Experienced

Chapter Twenty-One

The thing about making your murky way through a devastating breakup was that it did rather fuck up your ability to do or think about literally anything else. Like having food in the house.

And so, when Ash suggested meeting at the big Sainsbury’s after work, Bette jumped at the idea. They had eaten egg fried rice three nights in a row. It was time.

It made sense that Ash was in charge when they shopped together; Bette had a tendency to commit to a basket she regretted, hauling around the supermarket without a plan. They were halfway down the dairy aisle before Bette realized that Ash’s motivations in going together weren’t entirely about having a lackey to do the fetching.

“You seem okay today,” she observed.

Bette snorted. “As opposed to?”

“As opposed to the absolute steaming pile of misery you’ve been for weeks now.”

“Well, yeah,” Bette conceded. “I do feel a bit better.”

“Anything changed? Or are you just gradually feeling like you’re on the mend?”

“I don’t know. I mean, I’ve been thinking about it a lot. I’ve still not quite pinpointed where it went wrong. And I know she messed up, obviously. But in the beginning, all Mei was trying to do was to give me this opportunity to make up for lost time. Have the wild gay adolescence I missed out on.”

“Making up for the straight years?” Ash said, and though she kept hold of the trolley, Bette could hear the inverted commas around the word.

“Yeah. Like, it wasn’t a bad thing for her to do. I really do get it. I just didn’t know then how to articulate to her why it felt wrong. Hold on…” Bette dashed down an aisle and returned with an armful of ramen noodle packets, looking at Ash as if daring her to challenge it. “I don’t even know if this is going to come out right. I still haven’t quite worked this out myself. Okay. So, on the gay adolescence thing, I’m not a teenager. Right?”

“Sure,” Ash agreed, sounding unconvinced.

“I don’t feel like one, at all. I’m still the same person I was before I came out. I still want kids, and someone to be really domestic with. I want someone who’s going to be my person, the one I call if something horrible happens at two a.m.” It was coming out wrong, Bette worried. Her “in case of emergencies” contact for years now was standing right beside her. But it was complicated. Ash had Tim. “I know I have you and I know that couples aren’t the be all and end all. I know that compulsory heteronormativity is a scourge on all of us. But I want it. That didn’t change when I figured out who I’m attracted to.”

“That makes sense,” Ash said, a little hesitatingly.

“Yeah? I think maybe I can be mourning that time I lost, all those years I could have spent having fun and figuring out what I wanted, without wanting to make up for it.” Bette waited for Ash to respond, to agree and marvel at this frankly genius realization, but she seemed determined not to make eye contact. Bette forged on. “Anyway, for the sake of that, for the sake of being free to sleep around for a bit, I lost Mei. I let her tell me what I needed, let her make that decision for me. And I sacrificed the life I wanted for one I might have wanted ten years ago, or one she thought I should have wanted. I’m mad I can’t have both things. Or I’m mad I didn’t get to have both. But if I’d known I had to choose, the choice was easy. I always wanted Mei. I just didn’t want to let her down.”

They’d reached the freezer section and went overboard on frozen dumplings, paratha, the ice cream that was on offer and bags of frozen vegetables that would be destined either for noodles or for Ash’s regularly creaky football knee.

“Do you ever wonder whether you might be overthinking things a bit?” Ash asked, dropping a second bag of peas into the trolley.

“Constantly. I worry about that all the time. Obviously.”

“I’m not saying it’s simple, or that I understand every nuance here. I’m obviously never going to. Straight-person privilege, I guess. But I think that what’s happened is that your girlfriend left you for someone else. You didn’t sacrifice Mei. You got dumped. In a really shit way. You’re allowed to be sad about that. But it doesn’t have to be some big gay lost adolescence realization.”

It was difficult to be so called out, and even more difficult to argue with the truth of it.

“I miss her. I mean, I miss us,” Bette paused, wondering whether it was still true. It was, or at least: “I miss when it was good.”

“Yeah. You can be sad about that. That’s allowed. But let’s consider being sad about one thing at a time, maybe. We can mourn your lost slutty teen years next month.”

“Well, to be fair, I’ve kind of done it now. Maybe it doesn’t need to be mourned.”

