Experienced

Chapter Five

Bette matched with Ruth during her lunch break on Thursday. Ruth was hot; her profile was sparse in terms of information, but her pictures were great—candids rather than selfies, warm brown eyes, a glitzy dress in one photo Bette immediately wanted to buy for herself. Most importantly, Ruth messaged straight after they matched.

Ruth:That pic of you on the beach is gorgeous.

The picture was one of Bette in a stupidly large sunhat and a loose buttoned shirt; Ash had scrolled back through her camera roll for it. She’d pointed out Bette’s tanned legs, the breezy shirt, and how happy she looked. Bette had been unconvinced, certain her smile was too big and cheesy and that there was a visible spot on her chin and that she had an obvious squint behind the glasses. It was the opposite of sexy, and she was convinced that it undid all the work of the rest of the photos. But Ash was right; it looked like her, and it had been a brilliant week.

Bette:Lisbon last summer

Ruth:I’ve never been—always wanted to.

Bette:You should!

Bette:it was so good!

Bette:custard tarts, incredible grilled chicken, amazing seafood, good beaches

Bette:it was sunny all week, but not too impossibly hot, you know?

Bette:the city is so great too, really beautiful, such a good city for walking

Bette:I’d go again in a heartbeat

She looked at the string of messages, immediately horrified. Ruth hadn’t asked for a TripAdvisor review. This was a hookup app. What was she doing?

Ruth:Sounds brilliant.

She’d blown it, obviously. It was impossible to tell whether Ruth was being sarcastic or not, but a two-word response to what was basically a Lisbon long weekend listicle was definitely sending some sort of message. There was nothing left to lose.

Bette:so I know this is kind of out of nowhere, but trying to get to know someone over text like this is weird

Bette:do you want to meet in person?

Ruth:That’s not out of nowhere. It’s an app designed for that specific purpose.

Bette:true

Ruth:Plus I like your gumption. Six enthusiastic messages about Lisbon and you’re going for the date.

Bette wanted to crawl under her desk. The teasing was gentle but brutal: despite plans to be cool and casual in her messages, she’d instantly revealed a distinct absence of chill.

Ruth:So yes, that sounds good.

Bette:how about brunch? Sunday? Do you know In Brunch We Trust?

Ruth:Hate the name, love their beetroot hash! Brunch it is. 11 a.m.?

Bette:yes! Looking forward to it!

She regretted the second exclamation point instantly.

They didn’t really text in the days that followed. It was important, Bette thought, not to get in too deep. It was a date, a hookup if she fancied Ruth as much in person as she did onscreen. Nothing more.

As the weekend approached, Bette could feel herself growing more anxious. What if she wasn’t good without Mei? On a date. Or in bed. What if Ruth wanted something she hadn’t done before or—god, what if Ruth wanted something she hadn’t even heard of? But this, she supposed, was the point of the whole gambit.

It was her mantra as she arrived on Sunday morning: just sex, just sex, just sex. She was early; Ash had pushed her out of the door after her nervous anticipation had manifested in a fumbling awkwardness. They had lost two wineglasses to it before Ash had pulled the tea towel out of Bette’s hand. It had been Ash’s fault anyway, she’d spent the morning repeating the word “brunch” with ever-increasing incredulity. As if Bette didn’t know how to plan a date.

She realized the coffee was a bad idea as she took the first sip. It was her third of the morning, on an empty stomach, and she could feel it pluck and play on every nerve in her body as though it were fingers on a harp. It had felt rude to take up a table empty-handed on such a busy morning, but now she was about to vibrate out of her skin. Perfect. Exactly what she needed.

Bette reached into her bag, her hands properly shaking now, and pulled out her phone.

“Bette?” a voice asked, tone low and soothing. If a voice could be the opposite of caffeine, Bette thought, this was it. This voice should do ASMR videos. This voice should…

“Hi, yes, sorry,” she replied, the words running into each other. She could taste the anxiety and it tasted like coffee.

“Wannabe Dana Scully really helped. Well played. Your hair is stunning.”

