Chapter Eleven
It had been precisely the sort of day in the office that Bette should have been readying herself for since the break. Pure chance meant that she was on her way to the photocopier when she overheard Erin buzzing Mei up. It was just enough time to prepare herself. To her surprise and horror, the only option seemed to be to run into the bathroom stall, crossed legs beneath her on the seat, hidden from view in case someone came looking. She remained there for an hour; long enough for her leg to go to sleep, long enough to engender some distinctly odd expressions from her colleagues when she finally stumbled out. Long enough that the phone she had left behind on her desk had a couple of texts from Mei that she didn’t know how to reply to. Long enough that (as Bette discovered over lunch) a very confused Erin had had to tell Mei that Bette had simply vanished, her print job still awaiting her in the tray.
But it was the weekend now, and she didn’t want to think about having not explained herself to Erin, about not having texted Mei back, about the endless hour in the toilet. Bette had plans.
Ruth was already at the bar when she arrived, her ankles crossed, wearing a black dress that scooped down her back in a way that showed off her lipstick-pink bra, her hand resting next to a martini glass filled with so many olives that it looked like an optical illusion. She was laughing with the bartender as he prepared drinks, her head thrown back, her neck long. Bette had never seen anyone look more effortlessly glamorous. She belonged in a black-and-white film.
Bette shook herself slightly, realizing suddenly that she’d been watching from the doorway for a beat too long. She walked over and pushed herself up onto the stool next to Ruth’s.
“Well, this place is amazing.”
“Bette! You look gorgeous,” Ruth said, leaning over to kiss her on the cheek, her now-familiar perfume fresh and bright. “Isn’t it incredible?”
It was. The decor was cozy and plush: polished wood, dark-green velvet, cushioned banquettes. The lighting was low and warm in a way that made everyone glow.
“How did you know about it?” Bette asked.
“Haven’t been before, but I know the chef. He’s only doing a couple of nights, trying out a new menu. His wife is a colleague, actually, so I bought a couple of tickets when he announced it months ago. Honestly, I’d forgotten about it until she texted last weekend.”
Bette looked around, her eyes falling on a menu on the bar. “What are we eating? Stupidly didn’t even ask.” Everything on the tasting menu was a list of four ingredients separated by commas, at least one in each list that she’d never heard of. Ash had had to explain a similar menu to her when they’d gone for a fancy dinner once; nothing had arrived looking like she expected. “Tasting menu means we get it all, right? I’m so glad I don’t have to make any decisions. This all sounds amazing.”
“Me too,” Ruth said. “I had dinner with them once and made him tell me everything about cooking in San Antonio. I was so jealous.”
A download of their respective weeks took them through the margaritas that came with the menu, and to a table by the window. A plate of stuffed and fried jalape?os appeared, Ruth took more than her fair share, and Bette couldn’t even begrudge her them when she saw the bliss on her face. More plates hit their table and they shared them out. In the brief conversational lull that followed, as they both ate, Bette remembered the question she’d planned, to avoid them getting stuck too soon on her dating life.
“Look, I know we’ve established the apps are the worst, but have you met anyone fun lately?”
As Ruth finished chewing she fiddled with the menu to the side of her plate, rolling the corner between her fingers. She looked down at her hand, watching as she manipulated the paper, and then up into Bette’s eyes. Bette waited, wondering if she should regret the question.
“I mean, no one world-rocking,” Ruth said, shrugging, clearly already keen to change the subject. “But some—I mean, yeah. Some fun people. There was one woman I met a couple of weeks ago, but I don’t think it’s going to go anywhere.”
“No?”
“No, I don’t think we’re right together,” Ruth said with a shrug. “She’s a real Aries, you know?”
“I—” Bette paused, and resolved not to lie. “I really don’t. What’s an Aries supposed to mean?”
“Nothing,” Ruth said after a moment, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. “It means absolutely nothing. Just that star signs are a thing with most women I’ve dated. So I’ve ended up obsessed against my better judgment.” Bette’s skepticism must have been showing on her face, because Ruth’s tone shifted toward defensive. “I don’t want to; they just make sense! I guess I’ve dated a lot of really convincing lesbians. Anyway, this woman was a real Aries in the sense that she was ambitious and lit up the room, but also she sort of needed to be at the center of it.”
“I’m a Capricorn, so does that mean anything?” Bette asked, vowing never to mention any of this to Ash, a dedicated zodiac cynic.
“Sure, if you want it to. Anything can mean something if you want it to. Like, I’m a Cancer, so I’m loyal and sentimental but I can also get a bit…intense. Obviously I know, rationally, that that probably doesn’t have a huge amount to do with the fact that I was born at the end of June. But I also kind of like to think of myself as a textbook Cancer. It’s a nice feeling. A club of intense weirdos I get to belong to.”
“I see that,” Bette replied and, much to her surprise and slight dismay, she sort of did. “So tell me about Capricorns then.”
“Well, you’re persistent. Disciplined. Ambitious too—”
“Ha, okay,” Bette said dismissively, waving the words aside with both hands. “You should talk to my mother.”