“Well, we can mourn it drawing to a close. Or we can mourn the version of you who might have been good at it. Although, let’s face it. It never really was you.”

“Hey!”

“Oh come on. You don’t do casual. You fall in love straight away. I mean, look at us. Intense from day one.”

Bette was silent as she leaned on the trolley, considering.

“I guess you’re…not entirely wrong.”

“Of course I’m not. Speaking of—well—all of this, have you worked out what you want to do about Erin’s? Do you want to take someone to the wedding with you?”

It had been ten days since the bowling. Ten days during which Bette carefully hadn’t mentioned it.

“Are you offering?”

“Of course I am. I’ll come if you want me to come. I’ll call in sick to school. I’ll be there beside you, and tell Mei that I’ve left Tim,” she said, sounding so sincere that Bette couldn’t even laugh at her. “But maybe think about who you actually want to take. Like, in an ideal world. Who you’d have the most fun with.”

And then, like the knowledge had been there the whole time, she knew exactly whom she wanted to take. Who would make her laugh, who wouldn’t let her dwell and mope. She thought back to Ruth on the other end of the phone earlier in the week, Ruth vulnerable and honest while she was battling a panic attack. She thought of Ruth at the bowling alley, making sure Bette was laughing before she laughed too. She thought of Ruth with the mussels, and on the sofa watching ice-dancing, and walking through the cemetery, and sitting at the bar drinking a martini and making friends with the bartender, and in the playsuit she’d worn on the first date. Their only date.

The right answer, the only answer, was Ruth. Gorgeous, sparky, fun Ruth. Bringing Ash wouldn’t work. Mei wouldn’t be jealous of Ash. Bringing Ruth said: I’ve met someone new, and she’s extraordinary.

It had to be Ruth.

“So. I’ve decided that casual dating isn’t really for me,” Bette said, apropos of nothing, spreading the split yolk out over the crushed peas on her toast. She missed it when cafés were obsessed with avocados and hot sauce. Mashed peas were a crap substitute. “I’m just…not good at it. I’ve been thinking a lot about it and it’s not me. I mean, it was fun. Sometimes. It was fun with Charlie. And Netta. Did I tell you about Netta?”

Ruth shook her head, catching the eye of one of the waiters and miming out a far too elaborate water jug and drinking glass tableau. The waiter approached their table in confusion, and Ruth looked up apologetically.

“Sorry,” she said. “If we could get some water? That’d be great.”

He smiled the smile of someone halfway through a brunch shift, someone bored with hungover diners and splitting bills into awkward ratios and useless attempts at mime. There was silence between them for a moment after he walked away, a silence long enough to make Bette question Ruth’s timing in asking for the water. To wonder whether she hadn’t wanted to hear about Netta. But it would be even stranger to draw attention to it, not to continue the conversation she’d begun.

“Anyway, she was hot. The sex was great. Really—I don’t know. I got into it. But I also spent the whole time reminding myself it was a one-off, that I needed to play it cool. I felt weird, knowing I wouldn’t see her again. Knowing that wasn’t the deal. It’s not the sort of dating I’m used to.”

“It felt like you were trying to be someone else?”

“Exactly. Sex sort of—well, it means a lot to me. I spent so long not really enjoying it, wondering what the fuss was about. It was always a performance. I could never lose myself in it, you know?”

“Sure,” Ruth agreed.

“Anyway, I tried really hard with the dates to pretend that it was all meaningless, like I could be that person. A Charlie, or a Heather, maybe. But it’s not meaningless, not to me. Not now that I’ve figured out the attraction bit.”

Bette waited, expecting Ruth to agree again, expecting a nod, a visual encouragement to continue. It didn’t come.

“I don’t know if meaningless is fair,” Ruth said instead. “You had this very specific plan where casual wasn’t allowed to become anything else. But sex doesn’t always have to be either life-changing or meaningless. It’s not a binary. It can be something fun with someone you’re attracted to. And I don’t know. I’m not sure Heather would say that the sex she has is meaningless.”

Bette flushed. “Meaningless was the wrong word. Sorry.”

“I mean, it’s possible that it really isn’t your thing. But maybe it was the very specific…”

“The odyssey of it all?” Bette interjected.

