Experienced

Chapter One

The conversation started, appropriately enough, in Mei’s bed. It was a hot summer morning in mid-July, the light streaming in like a cliché through gauze curtains and warming Bette’s skin. There was an undeniable luxury about being in bed together like this during the summer; they’d had long hours the evening before to take their time in the last of the daylight, to appreciate the golden glow on each other’s skin.

As a general rule, Bette hated being sweaty, hated the summer. Her body felt big in the heat, like she took up too much space, as plump and warm as a rising ball of dough. But there was something—there was everything—about being there with Mei, about being flushed and warm in her linen sheets, that made her happy to overlook it.

There was a plan, at some point soon, for Bette to meet friends in the park, to enjoy the sun while they had it. But when she and Mei blinked awake around eight, the afternoon seemed so blissfully distant. They felt no rush at all. Mei disappeared to make tea, and Bette…Bette missed her. She’d been gone no more than ten minutes, just in the next room. Bette had heard her turn the radio on, had heard her fill the kettle with water. And still, she missed her. And so, quite without thinking how ridiculous it was, quite how soon she’d be back, Bette climbed out from beneath the sheet and followed her in.

She found Mei at the sink, looking out of the window, head tilted, fingers pressing into the top of her spine, where she was always tense after a week in the studio. One side of her robe had slipped off her shoulder, and she was humming along to something on the radio Bette could only identify as “misc. classical.” Bette stepped close behind Mei, her lips finding Mei’s neck, where her fingers had been. Still humming, Mei tilted her head, reaching back and working her fingers into Bette’s hair, directing Bette to tug at an earlobe with her teeth, to trail her mouth around to the hinge of Mei’s jaw. Bette pulled at the knot on Mei’s robe, turned her and lifted her up onto the kitchen surface, right next to the pot of still-brewing tea. Mei raised an eyebrow as her eyes traveled down Bette’s body; she was standing naked in Mei’s kitchen, as though that were a thing Bette did with lots of people, as though this wasn’t the latest in a long line of firsts. As though Mei wasn’t entirely aware of all of the ways in which this was new.

Bette thought Mei hesitated then—it was the proximity of the steaming pot, probably, or the blinds being open in the kitchen, or Bette being so obviously, mortifyingly hungry for her that she couldn’t wait ten minutes for tea—but a moment later Bette was sure she’d imagined it. Because Mei wrapped her legs around her, kissed her, soft and open, and pulled her close, enveloping them both in silk. They made it back to bed, eventually, abandoning the long-stewed tea. It seemed more important, much more important than tea, to bite down on Mei’s plush lips, to focus attention on the sensitive skin above her hip bone, to push her back against the sheets.

In the hours that followed, Bette lost track of quite how many ways they fitted together. And it was just when Bette’s heart rate was returning to normal, while she was deeply at peace with the world, that Mei mentioned it offhand. As though it were the natural continuation of a conversation they’d already been having.

“I love how much you love this,” Mei breathed, voice still soft and intimate, as she reached beneath the sheets for Bette’s hip. “Love how good it is for you. Makes me sad to think about the years you weren’t having it. All those experiences you missed.”

Her words carried a weight that was seismic, far too heavy for a Saturday morning, and Bette felt them fall onto the bed between them.

“You wish—you wish I had more experience?” Bette’s voice was pitched strange and slow, unable to keep the horror from creeping into it. The glowing pride she’d felt at her sexual prowess mere minutes earlier, at the sight of Mei’s hand twisted in the sheets beneath them, her whole body taut, vanished.

“No, no,” Mei laughed, quick to reassure her. “More experiences. Experiences,” she repeated, forcing the emphasis. “I mean, I just—I guess I wish we’d met after you’d had more time to figure out this part of yourself.”

Bette nodded, feigning relaxed understanding and chill, but her mouth opened quite without her permission. “Okay, but that still sounds a bit like you want me to be better at this.”