As her hand went self-consciously into it, as though it might be different to the hair she’d left home with, Bette looked properly at Ruth for the first time. At her center-parted dark brown bob, cut just below her chin. At her warm expression, at the laughter playing around the corners of her mouth. At her striped blue and white playsuit, the shorts turned up to show dimpled thighs kissed pink by the sun. At the sunglasses tucked into her bra, which dragged her top down just far enough to flirt with decency. She was somehow even hotter than her profile.

Bette put her phone away.

“It’s dyed. Obviously,” Bette said, and Ruth laughed. It was a lovely laugh. She sat down across from Bette and handed her a menu.

“Stole these from the counter as I was passing,” she said. “I love this place but they’re always rammed. And I’m starving.”

“Me too,” Bette said, relieved. “I think I’ve overdosed on coffee. I need to get something else into me before I have a heart attack.”

“Oh yeah, if this was that Blind Date column, I’d be recording my first impression of you as ‘jittery.’?”

“Jittery, good hair,” Bette corrected, relieved to be poking fun at herself. This she could do.

“Jittery, good hair,” Ruth confirmed.

“Well I think my notes on you would read ‘cute, playsuit,’?” Bette replied, and was pleased to notice a slight flush on Ruth’s cheeks.

“Is that cute comma playsuit? Or cute playsuit? I feel like that’s an important distinction.”

“Both, if you like,” confirmed Bette. “But I definitely meant to include the comma.” Ruth smiled at her and Bette took a breath, her heart rate calming a little. She really could do this.

“So, when did you move to Bristol?” Ruth asked, her eyes scanning her menu.

“How’d you know I’m not a local?” Bette replied, spotting the shakshuka and then deciding almost immediately against it, picturing peppers and tomatoes streaked down the front of her white shirt.

Ruth shrugged. “Lucky guess. More interlopers than locals here. I say that as an interloper.”

It was a truth Bette had never really considered.

“God, you’re so right. Almost everyone I know here grew up somewhere else. Anyway. Exmouth. On the coast in Devon.”

“Oh beautiful! I love the sea.”

“Me too, so much. And Exmouth’s fine. I think I’d be more impressed by it if I hadn’t grown up there.”

“Oh sure, every time I go home to North London I try to imagine coming as a tourist. It’s impossible; every corner down Kilburn High Road is a memory of some screaming teenage row with my mum.”

“Did you fight a lot with your mum when you were growing up?” Bette regretted the question almost immediately, alarmed at how serious it sounded. This was a date, not a therapy session. She hoped desperately that Ruth wouldn’t turn it back on her, wondered how to force the worms back into the can.

“No, she’s great,” Ruth said, running a hand through her hair and shrugging easily. “I was just doing a bit, usually. Imagining that we should probably fight more than we did. Felt mortifying to basically quite like my mum’s company.”

Bette laughed, and then the waiter arrived, and rescued her from having to segue away from mother-daughter dynamics. They ordered, and Bette even remembered to say decaf. After that, the conversation flowed easily. Ruth was halfway through a PhD in queer translated literature. She was sharp and quick-witted and self-deprecating. At one point she had a bit of maple syrup clinging to her top lip and Bette wanted to lick it off. It was a good date. Maybe even a great date.

And so she was feeling confident when she leaned over, met Ruth’s eye, and said, “Do you want to get out of here?”

A laugh burst out of Ruth, so loud that people from the tables around them looked up from their eggs. Bette looked around uncomfortably, trying to work out where she had gone so quickly wrong. Ruth’s forehead creased as her eyebrows crept northwards. “Oh wow, you’re serious? That was a real line?”

A silence fell between them and Bette wished for a swift and comprehensive death. She was going to have to explain.

“I don’t—sorry, I haven’t really done this before and I—”

“Haven’t done what before?” Ruth asked, sounding tentative rather than accusatory. Perhaps it hadn’t been unforgivable. Maybe Bette could get away with it.

“A hookup, you know? Like, met someone on an app for a hookup?”

She realized that she had indeed stepped across a line into unforgivable. Ruth’s arms crossed over her chest, and she looked down at her plate. “Oh,” she said, that low and soothing voice suddenly heavy with clarity and understanding. She laughed, but not in the way she’d been doing since she walked into the café. Then she shook her head and looked up again, and Bette was certain she had imagined it. Ruth looked fine, amused even.

