It was not as though she could ever forget what Trish looked like, but the force of her physical presence still took June’s breath away. There were dark circles around her eyes and her face was gaunt, but still she was the most beautiful woman June had ever seen. It was exactly why June needed her to stay away.
At last, June found the strength to meet her eye. Trish’s expression stabbed through her. It was full of sadness, and June had the maddening impulse to hug her. Instead, June pulled her arms across her chest.
“What are you doing here, Trish?”
“I’m sorry. I know you’re working. I know I shouldn’t be here. I just…I didn’t know what else to do,” Trish said, her voice wavering. “Where did you go?”
June shrugged. She needed to get through these few minutes, to harden herself enough to be able to walk away. Then she would be on her own again, and she could try to forget this desperate feeling.
“It looked like your students were really into your class. You’re a good teacher, but then I always knew you would be.”
June didn’t react, though the words gave her an unwanted sense of pride. It was pathetic that she still wanted Trish’s approval.
“Are you doing anything now? I’m on my break so I don’t have much time, but I was wondering if you might come for a walk with me, so that we can talk?” Trish asked.
June shook her head, shrugging again.
“Can I please have the chance to explain things? I need to apologize to you. Even if it doesn’t change anything, I think it’s important. For both of us.”
“Don’t try and tell me what’s important for me. I don’t think you’d even know what you were apologizing for,” June muttered, moving to walk past Trish.
Trish put a hand on June’s arm, lightly encircling it with her fingers. “Please, June. Just a few minutes of your time. Then you never have to see me again. I won’t come back again, I promise.”
They were staring at one another now. June let out a nervous laugh. She didn’t know whether she wanted to push Trish or kiss her, and it was terrifying.
“Get your hand off me right now. I didn’t say you could touch me.”
Trish’s touch dropped away. “Sorry. Please know that I care about you. I’ve made a lot of mistakes, and you didn’t deserve to be on the receiving end of all of it, all my confusion. I wish I could take it all back. I’d do anything for a fresh start.”
“It’s too late. I could never forget the way you’ve treated me.”
“I deserve that, one hundred percent. But don’t you think that what we have is worth fighting for? I think so.”
“And what is it exactly that you think we have?”
Trish moved closer to her, not touching her with anything other than her steady gaze, following June’s eyes as she tried to avert them. Trish’s shampoo smell was clean and sweet, familiar from when they’d been lying together. She remembered the last time they’d argued like this, and it was all she could do to not push into Trish again, to sink into her and soothe this aching need.
“Something special. I know how mad you are at me right now, and you have every right to be, but maybe one day in the future things could be better between us. If you can find it in your heart to forgive me.”
“That’s interesting. Don’t you worry that I don’t have enough stability? Seeing as I’m…what was it you wrote? Not a serious person? I mean, if we hang out, wouldn’t that mean you might have to hang out with my horrible friends?” June said.
“How did you…” Trish took a step back, her eyes wide.
“It was on the table, I knocked it off when I was leaving. I saw it all.”
Trish looked back at her, openmouthed.
“Don’t worry about it, I already knew that you felt that way. It wasn’t any big shock, considering the way you treated me. Still a strange thing to do, though, don’t you think? How would you like it if I wrote a list of everything I don’t like about you? How about the fact that you’re materialistic? That you have a great big stick up your ass? You’re too judgmental, how about that one?”
Trish had tears standing in her eyes. June shook her head and looked away so that she wouldn’t have to see them. “I didn’t mean to say all that. Forget about it. Just leave me alone, okay?”
“I’m so sorry June,” Trish said, her voice small.
June pushed past her, out into the hall, and walked down the stairs as quickly as her legs would carry her.
Trish returned to work with her stomach churning. It never occurred to her that June might have seen those stupid lists. She wanted to go home and look at them, to remind herself exactly what they said, but then she remembered she destroyed them. Trish wished desperately that she’d destroyed them sooner, or never written them at all.
She put her hand on her stomach. It was over for them, June couldn’t have made that clearer, but it didn’t feel over to her. Trish couldn’t bear that June would always remember her as the person who’d written those things about her.
Now June believed that Trish had added her up like a sum, and came out with the wrong answer. Writing the list had been so stupid, and she’d only done it because she had never been able to trust her own feelings. How could she convey to June how meaningless it had been to her?
There was no coming back from this.
“Good lord what’s wrong with you, are you sick?” Jodie asked. She put a hand to Trish’s forehead. “You look terrible.”
Trish tried to laugh. “I’m fine, just feeling a bit queasy.”
“Do you need to go home?”
“You know what, I really should. I could do with a good lie down, I think.”
