Chapter 27
Alyssa
Paxton Ridge really came alive as the spring rolled in towards summer. Of course, I might have been a little biased from the company I was keeping these days, but… I could forgive myself.
The mountains lit up with color as the days went by, and even though we didn’t talk about it publicly, Jade and I still found our ways to spend so much time together I wouldn’t know what to do with a day without her.
Rolling over in bed to find a good-morning text from her was the best way to wake up—well, second-best, after the nights with her I managed to sneak in, waking up to see the way the same one lock of her hair always fell over her face in the morning and got caught in her lips.
Waking her up by pulling it out and tickling her face in the process, and she’d scrunch up her features in protest at waking up, a sour little look that turned sweet as soon as she saw me there in the bed next to her.
God, I wanted to keep that forever. But I didn’t dare spend too many nights at her place.
I made a conscious effort to stay on top of the rest of my friend group here—Linda looked at me differently, I think, after our loaded conversation on the hiking trail, and we never talked about it directly, but I felt like she was more relaxed with me than I’d seen her before, more open, comfortable.
I didn’t push her on anything about her relationship, just left the door open for her to talk about it if she wanted to, and she did a couple of times.
It was only ever an oblique reference to it, but I could always see the way she lightened up after, getting something off her shoulders—venting about feeling obligated to go along with an event Charlie was planning and hadn’t consulted her on, or on her newest manicure that Charlie had scheduled for them together without asking her first. She always apologized after, something like it’s not your job to listen to me rant about my own problems, and I’d just shrug and tell her that was what friends were for, wasn’t it?
You could tell it really meant a lot to her, because she even hugged me a couple of times without provocation. Even at a Birdhouse party one time, where people could see her willingly hugging somebody.
I still felt like I didn’t deserve it, but she insisted, so I went with her to meet her manager and chat over lunch one time—not about job openings, but just Linda introducing her friend, and the manager, Susanne, a sixty-eight-year-old white woman with the cutest little glasses that had die-cut flowers at the edges, cheerily chatted up a storm in a way that overcame my impostor syndrome.
She was one of those people where even the most hard-edged self-critics would come away like oh, yeah, I guess she likes me.
Daniela never fessed up to looking for job openings for me either—probably because she assumed things with Linda were moving towards me working at the college, based on that smug look she gave me when I told her about it, a sort of yes, good, good, I’ve conquered this woman and convinced her to live in Vermont look.
But I still knew she had. She was a much better friend than I was.
She was the hardest part of all this. Every time I saw Daniela after a day snuck out with Jade, I felt this awful guilt like I was sleeping with her girlfriend, and a half dozen times I told myself I was going to tell her—that I’d find a way to sit down with her and admit to the situation—but every time I tried, something came up.
Cat would come around randomly while Daniela and I were talking, or Daniela would be suddenly enthusiastic about a new job she’d taken on and I would talk myself out of ruining her good mood.
They were all excuses, I knew, but they were my emotional support excuses. I was leaning on them hard.
Cat was still shaken from the whole interaction with Jade out on the hiking trail, and she avoided Jade and didn’t bring her up to me whenever we talked, but she was slowly coming back into her own.
It was especially clear when Jade and I were chatting at the Birdhouse one time for a community potluck, playing it cool off to the side with a drink for each of us—a virgin mojito for Jade, since she’d driven me here, and we were planning to use it as an excuse to have to take me back to her place after this—when Cat emerged from nowhere and pulled her signature trick, sneaking up behind Jade and covering her eyes from behind.
“Guess who?” Cat sang. Jade didn’t miss a beat—handed me her drink to free up her hands, and she signed over her shoulder, hi, Kaitlyn. Cat scoffed, taking her hands away to put them on her hips. “Hey!” she protested. “You know who it is. Don’t tell me I sound like Kaitlyn.”
Jade turned back to her, sidling up next to me so we both faced Cat as she signed. “Can’t stand the sound of her voice, huh?”
Cat grinned, leaning on the table. She had a drink in her hand and a bit of a pink flush that made it clear it wasn’t her first drink, and it was a bit hard for me to follow her one-handed signs especially since she didn’t raise her voice enough over the music, but I’d learned enough to catch up.
“You two having fun over in your corner?”
I felt myself blush a little, and I laughed to defuse it. “We’re just gossiping about Nayla’s friend.”