“Never?” she asked.

Bette shook her head. “Never. I met some people online when I was still dating men, but I was never particularly interested in the sex bit. Funnily enough. So I didn’t really do casual.”

“Right, that makes sense. And now?”

“Well now I thought—I don’t know. I thought I’d…” She trailed off. Ruth waited a moment, and then sat forward.

“Look, I don’t want to make assumptions here, but you don’t strike me as a hookup person.”

Great. Brilliant. This was mortifying. Was it just that she’d never done this before? Or was there something distinctly not-a-hookup about her? She had thought she’d been getting away with the here for a hot hookup persona.

“I’m not saying it’s a bad thing!” Ruth said. “It’s just that you’ve got wife and kids written all over you.”

Bette felt herself flush, and tried to subtly wipe away the sweat that was tingling her top lip. She wished that she’d gone for tinted moisturizer, rather than the foundation that was almost certainly flaking off in the heat. She was a mess.

“What makes you think so?” she replied, aiming for nonchalant and landing closer to hysterical. Ruth smiled, and her crooked incisors showed. They were oddly cute. Could teeth be cute?

“You’ve looked up at every single pram that’s been wheeled in since we sat down, you seem genuinely interested in my research, we’ve been here for nearly two hours and you haven’t made a single suggestive comment—except for the getting out of here bit, I suppose. Plus, you invited me out for brunch.”

There was no way to deny any of it, so Bette decided to tackle the most egregious statement first. “I love brunch! What’s wrong with brunch?”

“Brunch is a getting-to-know-you date,” Ruth said, gesturing around the café. And, all of a sudden, Bette saw it. The large windows and excess of light, the twee fonts on the blackboard, the mix of families and prevalence of dungarees. There was absolutely nothing about the café that felt in any way sexy. “A see-if-we-click-and-can-then-go-for-a-dinner date. Or a morning-after date, I guess. Brunch is not the sort of thing you suggest if your plan is a hookup.”

That was why Ash had kept incredulously muttering brunch all morning. How was Ash better at this than she was?

“Okay, so what should I have suggested?” she said, pressing her shaking hands between her knees, distinctly aware that her tone was edging back toward hysterical.

“Drinks. Dinner, maybe, if you’re feeling particularly confident or we’d been messaging back and forth about food. But if you actually want to hook up, then drinks. Or literally just invite someone round. To your house. And…hook up.”

Bette was silent for a while, considering. Drinks, obviously. She should have said drinks. Of course. How was it possible to be so bad at this?

“Hey, it looks like you might be starting to panic a bit. It’s okay! I didn’t mean anything by any of this. I’m not trying to tell you how you should feel about it. No judgment at all, I’m just making conversation.”

“It’s just. I mean, you’re right,” Bette replied, too overwhelmed to try and deny it, exhausted at the thought of trying to be witty or flippant or make more conversation. “I’m a relationship person. That’s why I’m shit at this! But I’m in love with this woman and she said I needed to have some more experience, some more experiences with other women before we commit to each other, and I—that’s what I’m doing. I guess.”

It was a lot to process, Bette supposed, and she waited for Ruth to work through it. It took a while; Ruth twice opened her mouth as if to say something, before moving her fingers across her lips and shaking her head with an air of incredulity.

“Wow. That’s. I mean. Wow. Okay, so I thought you might be new to this, but this is a whole other thing. Some woman you’re in love with has sent you off on, what? A sex odyssey?”

“I’m really sorry, I don’t want you to think I’m using you or anything.” God, it all sounded awful, from the outside. And the inside too, honestly. “But I should have been clear that I want to date women who are looking for something very short-term. Like, one night, ideally. Women who want a fun hookup. I don’t want to date anyone who might want more than I can offer. I just need to go on some dates and have a bunch of sex with new people. And then I can go back to Mei and she’ll know that it’s not just that she was the first woman I slept with, but that she is the one, and god I really didn’t plan on saying all of that.”

She was out of breath, she realized, her head pounding. It felt like the coffee high all over again.

“That is a lot to unpack,” Ruth said slowly, wonderingly. She flagged down a waiter and ordered an Americano. Bette, who was still buzzing with the coffee or the adrenaline or a combination of the two, passed him their empty water jug instead.

