Chapter Seven
It was Friday night, after work, and there were two pints sitting between them. The pub was crowded, but Ruth had managed to find a corner of a table in the beer garden and they guarded it ferociously as groups around them crept closer and closer. Bette should have anticipated it, of course; it was Friday, it was summer, and it was England.
When a man sloshed his pint down Bette’s back for the second time in as many minutes, she morphed into the worst and most uncomfortable version of herself, apologizing again for being in the way. Ruth had rolled her eyes at the first apology but cut Bette off halfway through the second, staring at the man from behind her enormous sunglasses until he shrugged out a “Sorry, yeah?” and tried to shuffle a little further away.
It resulted in just enough space between them for Bette to be able to contort her arms behind herself and wring out her shirt. Of the two of them, thank god it had been her back to take the spillage. Ruth looked like some sort of platonic ideal of summer in a crisp white shirt dress, her yellow bra just visible beneath the fabric. Bette’s trainers were streaked with mud from a walk to work through the park earlier in the week, and her navy buttoned blouse was an old one she had tucked into her shorts. It was a shirt she hadn’t ever felt self-conscious about until she sat down opposite Ruth and thought suddenly about the very small hole under the arm, and the way the collar never lay quite flat, and the fact that she hadn’t ironed anything since school. And though it would survive the lager (it had survived worse), she was now also destined to spend the rest of the evening smelling like a brewery.
Trying to ignore the stickiness, and at least appreciate the cool breeze against her wet back, she gave Ruth a rundown of the past fortnight, of her updated profile, of the aborted conversations.
“Nineteen? God, that’s young,” Ruth said, grimacing. “I was a proper rotter at nineteen. I would absolutely have swiped on a hot thirty-something.”
“Fuck off. I’m thirty. Full stop. Not thirty-something,” Bette replied, biting down on a smile.
“What were you like at nineteen?” Ruth asked. Her tone was casual, and Bette knew she wouldn’t blink if she responded flippantly. But it was clear there was an invitation behind it. Permission to take the conversation from light, frothy bitching about dates to something more sincere.
“I was—” She hesitated, taking a gulp so large it threatened to come back out of her nose. “Fuck, I don’t know. It’s easy to paint over the reality with the benefit of hindsight, isn’t it? Honestly, when I think about those first couple of years in Bristol my overwhelming memory is that I was just working really hard. Not even at uni, really. Just…working hard. You know?”
“I mean, I think so?” Ruth said, and then took a sip from her glass. “But tell me.”
“I just want to go back and shake that version of myself. Not to try and wake her up about the gay thing specifically. Just tell her to give herself a break. I was trying so hard to fit into some version of…god, I don’t even know. Whatever it was I was expected to be. Even though I didn’t really work out what that was. Just trying. To be cool? Maybe? To be liked, to be fun, to be the girl you’d want to date? Regardless of how I actually felt.”
“Yeah, I’d worked out the fancying women bit by then, but you’re so right. It was such hard work. You couldn’t pay me enough to be nineteen again.”
Going back with the knowledge she had now was impossible to imagine. “No, me neither. Some of it might be more fun the second time round. But I’ve been a pretty big fan of thirty so far.”
“Yeah? Did you come out this year?”
“Like a year and a half ago. But really only to Ash, my flatmate? It took me another year to tell my family, and then a bit longer than that to actually do something about it. To do what I wanted to do about it, I guess. I mean, coming out is doing something about it,” she said, suddenly anxious of offending. “You know what I mean. Anyway. I met Mei. What about you?”
“I pretty confidently told my mum that I was going to marry a girl when I was eight or something. My aunt Rachel is gay. And I wanted to be like her and her partner Sid.” She smiled, and Bette pictured a dark-haired kid with a blunt fringe prancing around with a lace tablecloth pinned to her head, certain she was going to marry a woman. She felt for herself at the same age. “I don’t think Mum took it too seriously, just said that sounded good. I remember realizing as a teenager that I liked boys too. I was so furious about it. I dated my first boyfriend for three months before I could bear to tell my parents about him.”
