Chapter Four
I’ve put Tim on standby tonight,” Ash said, when Bette flopped down on the sofa beside her.
“No, stop! Tell him to come,” Bette said, and reached down to scratch Marge beneath her chin. The tabby acquiesced to the attention for a moment longer than she normally would, a small sacrifice. It was as if she could intuit the complicated feelings of the past day. It had been a long one. And then a message had been sitting on her phone when she had pulled it out late in the afternoon, and her heart had leaped.
Mei:I think you’re amazing. I just want to make sure you get the chance to know it too. I’m here if you want to talk. But I think you should take advantage of this time. xxx
She did know it. Sort of. And if the break was a non-negotiable, then what was the harm in figuring things out? In flirting and trying out something new. Mei was right. Bette was so new to this. And women were beautiful. And so much fun. Since coming out she had imagined how much she might finally enjoy dating, now that there was a chance she’d fancy the person across the table. Maybe taking this time before settling down was the right thing to do.
By the time she’d pushed open the front door to her flat, her vague musings had begun to take shape. She would just have to go on some dates. Date a couple of girls. No big deal. A hot girls summer. Literally. And then, when autumn began in earnest, she could tell Mei it had been fun and that she was all in. The break would be over. They could move on with their life together.
“I didn’t want to push him on us if you needed—I don’t know. Whatever you needed,” Ash said, and Bette thought of the dark mood she’d been in the day before, how gentle Ash had been with her. How little she’d pushed for anything.
“I’m fine. Really. Completely fine. My job for tonight is to set up some of the apps, and I feel like he should definitely be here for that?” she replied.
“Oh, I can’t think of anything he’d like more,” said Ash, meaning it sincerely. “He’d be so sad if we did that without him. But—do you want to talk about it? I mean, I’m very pro you getting back out there, and good riddance to her and I curse her with every power I have and everything but—are you all right?”
“I am. I think I am. And I need to get out there as soon as possible. It’s kind of the whole point.”
“The point?” Ash looked confused, sitting up straighter against the sofa cushions, and Bette realized she’d skirted the specifics the day before. She filled Ash in, with particular emphasis on the crucial bit: by mid-October they’d be back together.
When Bette had finished, there was a silence, a long one.
“Right.”
“I’ve been thinking she’s probably right, too. You know, it would be so much pressure on both of us, if I ended up with the first woman I slept with. I’m thirty. I’ve slept with more men than I have women, kissed more men. It’s not like I’m keeping score or anything but—well. It probably matters.”
Bette took a breath. The air in her lungs felt so good that she realized it must have been the first in a while. She turned to look at Ash. Her face was reaching for neutral, her forehead furrowed, her mouth twisted closed. Bette could see her work to contain it and then, like a tray of drinks that begins to wobble, then pitch, then fall, saw her lose control of all of it in quick succession.
“Bette, you seemed—I don’t know—you seemed really sad yesterday,” Ash said, picking at the pilling on her ancient tracksuit bottoms, avoiding Bette’s gaze. “Really down. It’s great if you’re feeling differently now but I just—”
“It’s fine, really. I’m going to go on a couple of dates, and then we’ll get back together. And it’ll all just be this fun story we’ll tell at dinner parties one day. That time my wife sent me off into the dating wilderness. We’ll laugh about it.”
Ash’s expression remained unconvinced. She pushed herself off the couch, heading toward the kitchen, and Bette followed, even though the conversation didn’t feel finished. Sure enough, she was barely through the kitchen doorway before Ash started again.
“What’s she going to be doing while you’re off on this adventure then?”
It was an annoyingly good question, she thought, as she watched Ash pull ingredients from the fridge. Bette hadn’t really considered that aspect of it. But Ash didn’t need to know that.
“It’s not really any of my business. We’re on a break. She can do whatever she likes,” she replied, coloring her voice with more flippancy than she felt.
“And after, what, a few months? You just get back together? As if it never happened?”
It was so easy for Ash, Bette thought, with a prickle of resentful annoyance. Ash, who had met Tim at twenty-six. Ash, whose British Indian parents had welcomed their only daughter’s very white boyfriend with open arms. (“Bit of a racist assumption to have made, actually,” Ash had said, when Bette had brought up that she’d been worried. And Ash wasn’t entirely wrong, but there was relief all over her face, and her hand was tight in Tim’s.) Ash, who had dated a couple of other perfectly decent guys before then. Ash, who had a ten-year plan with her boyfriend; who knew she’d be trying for a baby by thirty-three, once she’d made deputy head and could afford a year of maternity. It was all pretty easy, Bette thought, when you didn’t stumble into a massive sexuality crisis in the dying days of your twenty-ninth year.
She had been quiet for a moment when she realized that Ash’s question had been left unanswered between them.
“Yes?” she said, hating the way that the question mark attached itself to the word, hooking around the -es and tugging it upward into uncertainty. “Yes,” she repeated. And then, to solidify things, “Exactly.”