“Sorry,” Bette said, once he’d left in the direction of the kitchen. “I mean, about the…”

“Don’t apologize. This is kind of amazing. I’ve been on a lot of dates in my life, and this is much more interesting than: So what do you do in your spare time?”

“Well, I’m glad you’re getting something out of it at the very least.” Bette hadn’t been aiming for sarcastic and petulant, but had landed there regardless.

“Look, I don’t know if you’re going to want it, but can I offer you some advice?”

Relief began to outweigh the embarrassment.

“Please, please do. I clearly have no idea what I’m doing.”

“We’ve established no more brunches, moving forward, right?” Ruth said, with the sort of authority that made Bette want to find a pen and a napkin for note-taking. “You need a good get-in-get-out strategy. So to speak. You don’t want to get too attached, right?”

“Okay. I mean yeah, you’re right.” Just sex, just sex, just sex marched through her head again. She blushed as the waiter returned with coffee and water, as though he could hear what she was thinking.

“I don’t want to stereotype and you might be absolutely fine. But if you’re used to having sex in relationships, you might find it harder to not get attached. So you need to keep it casual. Drinks. Get to know them, obviously, but keep it light. Kiss them somewhere you feel safe—it’s why I’ve always done this sort of thing in a gay bar, so you don’t get interrupted by some leery old perv in a pub who thinks you snogging a girl has literally anything at all to do with him.” Ruth took a breath, and Bette was suddenly impossibly grateful for her. For taking everything in her stride and for seeming to care. It would have been so easy for her to just stand up and walk out. “But you go where works for you. If that’s good, if the kissing is good, then brilliant, work out whose place you’re going back to, or how far you want to go without taking her home. If the kissing isn’t great, if the chemistry isn’t there, have a think about whether or not you might have a good time anyway. I’m not saying all first kisses have to be perfect, but it’s not a terrible indication of whether or not you’ll have fun in bed.”

Bette couldn’t help glancing down at where Ruth’s sunglasses were still hooked in her bra. At the freckles scattered over her chest, at the sharp line of her collarbone. It was difficult not to, when she was talking about first kisses and being in bed. Ruth met her eyes as she glanced back up, and she knew instantly that she’d been less subtle than was ideal. Bette shifted her tone to businesslike.

“Right, that all makes sense.”

“I don’t want to patronize you here, so stop me if I’m wrong, but given that you’re talking about this other woman being your first, you probably don’t have much experience with one-night stands? But maybe you did before you started dating women?”

“No,” Bette admitted. “Like, none.”

“Cool. If it were me, then, I’d be really upfront. Your profile needs work, for a start, because you’re definitely not clear enough about what you’re looking for. You’re newly out, and you want to date some people and work out what you like, right? You’re not looking for anything more than a night. Just tell people that. If they’re not looking for the same, they’ll swipe left. But give them the chance to make that decision.”

Bette realized that Ruth was talking about herself. She hadn’t let Ruth make that decision. Her stomach churned guiltily.

“You’re right. I’m really sorry. I should have thought.”

Ruth waved her hand, as if batting the apology back. And really, Bette reasoned, now that things were clearer between them, she didn’t seem to be terribly disappointed.

“It’s fine. But yeah, this sort of setup wouldn’t work for me, for instance. I’ve made a vow not to date emotionally unavailable people anymore.”

There was a story there, one that hooked in somewhere in Bette’s brain, that she’d probably wonder about later. If she hadn’t spent the past ten minutes deep in mortification, she probably would have asked.

“Thanks so much for the advice,” she said, meaning it sincerely. “Honestly, I’d have been floundering without you.”

“You’re welcome. Consider it a gay mitzvah. I’m very pro you having as much fun and great sex as you like, but it’s worth letting people know what they’re in for. You’ll have plenty of takers, believe me.”

Bette felt her cheeks glow, and it took everything within her not to ask whether Ruth was absolutely sure about the hard-line “no” she’d already laid down.

“Also, I think you should give me your number too,” Ruth said, smiling at the waiter again, in pursuit of the bill. “Because I am going to want to hear how this goes.”