Bette laughed, thrilled, as she always was, by the existence of a parent who was entirely unfazed. She hesitated. It had felt different saying all this to Mei, when she was overwhelmed and naked in her bed—it all came out without her intending it. But here in the beer garden it felt trickier. Much more exposing. “I don’t think I really knew what fancying people felt like until the last couple of years. I thought I was broken, a bit, I guess. Or that there was some giant conspiracy, and everyone felt the way I did about sex. Really underwhelmed.”
“Heteronormativity is a hell of a drug,” Ruth said, warmly and emphatically, touching her pint to Bette’s in solidarity. “It’s easy to get hooked on it really early on. And it’s a hard one to wean yourself off, especially if you grew up without representation.”
“And Catholic.”
“And Catholic. Yeah, that’ll do it,” Ruth said, grimacing. “But you made it through. And now you’ve discovered the joys of women.”
Bette could feel herself blush, and hoped she’d be able to pass it off as the beer, or the sun.
“Yeah, I guess I have. Or, I mean, woman. I suppose.”
“Oh I meant more generally, just the whole—women thing. In general. I didn’t mean—though yes. If you want to be specific. I guess.”
“Ummm…” Bette mumbled, mortified, before realizing that Ruth had hidden her mouth behind her pint and was laughing at her. “Great, this is really great for me. Thanks.”
She glared at Ruth for a moment before the corners of her mouth turned up too. She couldn’t help it. She was having fun.
“Anyway. The apps. Basically, I thought this was going to be fun, now that I’m swiping on people I actually fancy. But instead it’s just…admin. It’s boring. Every time I open it there are about forty other things I would rather be doing. It feels like having a second job.”
“Me too,” Ruth agreed, sounding relieved to have the truth of it confirmed. “Every single person I know has a success story that happened to them or a friend, or a friend of a friend. So I feel like I can’t give up. Like it would be the same as giving up entirely. On love, on romance, on the whole thing. I delete them all the time to make myself feel like I don’t need it, but I always end up caving and downloading again.”
“Have you met anyone interesting on it?” Bette asked, and then laughed and added. “Apart from me, of course.”
“Apart from you, of course,” Ruth repeated, less sarcastically than Bette thought she deserved. “No, not yet. I’m on it now to meet someone. Big, capital-S Someone. So it’s new for me too. In a way. I’ve sort of always met anyone I’ve been serious about through friends or at work. I was only ever really on apps for something fun. But a lot of my friends have coupled up now, and the pool is just—smaller. Smaller than it was a couple of years ago. And I’m not lonely, not really, but it would be a really nice thing to have. I miss having someone.”
There was a pause as Bette drained the rest of her pint. She wanted to say something reassuring, but everything she came up with sounded patronizing.
“So no, not yet,” Ruth said, tipping her own glass back.
“You will,” Bette said, leaning into the platitude. “You’re really great.”
Ruth smiled, but it was weary.
“So we’ve commiserated over our app failures,” Ruth said, and Bette felt a rush of relief to be moving on. “You had a thousand questions, if I’m remembering correctly?”
Bette had. When she’d been sitting by the pool she’d had a thousand questions. And suddenly they all left her, except one.
“I—I just don’t know how to do this without using people?”
Ruth nodded, fiddling with her empty glass. There was no instant reassurance, and Bette wanted to escape to the bar, suddenly keen for a task. But working her way through the rugby scrum was inconceivable.
“Sure, I get that,” Ruth said, after another moment. “You’re a nice person. So that’s not surprising. But also, you kind of are? Using people, I mean.” Bette opened her mouth to answer back, and realized she couldn’t. She was using people. Ruth must have seen her face drop, because she reached across the table and clasped Bette’s arm. “It’s okay, don’t beat yourself up about it. So long as you’re open about what you want, it’s not a problem. But, like, the intention here is to sleep with a bunch of women as a means to an end, right? Eventually you want to be back with whoever she is?”
“Mei. And yeah, that’s the goal. Shit. That sounds really terrible.”
“Stop apologizing. Sex is fun, and it doesn’t always have to be more than that. It’s okay to use each other. It’s hot to use each other. To get what you want.”