“Well, yeah. Honestly, I couldn’t imagine you going back to something you mostly seemed to be resenting, without someone waiting for you at the end of it.”

Ruth was right. Casual or not, the next person she dated wouldn’t be someone who fit inside the parameters she’d agreed with Mei, but someone who was right for her. Bette found herself nodding, and Ruth continued.

“I’ve had a fair bit of casual sex, mainly after my first boyfriend and I broke up. And I had a really good time.” Bette raised her eyebrows, could feel the corners of her mouth turning up. Ruth smiled too, her cheeks pink. “He was the first person I ever fell in love with, and I was obsessed with him. With feeling like that. He was offered a graduate position in Singapore after we finished undergrad, and of course it made sense for him to take it. We tried long-distance for a year. And then, and trust me, I know how boring it sounds, we grew apart. I felt it running through my hands like water, spent so much time furiously trying to stop it draining away. But he froze on Skype one day and when his video kicked back in he was halfway through ending things. For a while after him I didn’t want a future with anyone else. I couldn’t see it. I wanted to put less pressure on meeting people for a bit.”

Bette thought of the future she’d imagined with Mei, of the family she had started to visualize, and thought of how devastating it might be, how exhausting, to do that over and over again. To put that much pressure on everyone she slept with.

“Yeah. That makes sense.”

“It was fun, too. I met some great people. Just, no one I fell for.” Ruth sounded wistful, fiddling absent-mindedly with her hands as she spoke, and Bette realized that this was the most she’d ever delved into her romantic life. Short of knowing that Ruth was looking for something serious, that she had been taking things slowly with Gabe, Bette didn’t know anything else about her history. It had felt like territory Ruth didn’t want to explore. But there was an opening here. And Bette couldn’t resist.

“Have you been in love since?”

“Oof. Okay. I—yeah—actually, you know what? That’s not a question for here.” Bette was about to apologize, about to walk it back. But Ruth made eye contact with their waiter again. “Let’s go sit on the wharf instead.”

Bette nodded. It wasn’t a brush-off. It was a change of location.

It was, she thought as they sat down, a great one. The midday sun was still present enough to cut through the October chill. When they arrived at the wharf, Bette shrugged off her jacket and sat down cross-legged on top of it. Ruth followed suit, her legs dangling over the side, and opened the tins of whisky and ginger they’d bought en route. She took what sounded to Bette like a deep, steadying breath.

“So. Being in love. Yeah. I have. It was…it was pretty recently. It ended earlier this year.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Ruth said, her voice tight. “She was a colleague. We were together three years. Nearly four. We met doing our master’s. But she was seeing someone else too. For quite a while.” She paused and Bette bit her tongue, longing to interject. “For the whole time.”

It didn’t sound like Ruth, the story, the telling of it. There was none of her usual warmth, no segues, no self-deprecation. Her tone was that of a coroner in a TV drama, laying out the facts for the visiting detective, cold and sterile as the slab.

“Ruth, I’m so sorry,” the words utterly inadequate. Bette took a sip, to give her something to do with her mouth, and coughed as a rush of bubbles invaded her throat. “That’s—I don’t know how—I mean—fuck…”

“It was her ex. The other person she was seeing. I’m still not sure whether they ever stopped sleeping together. She was working in the States. The ex. So I was a placeholder, or something. I guess. Until she came back. They’re together now, I think,” Ruth was fiddling with her hands again, pinching at the skin between thumb and forefinger, hard enough that her skin turned white under the pressure. Bette wanted to reach over. Her own itched in her lap as she fought the impulse; she didn’t want Ruth to feel embarrassed that she’d noticed.

“I mean, she’s clearly a fucking idiot.”

Ruth laughed, short, sharp and surprised. “She is,” she confirmed. “But I was an idiot about her for a long time too. I should have trusted myself. I felt like something was wrong, especially in that final year. And I ignored it.”

“The old sunk-cost fallacy?” Bette said, thinking back to a half-remembered lecture. “You’d invested too much to leave?”