“What?”
Fuck. She’d not really meant it to come out like that. She just wanted to cut through the zodiac sincerity. Poke a little fun, deliver an easy line. It had seemed fun and flippant and self-deprecating in her head. But it didn’t sound as if Ruth was going to let her get away with laughing it off.
“Yeah, I mean, it’s not a big deal. Just—persistent, disciplined and ambitious is not the way my family would describe me. At all.”
“No?”
Bette recognized the tactic from the single therapy session she’d attended at the beginning of university: one-word prompts that encouraged someone to talk. She resented the effectiveness of it.
“No. No, I—oh I don’t know,” she started. “I think I’m a pretty big disappointment to them. There’s a life they thought I’d have that I—I mean, they’re convinced I’ve wasted my twenties in Bristol. That I’ll eventually figure things out and go back home. Work out that I’m supposed to have a more conventional life. It’s not like I’m even radical! I work a nine-to-five. I’ve not joined a cult. I just don’t think they got over me not marrying at twenty-three and going into teaching or something more—I don’t know. Secure. And the gay thing hasn’t helped. They’re fine with it, obviously. Apparently. But I don’t know…”
She took a breath, and realized as she did the false brightness in her tone. She felt exhausted, like she’d run for a bus. She hated running for a bus. Ruth was looking at her, considering but not pitying, and Bette felt a rush of relief.
“I mean, that’s pretty common, no?” Ruth replied. “Our parents’ generation was a whole different thing. It’s hard for them to look at us and what we’re doing and try to map it onto their lives. For them not to worry, not to apply their own timelines.” Ruth paused, rolling her menu between her fingertips again, taking a breath before she continued. “My parents were the last of their friends to have children. They tried for me for a long time before it happened. Before I happened. So they were in their mid-thirties when I was born. But now I’m thirty-three. I only have one friend with kids. I’m still studying. I’m renting. There is absolutely no place in my life for a kid right now. I know they love me, and they just want me to be happy. They’re trying. But they don’t get it.”
Nothing she was saying was particularly revolutionary. But Bette felt a warmth behind her ribs, at Ruth understanding. At knowing she wasn’t alone.
“I’m not trying to apologize for them!” Ruth said, and Bette realized she hadn’t replied, hadn’t shared any of the warmth aloud. “Especially about the gay thing. It’s shit that they’re weird about it, and I’m sorry. I’m on your side. If there are sides here. I think you’re great, and ambitious and focused and also—well—clearly very sensitive about how people perceive you. Touchy, even. A classic Capricorn, one might say. But all of that aside, it’s important that you know it’s not just you, that the parents not getting it thing isn’t about you. Its bigger than that. You’re great.”
A silence landed between them, one Bette didn’t know how to fill. She didn’t know how to tell Ruth how much her words meant. She couldn’t fathom why Ruth should have any difficulty at all finding someone. Finding a big capital-S someone. She was fantastic. How could anyone not want Ruth?
“Thank you,” she said, throat thick, feeling entirely and impossibly inadequate. “I—thank you.”
“Plus, look at how determined you’ve been about the project! You could have just been on your own for a bit, or something. But you’re really committing to it. Leaning in!”
“How have we ended up back on me again?” Bette wondered. “Okay, you said the dating hadn’t all been awful, and then we only got through one weird Aries. Anyone else?”
“I mean, yeah. There kind of is, actually, but it wasn’t an app thing,” Ruth replied, and Bette watched her throat and the top of her chest prickle into pink. “It’s new. He’s new, and we’re taking things really slow. His name’s Gabe. He’s a journalist, mostly zones of conflict, and he took a series of photographs on his last assignment. The university organized an exhibition of them a few weeks back, and I met him there.”
Gabe. Gabe the journalist, who didn’t just take photos but took a “series of photographs.” Gabe, who in two sentences was already alarmingly impressive. Some part of Bette’s brain offered up a memory from the haze of cheap party wine that had been obscuring it: the guy from the stairs, the night of the party. She thought of how great they both looked, of Gabe’s face as he looked at Ruth.
“Did I—was he with you last weekend? When I was leaving?”
Ruth nodded, the blush reaching her cheeks now too. It might be new, but Ruth clearly liked him. Bette found herself hungry for details, wanting to know what it was that made Ruth flush like that.
“So you’ve had a few dates?”
“A couple, yeah. We’re not rushing into anything, that’s basically the whole point. For me, anyway. I like him. I just—yeah. Slow was the plan. Is the plan.”
“Slow is good,” Bette said, not knowing whether she agreed even as she said it. Slow felt kind of ridiculous.
“We went to a roller disco,” Ruth said, her smile slightly embarrassed.
“A roller disco? Like, lights and roller skates and disco music?” Bette repeated. “Are we in a teen film from the eighties?”
“I know. Turns out I’m also appallingly bad on skates.”
“Yeah?”
“Oh yeah,” Ruth said, with a nod so sincere that Bette couldn’t help laughing at her. “No idea why I thought I’d be sort of all right. Put them on, fell straight down on my bum. Like, straight down. Still at the counter. I had to hold onto the side for the next hour, like a child.”