Bette flushed. It was hot, she knew that. And she wanted to talk about it in considerably more detail. But she was aware of everyone around them, of the too-close presence of the creeps. Sitting at the corner of a table in a packed beer garden didn’t feel like the right place for an explicit conversation.
“Bette, absolutely no one is listening to us,” Ruth said, apparently able to read Bette’s mind now too. “I want to tell you about my new strap-on,” she said, slightly louder. A couple of the guys in their vicinity turned, the beer slosher’s grin lascivious.
“Okay, maybe they are,” Ruth conceded. “Want to get out of here?”
Bette nodded and they abandoned their table and glasses; a couple were somehow sitting in their places before either of them had properly finished standing up. She managed to hold in the laugh until they tumbled out of the crowd and onto the street.
“Oh shut up,” Ruth said, her grin wide. “What’s a more appropriate location for this conversation then?”
It was getting late, Bette realized. She’d already taken up so much of Ruth’s time. Somewhere in the direction of home probably made sense. “We could walk back up through the cemetery? I think it’s late enough now that it’ll be quiet, and they don’t close it until sunset. We could take the long way back up?”
“Perfect,” Ruth agreed, readjusting her bright-yellow cross-body bag in a way that meant it slapped against her with each step.
Bette fell into step beside her, ignoring a niggling blister on her pinkie toe in order to keep up with the brisk pace Ruth set. She was a walker, Bette realized. One of those women who managed to stroll miles without effort, who always had the right shoes on, whose thighs weren’t sweaty and chafed from rubbing together. If you told Ruth to walk to Bath, she probably could, just keep walking from where they were and arrive ready for brunch the next morning. Bette would have to go home to change, spend a few months training for the endeavor, and even then would inevitably perish by the side of the road.
The tumble of thoughts circling in her head came out in one cohesive point. “How are you wearing a dress and walking this fast when it’s this sweaty?”
“Shorts, obviously.” Ruth stared at her, incredulous, pushing her sunglasses up from her nose to rest on top of her head. She pulled the hem of her dress up and showed Bette a line of white lace that circled the plump thigh beneath it. “You can’t tell me you don’t have cute little shorts to wear under your summer dresses? Why on earth would you put up with chafing?”
They were cute shorts, and Bette was furious. This is what came from spending all her time with a best friend and flatmate who only wore jeans. “Are you telling me that all the girls in Bristol whose thighs touch are just wandering around with shorts under their skirts and dresses all summer? And no one bothered to tell me?”
“Afraid so.”
“Text me a link?”
“Of course,” Ruth said, taking off again at a slightly more relaxed pace. “And the strap-on too, yeah?”
“Oh no, I’m fine,” Bette said, then paused before adding, “I’ve got one already.”
Ruth laughed, and Bette liked that she did.
“Actually, that was a bit of a lie. I don’t have one, Mei does. Did. Does. They’re not really for me, to be honest,” she continued, pushing through the feeling that talking about sex like this should be awkward. Maybe it could just…not be. Ruth didn’t seem bothered. “I tried with Mei because she liked it, but I wasn’t really a fan of fucking her like that as much as I was of the other stuff we did. I was into it because she was into it. If you know what I mean?”
“Sure,” Ruth agreed.
“So I’m not sure it’s really that high on my list.”
“You have a list?”
“Not, like, an actual list. There’s not a checklist on my phone or anything. It’s just a…like a metaphorical list. Really, it’s just a single bullet point that says: have some sex,” Bette said, and Ruth nodded sagely.
“Did she use it on you?” Ruth asked.
Bette thought back, wondering when she’d missed the moment with Mei when she might have asked. Wondered whether they’d made the decision together, or whether it had been made for her. “I guess—I mean—she didn’t ever suggest switching. So I didn’t really think about it.”
“Well, maybe that’s what she meant, by making sure you had this time? If you have any things in your head that you think ‘Maybe I would like that,’ then you could give it a go? With one of your…conquests?”
It was precisely the point, Bette thought. She nodded at Ruth as they rounded the corner past the stone gates. The cemetery was big and sprawling, the graves and monuments set far enough apart that in summer they were surrounded by a rich sea of green; grass and shrubs and flowers bursting through. It was always beautiful, but Bette loved it most as the sun just started to set. As they made their way toward the winding path that would take them up the hill, the temperature dropped significantly; the trees that lined the path broke the light until it fell on them in dappled patches.