“Look after yourself,” Jodie said, and it sounded like an order. Trish could tell by the way Jodie was looking at her that she wanted to ask more questions, but thankfully she let Trish go without another word.
Trish went directly to Leigh’s place, unable to bear the thought of being by herself all afternoon.
“Trish! What are you doing here?” Leigh said when she opened the door.
“I think I might have put on some weight. Do you mind if I try the dress on again, just to reassure myself?”
Leigh looked her up and down. “Okay, but I think you’re being silly, you don’t look like you’ve put on any weight to me.”
“Can I just try it on, please?”
Leigh crossed her arms and frowned. “What gives? Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”
“No, I finished early. I thought you’d be happy about this, we don’t want to leave it ’til the last minute and find out it has to be altered, right?”
“Riiiiight,” Leigh said. “Go then, it’s in the spare room.”
Trish took the dress out of its garment bag. Leigh said that she wanted her bridesmaids to have something they’d want to wear again; it was a strapless burgundy gown that flared out at the hips. Trish slid the zip up her back. She wished she’d thought of a better reason for coming over out of the blue, because she really wasn’t in the mood for this.
Leigh knocked on the door. Without waiting for an answer, she pushed her way into the room.
“See I told you that you were being silly, if anything you’ve lost weight!”
Trish looked back at her helplessly, and burst into tears.
“Come on, get out of that thing and come out to the kitchen, I’ll make us some tea or something,” Leigh said.
Trish cried as she stepped out of the dress, and was still crying when she explained what had happened with June. They stood at the kitchen counter, cradling cups of tea while Trish talked.
“You and your damn lists!” Leigh said, handing her a tissue. “You don’t know when to stop.”
Trish raised her eyebrows and pointed to a list on the fridge.
“That’s different, I’m getting married. I have a lot to organize right now. It would be impossible for me to keep track without them.”
“I know, but I’m begging you, can we please stop talking about the list? You’re starting to make me wish I hadn’t told you. I already feel bad enough.”
“Sorry. But that’s really the icing on the cake in this whole thing. I bet it wouldn’t be so bad if she hadn’t seen that. She might have been able to get over the other stuff. Well, then there’s the Katrina thing. I can’t believe you weren’t more thoughtful about all that. How would you feel if she were dating someone else, flaunting it like that and telling you all about it?”
Trish threw her head back, somewhere between crying and laughing. “Leigh! Can you stop rubbing salt in my wounds? I came here for support, not to be told how stupid I’ve been. I already know that.”
“You should have kept me updated, I could have really helped you avoid some of your bigger mistakes. I would have told you June was only doing that silly romantic friendship thing because she wanted to get close to you. I’ve never heard of anything so dumb. You should have seen right through that. And like, the whole Katrina issue, I can’t believe you even considered it. Ugh.”
“Honestly? Neither can I. It was all very unpleasant. I didn’t consider it, not really. I should never have gone there, though.”
“Damn right you shouldn’t. June’s so cool, and nice. Katrina’s not fit to lick her boots, to tell you the truth.”
“I really like her,” Trish said helplessly.
Leigh handed Trish another cookie. “I can’t believe you made me break my wedding shredding diet for this.”
“You opened them! I didn’t ask you to,” Trish said.
“Whatever. So, what’s your next move?”
Trish stuffed the cookie in her mouth. “There’s no next move. She couldn’t have been any clearer. I’m just going to have to get over it.”
“You’re kidding. You can’t leave it like that!”
“Stalking is illegal in this state last time I checked. I was already pushing it going to see her at work.”
Leigh sighed. “Oh, Trish, you’ve always been such a quitter. Always taking the path of least resistance.”
“What exactly do you propose I do?”
“Make a grand gesture. She’s already mad at you, what’s the worst that can happen if you give it one last shot?”
“A grand gesture? Like what?”
“I don’t know what she’d like, I don’t know her as well as you do. It needs to be something personal. Something just between the two of you. You’ll know the right thing to do if you give it some thought.”
That night Trish lay on her sofa, thinking about every romance movie she had ever watched, and ran through every make-up scene in fiction that she could think of. She considered special songs and performances, expensive dates and gifts, and yelling for June outside of her window with a stereo over her head. Everything that crossed her mind was ridiculous, and she couldn’t imagine June going for any of it.
It had to be something that Trish would have time to deliver before June could cut her off. That added an extra layer of difficulty.
There was so much she wished she could say to June. Yet, she’d never been all that good with words, and when it came to June, all she had ever done was put her foot in her mouth. If only she could be eloquent, if only she was the sort of person who could find the right words to capture everything.
