it, which is why I had to have a delicate screening process when I read them. I like love stories. Love stories are great. But both people have to love the flaws and not just the surface, you know?”

“I know, I know,” Carly said, closing her eyes in embarassment. “I really fell in love with an image instead of a person.”

“Yes. And that will definitely get you hurt.”

“I know.”

“But I can’t say I blame you. It’s easier to love an image than a person. Especially when you’ve been rejected most of your life.”

Carly tilted her head slightly, looking up at Ashley. “What do you mean?”

“Emotional abandonment sucks. That’s all I mean.”

“I haven’t been… I mean…I have Cyn and Landon.”

“But you don’t have your mom. Not always, anyway. I don’t want to sound like Oedipus or anything, and maybe all lesbians have mommy issues, but your mom was distant. She’s still distant. Our parents teach us how to love people. And if you don’t get a first swing at it in your own house, it’s hard to love people outside of it. It’s easier to love images, because they don’t change.”

“Huh. But Brooklyn still screwed me over.”

“Because she was a person. Perhaps a misguided one—I don’t know the full story. But what I do know is that when I was in the hospital, I read a lot of romances. And then, when I got out, I slept with a lot of women.”

“You know, that’s the second time you’ve mentioned that,” Carly said, cutting in. “It almost sounds like you’re bragging.”

“Hah. I’m not. Trust me. All of that sex was meaningless, and I realized what I was doing because I had read about it so much. I was trying to fix my own illness and failure with other women. And while that may sometimes work on the pages of Harlequin with big strapping young men, that’s just not how it works in real life. You can’t fill up a life that way… Gah,” Ashley said, suddenly losing her focus. “I know I sound a bit corny right now, but hear me out. You wanted to love this girl, Brooklyn. You wanted her so much, right?”

“Yes,” Carly said. “Of course.”

“Did she love you back?”

“Yes, she told me so. She sent me emails, we talked on Skype.” Carly sighed now. “Can I just tell you what happened? The whole story is useful to know. I feel like the bad guy unless I tell you what happened.”

“Context is good, sure,” Ashley said. “But I don’t know if it will help much. The myth of the straight girl and how it’s her fault that lesbians get their hearts broken… I just hate it. It’s falling in love with an image and actually has nothing to do with sexuality. We’re all guilty of it—trust me, I’ve done the same thing. I was trying to do that after my illness, trying to find the best person to help me escape without opening up myself. But I had to realize that my own dream girl or straight girl was not mine to love. She was a person, with her own will and desires, and I had to respect that. Even if she said she loved me back. Some people express love in many different ways. It’s just…difficult.”

“Tell me about it.” Carly pulled herself up into a sitting position in the bed, along with Ashley.

“You can tell me,” Ashley said. “I didn’t want to shut you up. I just wanted to let you know that even backstories don’t always excuse behavior. It’s just something we need to learn from.”

“I know. So. This is what happened, more or less…” Carly spoke of Brooklyn in broken phrases, out of order, stepping in with relationships and explanations. It felt bad, like a shitty story that had a hackneyed editor, worse than Kerouac’s ramblings about Mary Lou and the open road.

“I know Kerouac is a lost cause, and I should grow up,” Carly said. “But Brooklyn was mine. This wasn’t some white guy longing for a woman he couldn’t have. This was me, and I had waited so much of my life to find someone I thought would make me whole. And then she just ran away. This is my story, even if it had been told a million times before by white men with bigger publishing contracts.”

“That’s your first problem, though,” Ashley said after a few moments. “You want someone to make you whole.”

“Isn’t that…isn’t that what love is about?”

“Yes, in books,” Ashley said. “In books it’s about soul mates and fixing yourself. Fixing another person.”

“Yes. And…”

“And you shouldn’t fix someone,” Ashley said. “You should be whole by yourself. I mean—look at Cynthia.”

“What about her?”

“Do you think she believes in fairy tales? That the prince or princess is going to save her?”

“No, she’d probably kick any guy in the nuts with her blades on if he tried that.”

“Exactly. She is much more willing to be Bliss Cavendar at the end of Whip It than anything else.”

“Right, I know. She has her shit together,” Carly said. “So the new fairy tale is to wind up alone?”

“No, the fairy tale is to leave the person who tries to fix you. To ignore the person who tries to save you, because you can save yourself. Find the person, if you want, that helps you. Not people who think you’re broken and need to be whole, but fall for the person who hangs out with you because they like you.”

Ashley nudged toward her on the bed. She smiled a little as she did. Flirtatious, but still willing to discuss this point. “You need to find a partner. That’s what I learned after my brief sojourn from the hospital to the hallways of women I barely knew. I didn’t want love, and I didn’t want sex. I wanted something in between.”

“What’s that?”

“A partner, like I said. I’ve always liked that term, because you never quite know if a partner is a dating partner, or if you rob banks together, or if you’re cops. It’s ambiguous and multifaceted, like a relationship should be. I don’t want someone to fix me. To try and heal me. I’m fine. Even if I am sick, I am not this fragile creature that needs to be protected.”

Carly swallowed hard. Ashley was moving closer and closer to her, their hands linked in between their bodies on the bed.

“I understand,” Carly said. “I’m sorry. I know things with Brooklyn were half my fault. I was just so angry.”

“And so young. She was your first love. You’re allowed to be a dick for your first love. So long as you learn from it.”

Carly nodded. Her throat felt tight. She watched as Ashley’s blue eyes moved, looking at her up and down.

“I have learned,” Carly added.

“Good. Is that what you want again? Something like Brooklyn?”

“Oh, God no. Not at all.”

“Okay,” Ashley said, her face close to Carly’s now, and her voice a whisper. “What do you want?”

“What you described.”

“And what is that? “Come on, use your words.”

“I want a partner. I don’t want to fix you. And I don’t want to be fixed,” Carly said, gaining conviction. As Ashley nodded, she got closer and closer. Their noses touched once again, but their lips still remained too far apart.

“I want you,” Carly said.

“I want you too,” Ashley said, whispering now. “And I don’t want to hurt or fix anyone. I want to help.”

“Okay,” Carly said. “Then will you be my partner?”

“Yes, Carly Rogers.” Ashley said with a small breathy laugh that Carly felt on her lips. “I thought that was obvious?”