“No.”
“Yes indeed. He tried to help, but I was pretty much a lost cause. Plus, turns out Gabe can literally dance. Like, moonwalk in roller skates. He brought his own with him.”
Bette wasn’t sure why the first image that came to mind was of the guy from the stairs, looking unfairly good in denim shorts and an open shirt and hot-pink roller skates, and of her sticking a foot out and tripping him as he skated past. It probably didn’t speak well of her.
“I almost saw Mei today,” she said instead, and then regretted it almost immediately. Keen for something tangible to do, she pressed her finger into the sauce left on her dinner plate and transferred it to her mouth. “I mean—I didn’t actually see her. She was in the office. And I—I hid in the toilets.”
“Right.”
“Yeah, I kind of knew it would happen at some point, but I wasn’t…” she began, no choice but to commit to it now, but Ruth cut her off.
“Bette, I don’t want to talk about you having to hide in a toilet. I don’t want to talk about Mei at all. Oddly enough.”
It was as though shutters had crashed down between them, as if Ruth was closing up shop. The warm flush on Ruth’s cheeks was gone, and her eyes seemed distant. There was an edge to her voice, so instantly altered, that felt sharp against Bette’s skin. There was danger here, suddenly. She’d stumbled down a bad road.
“What?”
“I don’t want to talk about her.”
It made sense, of course. Ruth didn’t know Mei. Disinterest made sense. But Ruth seemed…weirdly mad. And that made no sense at all.
“I just wanted to—” Bette said, trying to backtrack, desperate to reverse away from the harshness in Ruth’s voice. But she couldn’t even finish the sentence. Why had she brought Mei up?
“Look, if she were your girlfriend then sure, I guess. We could talk about her. But all I really know about her is that she’s given you an ultimatum and forced you to do something that, no offense, you’re not very good at doing. And that’s enough for me to know I’d really rather not talk about her.”
It seemed incredible that mere minutes before she’d felt Ruth so entirely on her side. Embarrassment rushed in, her face and neck flushing, but it was quickly overtaken by anger. Ruth had no idea what her relationship with Mei was like.
“I’m not sure what you’re saying.”
“Look, I know it’s been weird for you. I know you’ve struggled with it. But—I mean—with Nat…”
So that was it. She’d talked to Natalia. And underneath the nice invitation to dinner and the conversation about fucking star signs she was simmering away. Bette had hurt her friend’s feelings, and now Ruth was mad. She could feel tears prick at the corner of her eyes. They were in a restaurant. She absolutely could not cry.
“Did you invite me out here tonight to tell me I’m doing a bad job at hooking up with people? Because, frankly, I don’t need you to do that for me. I felt awful all day on Sunday.”
Ruth looked uncomfortable, her shoulders creeping closer to her ears, her eye contact avoidant.
“Well, I’m kind of glad you did? I mean, I hate the idea of you feeling awful. But there’s a better way to go about things than the way you are. Than the way you did.”
“You’re talking like I don’t regret it,” Bette said, aware of how crowded the restaurant was, aware of her voice tipping toward hysterical. “Like I’m asking for your opinion.”
“I thought you messaged me to get advice on how to pick up other women. Surely we’re only here because you wanted my opinion.”
The accusation coursed through Bette, her stomach churning and skin itching. There was no denying that her first texts had been a request for help. But it had been weeks since she’d first texted Ruth for help. Weeks since that had been all they were. She’d thought there was more between them now than that.
“And I thought we’d become friends, actually, but I guess I’m shit at all relationships? Not just romantic ones.” Bette stood, reaching into her purse. And then she sat down again, her jaw clenched, her teeth gritted. “For fuck’s sake. I don’t have any cash. I’m not going to leave you with the bill because I’m not that person but I want you to know I would be walking out right now if I could.”
They sat in silence, the seconds ticking over, inexorably slowly, until there had been a full minute of them.
“In fairness, no one carries enough cash to make that kind of statement anymore,” Ruth said.
“No,” Bette agreed. “No, they don’t.”
“Also, I’ve already paid. I bought the tickets.”
“Oh.”
They sat in silence again, the air between them tense and uncomfortable, until Bette decided that she could be the bigger person. If she absolutely had to be.
“Should we have coffee with our dessert?”
Ruth’s head flew up, her brows knitted together, her eyes wide. She nodded, the action odd and childlike when coupled with her expression. She looked so grateful that Bette could feel the relief of it behind her ribs.
“Yeah,” she said. “Let’s order some. Bette I didn’t mean to—”
“It’s fine,” Bette replied, certain that a sincere apology would either grate against her or make her cry. Potentially both. “We can just—let’s just forget it.”
“No, I shouldn’t have—I mean, it’s really not any of my business. I don’t know where that came from.”
“Really, let’s just—please can we just not?”
“Okay,” Ruth said, nodding reassuringly at her. “I’m done.”
Bette made eye contact with one of the waiters. Dessert would fix things. It had to.