It had to be a letter. As soon as she thought of it, she knew it was right. It wasn’t exactly a grand gesture, but it would be sincere, and it would mean she was being true to who she was. Writing to June would give her time to digest Trish’s words. There could be no more ambushes, like what she had done when she’d gone to June’s classroom. Even if June made the decision to not forgive her, there was something comforting to Trish about the idea of spilling it all onto the page.
Trish jumped up from the sofa, arranging herself at the table with a notepad and pen.
It took her hours, because she approached the letter in her usual methodical fashion. Though she had always wanted to write, she didn’t consider herself a natural author. She didn’t have any special skill in transforming her words into sentences and paragraphs, especially not when it came to emotions. It was something that she had to plan, no matter how much the sentiment was from her heart.
Trish began by writing bullet points that set out exactly what she wanted to communicate. It was important that she explain herself and tell June why she had been acting the way she had, but the worst thing she could do was write something that was all about herself. She wanted to focus not just on the way that June made her feel, but on why June was everything that she wanted in another person. And she had to do it in a way that would blot out the memory of those damaging lists and everything they said.
Trish drafted and redrafted, reading the words aloud to herself each time to see if they were working. When it was right, she would know. When she was finished, she went to bed and slept on it, and then when she got out of bed just after dawn she rewrote it one more time.
At last she was satisfied. Trish crisply folded the letter and sealed it in an envelope. She was going to mail it, because she didn’t want to risk being discovered if she tried to slip it into June’s mailbox.
Dear June,
I know that I owe you an explanation, but that you don’t owe it to me to hear it. Still, I hope that you’ll keep reading.
Once there was a time when I would have said, “if you care about someone enough then fear doesn’t matter.” I would have said that fear could never be a reasonable excuse for treating someone the way that I’ve treated you (and I’d be right, wouldn’t I?). I would have said that there must be some other reason someone would act this way, because if you hide behind fear then you just don’t care enough. I feel differently now. I still believe that it’s not a reasonable excuse, but I do care about you, and still I let fear get in the way. I’ll always regret that.
I don’t know what happened to the person that scoffed at the idea that fear could make a person act the way that I have acted. The simple answer is that I’ve gotten older and somehow not at all wiser. My experiences have not made me brave as you should be brave when you’ve lost something, especially if you ever hope to be happy again.
I was with a person for a long time that taught me a lot of bad habits. I learned to mistrust myself, and to think that my feelings don’t mean much. I don’t blame Katrina and I know that I played my part in all of it. One day, if you let me, I’ll tell you about all the ways that she’s your opposite. I’ll tell you how you’ve allowed me to imagine a different way of being with someone. You make me feel good about myself and I wish that you could say the same about me.
You know that I’m a rule follower. Rules are necessary, but I’ve always overestimated how important they are. I’m trying to face the fact that I grab on to them because I don’t know who I am sometimes. Katrina is supposed to be the type of person that I should be with for no other reason than that she follows the same set of rules that I do.
You might be wondering what it is about you that makes you someone that goes against these all-important rules. You saw my stupid list, you know what I’ve thought. But you think it’s a judgment against you, when it’s myself that I doubt. We come from different worlds. I’ve always wondered what you would see in me, someone who is older, conventional, and dull. I’m a librarian! I would never dream of strapping on a pair of skates, or riding a motor bike, or working two jobs so that I could pursue my dreams.
That is why you scare me, because I was always sure that if we were ever to be together I would bore you and it would be over almost before it had begun. If I’ve ever made you feel like I thought you’re not good enough it’s just my own stupid projection. I’ve worried that I’m not good enough for you, and that if you didn’t already know that then you would figure it out soon enough.
The reasons that you are against the rules are the exact same things that attract me. Seeing as I’m so good at making lists (!) I will tell you some of the things that I love about you. I love your wit, your toughness, your beauty, and intelligence. I love your drive, your talent, and your sense of fun. I love the million things that make up who you are that I can’t define.
I wish I could rewind to when I met you. I’d relive every interaction with you, but I’d do everything differently. Instead of trying to run away from you all the time, I would run toward you.
We could never have been friends and it was foolish to try. I take full responsibility for everything. Trying to be your friend is one of the biggest mistakes I’ve made. I just didn’t know how to do it. I wanted to be near you, and I was so selfish. I should have been brave enough to date you when you asked me, and I’ll regret it forever that I didn’t have the courage.
You were right about romantic friendships, they can’t exist like that, at least not for people like you and me.
I hope that there are some good times that you can remember about us. I know that I will always remember them, and I’ll always remember you.
You know where I am if you ever want to talk to me. I’d give anything to talk to you.
Love, Trish.