Ash nodded, hesitantly at first and then with a more confident certainty. “Okay. Noodles for dinner then? We’ll call setting you up with a profile dessert?”
Ash cooked while Bette levered the tops off a couple of bottles of beer and tipped a bag of crisps into a bowl. When Tim arrived, work polo shirt tucked into faded jeans, he joined them in the kitchen. His hug let Bette know that putting Tim on standby also involved giving him a heads-up.
“I’m fine,” she said firmly, before he could ask, and felt him nod against her.
“We’re setting Bette up on the apps after dinner,” Ash said, as she abandoned the noodles briefly to land a kiss on Tim’s cheek.
“These Bristol lesbians won’t know what hit them,” he said, his voice both joking and tender. Bette wanted to be reassured by it, wanted it to soothe her. But she was raw with embarrassment. It all felt too patronizing, the thought that she needed to be buoyed up. She wanted Tim to take the piss, hated the thought that she might be an object of pity.
She had struggled with Tim, in the beginning, with the time he spent with Ash that usurped her time, with the way he walked nonchalantly into their lives. He was easy in a way that neither she nor Ash had ever been. It was, she supposed, perhaps part of being a straight, white guy: assuming that your place was everywhere you wanted to be. The thing about Tim was that she found it impossible to resent him for it; he was so sincere with his affection. He felt like a brother, someone she could share things with and who looked out for her, who she knew loved her even when she annoyed him. Nothing at all like her actual brother, now she thought about it.
Later, once Bette had run her finger around her bowl, collecting the last of the peanut butter and soy and chili sauce that Ash always made, and Tim had mined the best of his “clueless people buying hiking shoes and camping equipment” anecdotes from the shop—a rich seam as ever—Bette placed her phone in the center of the table.
“So,” she said.
“So,” Ash replied, her face serious.
“So,” Tim joined in, his smile bright and thrilled as if anticipating a treat.
Bette downloaded a couple of options—Hinge, Tinder, Her—while Ash filled the kettle.
“Remember when I had Guardian Soulmates?” Bette said, clicking through the initial setup, allowing access to her phone and her data and briefly worrying, as she always did, that she should be more worried about it.
She couldn’t remember how she’d advertised herself back then. She didn’t know how she’d introduced herself to strangers before the headline was I didn’t know I was gay, but I do now; isn’t it nice to fancy people?
“Oh Soulmates! RIP. What a time,” Ash said, distributing teas between the three of them and joining them at the tiny kitchen table. “Oh my god. That guy! Heart attack!”
“Heart attack,” Bette remembered.
“Heart attack?” Tim asked.
“As in ‘serious as a…’ I can’t remember his actual name. How would we describe him?” Ash asked, looking at Bette thoughtfully. “I have nothing. He was entirely without personality and Bette dated him for six endless months.”
It had been six months, Bette thought. Longer than she had been with Mei. It was unfathomable.
“Look, Tim. The thing about not fancying men—no offense, you know I think you’re great—is that every single one I dated was completely fine. Nothing offensive. Fine men. But also entirely unappealing to me. It’s all very obvious why now, but at the time…”
“So, you have to answer a few of these questions,” Ash said, steering them back on track. Tim leaned over and scrolled through the list.
“Hang on. Your coming-out story? Your love language? Top, bottom, or switch? Just casual little openers then? Low-key getting-to-know you stuff?” he asked with a laugh.
“Welcome to lesbian Hinge. This is going to be a real eye-opener.”
“Teach me dot dot dot,” Ash pointed out another of the prompts. “I mean—”
“Yeah, I’m honestly not sure I can pull that off?” Bette replied. “Like, hi, teach me what sort of sex you like in case I like it too? Teach me how best to get you off so I can take my new skills back to someone else?”
“Yeah, it’s maybe going to be better to wait for the date on that one,” Ash said, pulling her back into the room.
Bette scrolled up and down, searching for prompts that felt casual, rather than instantly exposing. Tim and Ash were silent as she typed; the anticipation was tangible in the room.
“Okay, how about this then? My esthetic: wannabe Dana Scully circa season four. A life goal of mine: see Tegan and Sara play live. The way to win me over is: with bog-standard crisps and really beautiful collarbones.”
“Perfect,” Ash confirmed. “Nothing too serious, gay band name-checked, crisps name-checked. I like it. Now. Photos?”
“Hold on. Are we just skipping over collarbones?” Tim said, his hand landing on the phone in the center of the table, as though concerned they might simply breeze past it. “Seriously? Like…of everything, it’s collarbones? Collarbones?!”
“Oh god yeah,” Bette said wistfully. Mei had incredible collarbones. “They’re so elegant. So hot. Absolutely no idea what it is because it’s not like they’re risqué or anything it’s just…”
“Guys, please. If we’re going to do photos before bed…” Ash started before trailing off with a tone of resignation. It was already far too late; Bette and Tim were lost to the undeniable attractive power of the clavicle.