“It wasn’t even that considered. It was just…denial. I couldn’t believe it of her. I couldn’t believe how lucky I was when I met her. If I’d listed out everything I thought I wanted, she would have ticked every box. Clever. Compassionate. Cared about the same stuff I do. Made me laugh, even when I was in a horrible mood. She came to synagogue on Rosh Hashanah, with my parents. She was great with my cousins’ kids. Everyone adored her. I adored her.”

“But she was sleeping with her ex,” Bette said, entirely unnecessarily, before she could question the impulse. There was something hot coursing through her, and she was suddenly desperate for Ruth to look at her instead, to list out her good qualities. She wanted to meet Ruth’s family, wanted them to adore her. She wanted not to have to Google Rosh Hashanah, wanted to know already what the rituals were and why it was important. She hadn’t gone back to church since her brother’s wedding, since they had used one of the blessings during the service to pray for Bette. Specifically. But she could go to synagogue, if Ruth wanted. She liked that it was important to Ruth.

“She was sleeping with her ex,” Ruth repeated quietly, her gaze squarely on Bette, her expression curious. It was as though she could see right through all Bette’s layers. Straight to her heart.

Fuck.

Oh fuck.

She fancied Ruth. The thought didn’t hit her like a train, or like a bolt of lightning. She just…saw it. Knew it. Realized consciously what the rest of her had known since the start. It wasn’t news, not really. She had thought Ruth was gorgeous since the app. Certainly from the date. She’d lingered on the low cut of her playsuit, on the way the fabric sat on her thigh. She’d noticed her. She’d thought about kissing her. She’d wanted Ruth from the moment she’d approached the table.

And then they’d become friends. Of course she could be friends with someone she found attractive. Bette found a lot of people attractive. It wasn’t particularly complicated. Ash was fit. Carmen was too. Erin was beautiful, in a pretty intimidating way, and it had never been an issue at work.

But there was a difference, she realized, between thinking someone was attractive and being attracted to them. A difference between appreciating someone’s outfit and wanting to strip them out of it.

She didn’t just like Ruth. She didn’t just think she was clever and sparky and fun and beautiful and brilliant. She didn’t just enjoy spending time with her. She liked Ruth. Ruth was gorgeous, and now Bette thought about it, the image did come to mind every now and then of running a hand through her hair, of how warm and soft she’d feel pressed up against Bette. She wanted to kiss her, to bite down on her collarbone, to suck on the tender skin beneath her ear. She wanted to see her make tea first thing in the morning, and take her to visit her nonna, and argue about where their children should go to school. All things considered, they weren’t particularly platonic feelings to have for a friend.

And now she’d reacted in a weirdly jealous way, and Ruth knew. Maybe Ruth knew? She was looking at her as if she might know. But maybe she was looking at her oddly because Bette hadn’t spoken in a while, because she’d said the weird thing about the still-unnamed ex-girlfriend. Because Bette was still staring at her. Without saying anything.

“Um—sorry,” Bette said, not knowing how else to address it. “That was a really weird thing to say. I was just—I hate that she hurt you. I’m really sorry.”

“It’s okay,” said Ruth, her voice soft and careful. “I’m okay now. Mostly. But it’s why I need to be really careful with myself. Why I need to take things slow, and look for the right person this time. I jumped off a cliff with her, you know? Trusting that I’d land safely. It felt like I’d ended up so deep in something that it was hard to breathe, but I thought that at least she was there beside me. That we’d both jumped. But she hadn’t. I was just down at the bottom of the cliff, drowning alone in the sea. I can’t fall head over heels into something again. It’s what I’m doing with Gabe at the moment: acclimatizing as I go. I’m considering every step. He’s nice. I like him. But I’m not losing my head over it. I’m nowhere near the cliff.”

The twist in her stomach at the mention of Gabe’s name felt familiar. It was so obvious now, what it was. What she’d felt as far back as the party, watching him on the step with Ruth. She felt stupid. And also so thrilled about the banal nothing that was the word “nice” that she wanted to jump up and scream in joy. “Wow. That’s…vivid. You’ve really thought about this.”

“Oh sure, like you’ve never spent an afternoon coming up with the perfect metaphor for a feeling.”

“Yeah. I have. I really, really have.”

The silence that settled between them felt heavy and loaded. This realization had changed…everything, really. And also nothing. Ruth was already seeing someone. She was looking for slow, for sensible. Not someone so recently out of a relationship, who’d fallen for her already, who’d been anything but sensible in the past few months.