“Stop! You know that’s bullshit. You’re fishing now. All right, make sure you’re listening to this next bit. You’re great at this. Fantastically, overwhelmingly great.” Mei leaned over to kiss her reassuringly before carrying on. “I’m talking about all of it, not just the sex. I’ve been dating women forever. I know what I want. I want you to have had that opportunity too.”

“I don’t…” Bette started, but Mei put a warm hand over Bette’s still-tender lips and jaw and leaned over to suck a kiss against her collarbone. It was infuriating that she’d figured out exactly which parts of Bette’s body to put her mouth on when she wanted her to shut up. It was horrible (incredible) being so well known. Bette waited for her to continue.

“What we have is great. It’s so great, and so easy. Which never happens to me this fast,” Mei started. And despite the fact that Mei was blinking too often, oddly nervously, despite the fact that Bette’s insides were still twisting anxiously, it was impossible not to feel gratified at the truth of it. To hear from Mei how unusual it was for her too. It had never happened to Bette at all. “But—look—I can’t help thinking that, somewhere down the line, you’re going to end up regretting not having given yourself the time to date, to sleep around when you came out. I don’t want to take that opportunity away from you. I don’t want you to resent me. Regret committing to the first woman you slept with. You know?”

Bette was quiet. No, she decided. She did not know. Three minutes ago her biggest problem had been whether or not they could fuck again before Mei left for her studio. How had a few minutes been enough to derail everything? Was Mei really talking about her regretting this? Regretting them? It was precisely the opposite of what Bette had been thinking. Should she tell her that she’d imagined them going to visit Mei’s family together at Christmas? That Mei had mentioned her sister in Tokyo and Bette had looked at flights more than once? That she’d found herself wondering last week what them having a baby might look like? It felt, despite the nudges Mei had given her to be more open with her feelings, to share more of herself than she was used to, that it all might be too much too soon. It had only been a couple of months. And so she found another way to say it instead.

“I meant what I’ve said since the day we met. I’m a monogamist. I don’t need to have time in some dating wilderness, shagging as many women as possible. I want you. I want this.” On her back, eyes fixed on the ceiling, Bette searched for the right words to encapsulate it, to tell Mei how much it all meant to her. “Yes, you’re the first woman I’ve slept with. But also I can’t imagine it feeling this good—this right, I mean—with anyone else.”

Bette turned her head and found Mei looking back, her face squashed into the pillow. Her blunt fringe was too short (she’d been furious on Tuesday when she’d had it cut), the dark hair sticking up where she’d been tugging at it earlier. Her eye makeup from the night before was smudged, the once perfectly drawn wings flaking and streaking across her cheek and beneath her bottom lashes. Bette could see the distinctive speckling of a hickey on her chest, just below her jutting collarbone, that Mei would feign being grumpy about once she spotted it. It was unbearably intimate, Mei was stupidly gorgeous, and Bette couldn’t believe she’d still not told her that she’d fallen in love with her. Couldn’t believe she’d held it back. She wanted to say it, wanted to tell her, but something about this conversation made it impossible. It wasn’t the time.

Instead, Bette rolled fully on her side, reached across to curl an arm over Mei’s waist and traced her fingers up her spine. She tucked a knee between Mei’s, slotting their bodies together beneath the light summer sheet. Mei smiled, the good one that she thought showed too many of her teeth, and Bette kissed her open mouth. It was clumsy and awkward and it made Bette shiver. They both giggled helplessly. Mei pulled her even closer, her hand settling low on Bette’s back.

“I get that. I do. I’m not trying to tell you how you’re feeling. I’ve just been thinking about it, you know? About us, I suppose, about the future,” Mei continued, her voice easy and light in a way that felt forced. “Our future.”

“Right.”

“It’s just…I think if there was a time to do it, it would be now. To, you know, take a break for a bit.”

“A break?” A faint ringing started in Bette’s brain, a too-late warning of an imminent disaster; the bell that rang out on the Titanic long after the ship had any hope of turning.

