Page 27 of Anywhere with You
“Thanks?”
“Oh my God,” I said, so suddenly that Cara turned away from the road to look at me. “So in our little rainbow troupe, I’m the only True Lesbian?”
Cara gave an exasperated sigh. “Don’t call us that, and put down your trophy. Lorenzo and I gossiped about you and Bridget, both.”
I laughed. “Okay, fair enough. I’ve been attracted to men. It just turns out I don’t really like them.”
“Except…”
“Except what?”
Cara was holding her hand out, as though waiting for me to put an answer in it. “There’s always an exception.”
“Fine. Except for Alan Alda.”
“The guy onM*A*S*H? That’s who you’d date? He’s really old.”
I sighed, leaning my head against the passenger window. “Not now. In the seventies.YoungHawkeye.”
“So your only exception is a time-travel romance with a fictional Korean War doctor?”
“Can I have my fucking trophy back?”
“No.”
I blew a raspberry, and she laughed at me.
I’d met Bridget after college, at a club that was frequented by large numbers of senior citizens. At first, I’d been sure that I was at the wrongplace. I was meeting up with friends from work, fellow accountants. I spotted only one of them, right in the middle of the dance floor in a plaid shirt and jeans, line dancing with the best of them.
It’s not that I was opposed to line dancing. On the contrary, it looked like fun and not too difficult for a newbie. But I had twisted my ankle in Mom’s garden a few days before and had only agreed to a night out because I was craving a real martini and because several people from work had planned to meet here and hang out.
No one but Line Dancing Larry showed up.
I ended up at a table near a woman in a sunflower-print dress, her hair hanging loose past her waist. I’d never forget that. Bridget had cut it soon after, and it was beautiful then, too, but that day, she was like a real-life Rapunzel, without the creepy recluse vibes.
I’d been eyeing her when a tall, skinny, dark-haired guy in a cowboy hat came over and pulled her toward the dance floor. She had grinned at him, but when her eyes caught mine, they stayed there for a moment, time stretching out impossibly, until Lorenzo pulled her a second time.
Bridget stayed with him for one dance, and when she went to sit down again, someone else had taken her table. So she sat at mine.
Even then, it was clear how much she loved Lorenzo. I told myself that it was a sibling-type love, and Bridget told me the same. Still, sometimes they would laugh together at their own jokes, hands held and arms entangled, and I had to remind myself. After all, there had been no reason they shouldn’t be together then, if they’d wanted to be. They were both single. They’d been friends their whole lives.
Part of me, when I was being very, very generous, could sympathize with what they both must have gone through over the years, realizing that they had either been lying to themselves or each other, or maybe just changing as the years passed, as they recognized the future they had given up by marrying other people.
Lorenzo and Cara moved in together weeks after Bridget and I got married, and after that, everything was different. We had dinner at their house every few months, and they came to ours, but their friendship was an ember of what it had been in college.
Until it wasn’t anymore.
I told Cara the story now as we drove through a small townsquare, every building straight out of a 1950s movie set. I left out my observations on their difficult friends-to-lovers journey because I didn’t want to seem sympathetic to the lying, cheating trash bastards.
“Do you ever…” Cara said, then stopped, not taking her eyes from the traffic light ahead. “Never mind.”
“No, what?”
“No, really. It was a horrible question.”
“I won’t judge you. I promise. Keep in mind that I’m the person who just asked if you wereL,G,B,T, or plus.”
Cara grinned, but it didn’t last. “Bridget,” she said. “Do you think that’s part of why…?”
