Page 19 of The One That Ran Away
My boyfriend at the time, a guy named Nick, looked up from his math homework and searched for Jess’s face in the lunch line. “Who? Her? You know her, Shan?”
“She was the girl sitting with me the other day. Remember?”
“Sitting with you?” Kelsey tilted her head. “So youdoknow her?”
“What is with you?” I searched for Jess. She was in line, but head pointed forward, earbuds in her ears. If she had noticed me, it was only with passing interest. We may not have been friends, but we bumped into each other all over campus. What was wrong with acknowledging an acquaintance? “She’s someone I know. You can’t be my only friend!”
“You know she’s a big ol’ lez, right?”
I dropped my pen into my leftover fries. “Excuse me?”
“She’s in the GSA. Been seeing her at their events recently. Always volunteering at booths and stuff.”
“Uh, so?”
“Soooo, she’s totally checking you out.”
I sat back in my chair, pretending to be as far from shocked as possible. Jess was a lesbian? So what? Wasn’t half of our generation gay? Just because I wasn’t, didn’t mean I wasn’t constantly surrounded by people of same-sex persuasions. It was 2007. Who gave a fuck? Kelsey sounded like someone I used to go to high school with – paranoid that every lesbian in the country lived to hit on her. Showering in the gym? Forget about it.
The concept didn’t bother me. I was a woman, after all, and that was something I had in common with a lesbian. We both knew what it was like to be leered at by men. Even if Jess were gay, she seemed the type to understand first-hand what harassment, assault, and “creepy weirdos,” as Kelsey put it, can do to our psyches. She hadn’t openly flirted with or made a pass at me. As far as I knew, Jess was a giggly sophomore trying to pass her classes and have some fun on the side. Like us all!
“So what if she’s checking me out?” I said.
Nick grinned like an idiot. Of course, he was into the idea of me lezzing out in college, especially if he got to watch through my webcam. That grin extended to Jess, who had made it to the front of the line and ordered a hamburger. Then? The grin got bigger. Pig.
“You gotta nip that in the bud,” Kelsey said with a shake of her head. “Put out that fire before it burns you.”
At the time, I assumed she meant I needed to gently let Jess down before she got it so bad for me that I ended up breaking her heart simply by being a heterosexual woman. I wish I could say that it’s only now that I realize what she truly meant. But no. I figured it out a long time ago, and I let it get to me.
“Put that fire out before you get roped in, Shannon.”
How was I supposed to know that’s what my own best friend meant? The one who had never shown a hint of homophobia before that moment? When I had no reason to believe that I would ever – could ever – be attracted to another girl? I had Nick. We were already planning what we might want to do after we graduated in two years.
Yet as Andrew taught me once again, most relationships aren’t forever. I should’ve known there would be opportunities for my walls to come down and my heart to wander toward people I would have never noticed had they never made themselves known to me.
To this day, I struggle to decide if I’m grateful or horrified.
***
Shannon sat back from her laptop. The photo edits had given her serious eyestrain, but instead of looking at a wall or entertaining herself with Decks for a few minutes, she turned to her phone and opened her web browser.
“Get your daily horoscope!!!”
She groaned, because the lead-in had taken her information from her phone and supplied,“You will have sudden memories…”
Well, no shit. Who wrote this stuff? Was this what Jess wrote for a living? Crappy horoscopes based on the arbitrary day of one’s birth?
She clicked it. Curiosity had gotten the best of her again.
“You have sudden memories flooding back to you after a chance encounter with an old friend. Those in relationships are best to assess the true meaning of these memories and whether they are meaningful to who you are with. Single people should take this as an opportunity to open more doors into the past and find something you missed before.”
Shannon shut off her phone and resumed her photo editing. The pictures of Stephen and his fiancée covered her large monitor, their fake smiles and tentative touches making her think of her relationship with Andrew.
They had met a year after Shannon graduated college, after she moved back to California and began her job hunt in earnest. Andrew was a few years older than her and part of the recruiting department of one of the major corporations she interviewed with before deciding to go solo.I can’t believe I thought that was a great idea. What was I thinking? Dating a guy who interviewed me?The man had asked for her number when he called to inform her she didn’t get the job!
Why had she said yes? Was she really that desperate for a lover again?
She went out to her balcony and lit up a cigarette. Her elbows dug into the wrought iron guardrail separating her from the quiet side street below. The sounds of 21ststreet chimed in the distance, but from her perch, she saw nothing but old Victorian rooftops and the greenery of nearby Forest Park. Joggers and dogwalkers were the only people she saw on the sidewalks below. It wasn’t quite dark enough for the stars to be out, not that the clouds would allow her the view, anyway.