“Look, you probably don’t need me to say this. But…” Ruth hesitated. “The first time is not necessarily the best time. Not that it won’t be good. Not that chemistry isn’t a thing. But, you know. I mean—women are all—people are all different. Obviously.”
“Obviously,” Bette agreed with a nod she hoped looked reassuring, because Ruth had paused and was looking in her direction, and it seemed like she wanted her to.
“Like, I don’t—I don’t know if you’re after specific ‘sex with women’ tips?” Ruth lifted her bag and settled it over the other shoulder, her eyes back on the path.
Bette didn’t know how to answer. She absolutely did want specific tips, but it seemed very much like the wrong answer.
“Well…I mean…”
“Because I’m happy to be a sounding board,” Ruth interrupted, “but actually my only advice is that there’s no guidebook for correct lesbian sex. Or correct any sort of sex. Just, assuming anything based on gender isn’t the one. You don’t need to go in with a plan. You can just…ask. Listen. Figure out what the other person likes. Okay, sorry, this is starting to sound like sex ed, which really isn’t what I was aiming for…”
“No, it’s good. I mean, that makes sense,” Bette said, suddenly feeling nervous.
“I’m not saying it’s going to be bad! It might be great. But if I wanted to guarantee a bunch of really great sex, I’d probably find someone I clicked with. Someone I felt comfortable with, so I knew I could ask for anything I wanted. And have fun with them, trying things out.”
She was blushing, a gorgeous pink, and Bette was charmed that it was a turn from strap-ons to intimacy that brought a flush to Ruth’s chest.
“Well, sure,” Bette agreed. It sounded enormously appealing when Ruth said it like that. But it also sounded a lot like a relationship. “It did keep getting better and better with Mei. Every time. But I couldn’t do that to someone. I think I’d inevitably get attached. It’s too messy. This is the best way to handle it.”
“No, of course,” Ruth nodded. “Of course.”
Ruth’s voice was more distant, and Bette couldn’t work out what had changed. But a moment later Ruth continued, and it was as though she’d imagined it.
“You could add what you want to the profile then? Like, sex-wise. Specifically.”
“What, ‘working out whether I want to be fucked, so bring your strap-on’? I don’t know if I could text that to one person with a straight face, let alone write it down on the internet for anyone to read.”
Ruth laughed again, a little snort through her nose and then a grimace.
“You’re right. It’s not really the tone, is it? It’s all taking baths together and what books are you reading and Sunday afternoons in the park, and here’s a picture of my dog and let’s take him with us on our first date. My flatmate has a dog breed checklist from her dating escapades.”
“Oh that’s so good. Hang on. I’ve just realized I know nothing about who you live with. I must have mentioned Ash and the flat fifteen times by now.”
“Well, in fairness, your life is a hundred times more interesting. You’re on a sex odyssey!”
Bette laughed. “Well, we need to rectify this imbalance. I get it, I’m amazing and fascinating, and we could talk about me for hours. But from this point, all the way up to the top, it’s all you. Tell me about where you live.”
“This is because we’re hitting the worst bit of the hill now, isn’t it? You don’t want to be all out of breath. Leave the conversation to me instead.”
“Exactly,” Bette said, and then stared pointedly at Ruth.
“Okay,” she said, a little out of breath already. “I live in a big, crumbling old terraced place. Not a single wall is at a ninety-degree angle, and most of them are sort of damp. I adore it. We do what we can with it. My flatmates have been there at least a year now, I think? We had a couple of duds a few years back, which wasn’t great, but they’re all really solid at the moment. The landlord reckons it’s a four-bed, but we’ve turned the little box room into a kind of horrible storage space. We can close the door and pretend there’s nothing there.”
“Oh god, we need that room,” Bette groaned.
“Yeah, in London some sad intern would be paying ￡650 a month for it, but here it made sense to turn it into a shared storage space to hide things we don’t want to see. Especially once Jody’s boyfriend moved into their room and everyone’s rent dropped a bit.”