“Friend,” Jade repeated, saying the word out loud but signing a scissoring gesture instead. I almost choked on my drink. Cat laughed.
“Ah, I bet they aren’t doing it. Ellie’s a Capricorn and you know how Nayla feels about that.”
“I doubt the stars are going to get in the way if they want to bump uglies,” Jade said.
Cat finished off her drink before she set it down, a more serious expression on her face now. “Any updates? On your big move?”
Jade tensed up, and I wanted to reach out and comfort her, but in a public place like this… I settled to put a hand lightly on her arm, and she relaxed a little, dropping her eyes to the table. “Not a lot yet… still looking at jobs.”
“Mm.” Cat forced a smile. “Any standout places?”
Jade shrugged. “Dunno. Lots of openings, not a lot of promise. We’ll see how things go.”
“Well, I hope something comes up soon,” Cat said, forcing a brightness into her voice, and Jade sighed.
“Thanks,” she said, pushing away from us both. “Gonna go grab some water real quick. For both of us. You look like you need to pace yourself.”
“I’m good!” Cat protested after her, but Jade went anyway, and it was clearly about more than just getting water, but Cat turned to me with a small shrug. “You have a thing for stubborn girls, huh?”
I hunched my shoulders. “Ah, well… it’s not like I know what kind of girls I’m into. I’ve been repressing that.”
“Who was your gay awakening, anyway?”
I snorted. “I don’t know… I think I just always thought everyone felt like that about girls.
And people. I used to think everyone felt the way I did and you just kind of picked if you wanted to be with boys or girls.
So I definitely crushed on, like, actresses, girls at school, but I was just like, no, I’ve decided to be straight. ”
“That’s so you. I just think everyone is beautiful.”
“Why, who was yours?”
She grinned. “Willow from Buffy. I wrote a self-insert fanfiction where she dominated a girl who was basically me with a different name. And they had tons of sex, but I didn’t really know how sex worked then, so it was just like, they took their clothes off and ooh, yeah.”
“That’s… so you.”
“The writing was terrible, and thank god, because my parents found it but they couldn’t make it past the first chapter, so they didn’t know Willow’s tongue was fully down my throat by the end of chapter two.
They got mad at me for writing about demonic TV series instead, which, I guess, I gotta hand it to them, it did make me gay. Maybe they were right.”
“I feel like I need a better gay awakening story myself now too.”
She laughed, but there was something more serious on her face now. “Jade makes for a pretty good one.”
“Ah, well…” I swallowed awkwardly, and Cat sidled up closer next to me, lowering her voice.
“You should tell Daniela.”
I winced. “I’m… I’m trying.”
“Are you?” She looked genuinely inquisitive, brows raised high. I withered more under it than if it had been an accusation.
“I am. It’s just… Jesus, I feel awful. Daniela’s done so much for me. And what have I done for her? Get in the way of her and her crush.”
“She can handle it,” she said. “She’s a big girl. Literally and figuratively. Maybe she’ll be unhappy for a bit, but you’ve gotta step on some toes sometimes, right? Only way to never bump into someone is to never move at all.”
Maybe I shouldn’t have moved at all, if all I was going to do was hurt everyone I ran into along the way. But Cat wouldn’t want to hear me say that. “It’s just… what does it matter?” I said. “Jade’s leaving soon anyway… we’ll have to end things no matter whether I admit to it or not.”
“And will you just keep lying to Daniela when you talk about Jade in the future? If Jade comes around to visit, are you going to play pretend like there was never anything there?”
I wavered, looking down at the floor. She put a hand on my shoulder.
“Daniela’s done stuff for you because she cares about you. That’s it. You don’t need to keep score. But you do owe it to her to be honest.”
I squeezed my hands tightly. “I… I guess. No, you’re right. I know.” I sighed, shaking my head, looking back up at her and loosening my hands—she’d probably caught none of that, and I repeated it while signing. “You’re right. I’ll tell her. I just… don’t know how.”
She smiled. “She’s Daniela. She likes straightforward,” she said, stepping back, relaxing her posture.
“Just get her a drink, sit down with her, and tell her you’ve been seeing Jade.
You don’t even need to apologize for it, because it’s not like she owns Jade.
But maybe to be polite, just don’t brag about how mindblowing the sex is or anything. ”