The original plan for brunch had been to warm up to asking Ruth about the wedding. Could she still ask Ruth to go with her? Now that she’d realized how she felt? After she’d risked letting Ruth know it too? Maybe this was her chance to reassure her, to let Ruth know that what she was asking was clearly platonic. That she was confident that they were friends who could do something ridiculous without the threat of it changing anything.

She liked Ruth. But it hardly mattered. Even if they hadn’t settled into a friendship she was determined to keep, even if it was what Ruth wanted, it was far too soon. Bette was still bruised by what had happened with Mei. She wasn’t ready. Ruth deserved better than this version of her, a version who was still trying to figure things out. She could get a handle on the other feelings.

“So, I have a favor to ask,” Bette said, digging her nails into her palms. “It’s a big favor and you can absolutely say no. Honestly, I’m kind of expecting a no, so really it’s not a problem.”

“Bette, stop saying no for me and just ask.”

Bette forced a laugh, peering over the edge, wondering whether orchestrating a fall into the water might be less embarrassing than what she was about to do. It was, she decided, on a par.

“Jody was right, I think. I need a date for this wedding. It’s—I’m going to be all right. It’s not that I want to get back together with her. But I can’t go to the wedding alone. I just don’t think I’m going to survive seeing Mei, and watching her dance with this new woman, while I’m standing in the corner alone. Very Robyn, and not in the good way. So I—”

“Bette, do you want me to go to the wedding with you?” Ruth interrupted.

“Yes.”

“Okay,” Ruth nodded.

“Okay?” It would have been so easy to smile. To say thank you. But they needed clarity. Ruth deserved clarity. Or…at least…a bit of clarity. “I mean, that’s amazing, but I need to make sure we’re completely on the same page. I want you to go to the wedding with me, but I also want you to go to the wedding with me. Like, I want it to appear, for all intents and purposes, like I’ve brought my hot new girlfriend. I want Mei to look at us together and think: fuck.”

Ruth was silent for a long time, looking out at the buildings opposite, squinting against the glare. Bette gave her time to process. Ruth didn’t make eye contact, didn’t turn back toward Bette, and Bette focused on the strong line of her jaw, the curve of her throat, the wide neckline of her Breton top. It was incomprehensible to think back even half an hour, to a Ruth she wasn’t entirely aware of fancying.

“You want me to act like your girlfriend? Tell everyone we’re dating? Behave like we’re a couple? The whole bit?”

Bette was suddenly convinced that Ruth was about to change her mind. That she’d just heard how ridiculous it all was. That it had been too much to ask for. She wished that Ruth didn’t have her sunglasses on, that she wasn’t facing the water, that it wasn’t impossible to read her.

“Yes,” Bette replied, hope tight in her chest.

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yeah. I mean, it’s Edinburgh, right? I love Edinburgh,” Ruth finally turned back to her, and offered Bette a small shrug. “And I love a train. And…I don’t know. I think we’ll be able to pull it off. I mean—we could be convincing. With the whole…thing. We like each other, right? Shouldn’t be that hard to extrapolate that. Exaggerate it, I mean.”

Bette’s heart was racing, her mind struggling to keep up.

“Do you think Gabe would mind?”

Ruth paused, and Bette let herself imagine that Ruth had only just remembered that she was seeing someone. Let herself imagine Ruth saying, I don’t care or this is more important. You’re more important.

“I mean, we’re not in an exclusive relationship. And also, us being together in Edinburgh isn’t real. He’s going to think it’s very very funny.”

It wasn’t real. Bette’s heart dropped. She was suddenly aware of her body, of being scrunched up over her crossed legs, of the folds of her belly. She wanted to stretch out, wanted to look casual and easy, the way Ruth did, resting back on her hands, her legs dangling. It was the first time since their single aborted date that she had thought about how her body might look to Ruth, had wanted Ruth to think she was hot. She was so fucked. Bette looked at Ruth, so overwhelmed and so entirely enamored with her that she didn’t quite know what to do.

It wasn’t real, she reminded herself. It wasn’t real.

“Okay then,” she replied. “Okay.”