“So there’s Jody and her boyfriend,” Bette said, starting a count on her fingers.
“Their boyfriend,” Ruth gently corrected. “But yes. Jody and Leon. They met when Leon was dating Jody’s brother.” She nodded at Bette’s widened eyes, “I know, I know. I am privately slightly judgmental about it. But also, it’s hilarious. I want to be a fly on the wall when they go back to Jody’s folks for Sunday lunch.”
“Wow,” Bette exhaled with a shake of her head. “I’m trying to imagine my brother’s wife leaving him for me. I mean, it would be horrible for both of us because she’s an uptight bitch, but it’s also very funny.”
“Anyway, Jody is doing a law conversion course. Leon is a musician. He plays the double bass, which is, of course, the very nicest instrument for your flatmate to play.”
“The girl next to me in halls in first year played the trumpet,” Bette suddenly remembered. “I’m not musical so I guess I can’t really judge, but she was so so bad. I haven’t been able to hear one since without feeling a little sick. Like, my whole body rejects the instrument now. As a concept.”
“I see your trumpet and raise you bagpipes,” Ruth said.
“No!” Bette gasped in horror.
“Well, no,” Ruth said, a smile breaking out. “But imagine.”
“A nightmare,” Bette agreed. “Okay, so that’s Jody and Leon. Who’s in the other room?”
“Heather. She’s brilliant. The one with the checklist. I would suggest her for your sex project, if I didn’t think she might ruin you a bit.”
Bette turned to her, opening her mouth to protest that perhaps she wanted to be a bit ruined. Or a lot ruined, honestly. But Ruth shook her head, as if she knew what Bette was thinking.
“Nope. Absolutely not. But if you promise not to sleep with her, then you should meet her. She’ll have loads of good advice, and probably people she’d introduce you to. It should have occurred to me before, actually. Anyway, Heather’s gay and dates a lot. She’s not that into relationships, but she really knows the scene.”
“Wow,” Bette replied, feeling oddly jealous of a woman she had never met. “What a crew!”
“Yeah, it’s a bit of a queer house,” Ruth said. “Always has been. Not deliberately, really, it’s just part of having been out forever, I reckon.”
Wonder bloomed in Bette, imagining the life she might have had, the chosen family she might have built. If she’d known. If she hadn’t been so late to the whole thing.
“So, I’m this way,” Ruth said, pointing off to the right when they reached the top.
“I’m just over there,” Bette said, pointing vaguely in the direction of the flat, aware of the little prickle of disappointment in her, that they’d reached the fork in the road so abruptly. She hesitated, and then decided to throw out an offer and leave the ball in Ruth’s court. She didn’t want to be taking advantage. “Let me know if you fancy another pint at some point? Maybe somewhere less…Friday?”
“Absolutely,” Ruth said, and then stepped forward, her arms wide. “I’ll message you,” she said as they hugged, the words close to Bette’s ear, tickling down her neck. They pulled apart and in a rush of uncertainty, in wanting to do something with her hands, Bette found herself waving lamely. It was new, in terms of a level of awkwardness, she thought, as she moved her arm back and forth. She wasn’t thrilled by it.
“See you later,” Ruth called over her shoulder, her voice bright with laughter. Bette watched her leave, the yellow bag still bouncing against her with each step. And then she walked home in the last of the daylight, the cool evening air delicious against her skin. The shirt still stuck slightly, the stale smell of lager emanating from it. But she had made a proper new friend. She felt fantastic. Mostly fantastic. Almost completely fantastic.
There was something gnawing away at her, though, something she was missing.
When she pulled her phone out of her pocket to plug her headphones in, keen for something to soundtrack the last few streets home, she noticed a text that she hadn’t felt buzz.
Mei:Hope you’re having a lovely
Friday. Thinking of you. Xx
The bottom dropped out of her stomach, and she wanted to sit down on the footpath. It was Mei. The thing that was missing was Mei. Her thumbs hovered over her phone screen, poised, as though she had any idea how to respond. After a minute or so of standing still, she put Phoebe Bridgers on, dropped her phone back in her pocket, and walked home, utterly deflated.