“Not a breakup, obviously. Just a break. So you can have a bit of time to experience being out. Being gay. Have some fun before you settle down. Before we settle down.”

Heart racing, Bette skittered over the scraps of the morning, trying to piece them together, adding them up and still coming up short. She pulled her leg out from between Mei’s and shifted backward under the sheet. She realized she didn’t even know where she’d left her clothes. This is why people shouldn’t spend the night together naked. She was vulnerable. Exposed.

“You want us to stop seeing each other? So I can sleep with other women?”

It felt mad. Ridiculous. Surely she had misunderstood.

“Yes. Sleep with. Date, a bit, if you like. Have the time I had. To figure this out, you know? But yes.”

The silence sat between them, stretching out until Bette realized that Mei was waiting for a reaction. She grasped at the first thought that came to mind, and regretted it almost as soon as she’d begun.

“Wouldn’t—I don’t know. Wouldn’t an open relationship be a better way to do this?”

“I don’t really want an open relationship,” Mei said, her voice so calm and placating and definitive that Bette felt a rush of anger. She’d had the chance to prepare a response for everything Bette might come back with. Her tone seemed to suggest this was an unremarkable conversation, a chat entirely suited to taking place in the sheets they’d just had sex in. It was as if she’d already decided this wasn’t going to be a big deal, as if that wasn’t a decision Bette was allowed to make for herself. “And you just said it. You’re a monogamist too. I think things would probably stay the way they are.”

Things staying the way they were was exactly what Bette wanted. She felt sick. Worse, her clothes were, she was certain now, in the living room. All of them. She was going to have to walk out there, after this conversation, wearing nothing.

“So instead you think we should break up?”

“Not forever!” Mei said, as though she were throwing Bette a life vest while she sailed off away from her. “Just for a little while. And then after three months,” Bette’s eyebrows flew up and Mei stumbled for the first time, “or, you know, whenever—I just thought three months might be good, give us time to get back together a couple of weeks before Erin and Niamh’s wedding? Anyway, after three months we can properly commit to this. But I want you to have time to figure out what you want first.”

“This is what I want,” Bette insisted. Mei had really thought this through, she realized; the plan was so detailed, so horribly considered. And so, so maddeningly stupid. And then she remembered Ryan, remembered breaking up with him while on the sofa together on a rainy Sunday afternoon. Remembered him fighting so hard for them that her empathy had morphed into pity. It wasn’t attractive, desperation. It was mortifying to watch. She took a shaky breath and realized she was dangerously close to tears.

“I know you think that. And I’m not denying how wonderful this is,” Mei was saying, all gentle sincerity. “But it might feel great with someone else too. You don’t have anything else to compare us to. And I want you to know for sure.”

It was impossible to argue with this. But it didn’t seem fair. Wasn’t there always a risk with a relationship? It was all hope and risk and jumping off a cliff together not knowing where you’d land.

“But—Mei, I—I love you,” Bette said, hating the desperation in her voice, a tear slipping out with the words, determined not to be held back. It was agonizing to say it like this.

“Oh Bette,” Mei said, her eyes sparkling and wet, as she reached across the bed to take her hand. Bette clung to it as though it could stop her from drowning. “I’m falling in love with you too. That’s why I think we have to do this.”

Maybe it all made a horrible sort of sense. How could Bette know? She felt suddenly weighed down, her inexperience hanging off her like an overstuffed weekend bag. Maybe it was right for Mei to want her to be rid of it. Maybe getting rid of it would make everything better. Easier. Less loaded.

She took a deep, steadying breath and pulled her hand away from Mei’s, feeling the absence of it like a physical pain. “So. A break then. Okay. If that’s—I mean, if that’s what we’re doing, then can I just…Do you mind turning round? I need to go and get my things.”

And instead of Mei telling her to stop being silly, instead of Mei laughing and pulling her across the bed, she nodded and settled a hand over her eyes.