Chapter 19
NOW: DIANA
“How was the flight?” Diana asked as Michaela and their oldest child, Cole, finished buckling in the last of the kids and Jay slid into the passenger seat. Diana was in one of their large transport vans, given Jay and Michaela had loads of luggage and four kids.
“What do you think?” Jay said, buckling her own seat belt.
She sat back in the seat and turned to Diana with the most “Jay” look ever.
Diana couldn’t help but beam at her old friend.
She hadn’t laid eyes on her physical self in years, and it was surreal to have her like this in her car, on the way back to her house.
Jay smiled back at her, her cheeks rose from the cold and her long straight black hair framing her face. Her dark eyes alight and lined with her long eyelashes. It didn’t matter that decades had passed, Diana always felt complete when in Jay’s presence. She was so happy to have her closer to home.
“Yeah, never mind,” Diana said with a small laugh as the last of the seat belts were clicked. “We ready?”
“As ready as we’ll ever be,” said Michaela from her seat in the back, and Diana made eye contact with her in the review mirror.
God, Jay and Michaela were a striking couple.
Unlike Jay, it was like Michaela had barely aged.
The sharp lines in her face and her dark brown skin remained the same as the last time Diana had seen her, which was even longer ago than the last time she physically saw Jay.
For years, Diana had teased Michaela for always lathering her face with cocoa or shea butter, and now she wondered if there was something to it.
Not that there was anything wrong with aging.
Diana loved that on her women too. She loved Jay’s crow’s feet and the slight wear on her deep tan skin, how much more pronounced the slight dusting of freckles had become on her face.
The few white hairs that had sprouted amongst the black.
Diana couldn’t help but associate these signs with strength and proof that one had actually lived.
Had experienced. And she knew both Jay and Michaela had for sure. It just showed up differently on them.
“How long is it to Maplewood?” Cole asked from the back seat, and Diana was again struck by how deep his voice was.
When she’d last spoken to him in person and really heard his voice, he was barely a teenager.
She had flown to London to visit Jay and Michaela one summer, just for the hell of it.
She and Jay had made it a point to not go too many years without seeing each other in the flesh.
“It’s just under two hours,” Diana said, and smiled at the small groan that left Cole’s mouth.
She could hear the chatter of the other kids in the back.
“That’s how he communicates now, it’s all grunting,” Jay said, sliding on a pair of sunglasses and shifting to seemingly get more comfortable in her seat.
“It’s okay, I remember with Lily.”
“How is our girl?” Michaela asked from the back.
“She’s good, when was the last time you saw her?
” Diana asked because she honestly couldn’t remember.
The time she and Jay made for each other was exactly that — their time.
Michaela sometimes hung out with them, which Diana enjoyed, but they hadn’t really made it a habit of blending or even gathering their families together.
“I don’t know? Maybe she was like ten? It was just before we got Cole,” Jay said.
“Yeah wow, then she was little,” said Diana, nodding her head and soaking in how long she’d known the woman beside her. “She’s a senior in college now, if you can believe it,” Diana said, feeling her chest swell with pride.
“So what, she’s not that much older than me,” Cole said from the back.
“My daughter is very, very gay,” Diana said, delivering the words exactly how she knew Lily would want them delivered.
“I wasn’t—” Cole didn’t finish. Diana caught the young man’s flush in the rearview mirror as she looked back to change lanes and head towards Maplewood.
“God this place hasn’t changed and yet has changed so much,” Jay said.
Diana nodded in acknowledgement and handed her a glass of wine.
They were in the living room. They’d showered and unpacked, the early afternoon turning into the kind of pleasantly hectic dinner Diana hadn’t had in the house in a long time, and then to evening and bedtimes.
Michaela was upstairs wrangling the last of the kids, the twins, Lou and Syl, to bed.
Diana was happy for them. They’d gotten their happy ever after, after they’d fought long and hard for it.
They’d had to wait over a decade to be able to legally marry.
For Michaela to minimize her dysphoria and get the gender affirming surgery she needed.
For them to be able to adopt Cole, and then two years later, Mars.
In an attempt to make amends, or at least that’s how Diana saw it, Michaela’s sister had given them her frozen eggs after her marriage fell apart and she decided she didn’t want children.
Since Jay still had all the equipment necessary, they had gone the surrogacy route.
It had been a long shot given the estrogen Jay had taken.
Somehow, they’d ended up with both Lou and Syl.
Diana was all of their children’s godmother.
Before sitting down on the couch, Diana leaned down into her friend’s space and kissed her softly on her lips, relishing the feel of Jay’s lips pressing back against hers.
“Missed you,” Jay breathed against her lips, and Diana smiled.
“Missed you too,” she said, pulling away and then sitting on the couch.
It had been a long time since she’d kissed Jay, and it felt nice.
It was nowhere near kissing Maggie, that hadn’t been true for decades.
It wasn’t the same but it also wasn’t anything less, just different, and it was still nice that it was something they did.
“Aren’t you cold?” Diana asked, eyeing Jay in her very short shorts and long t-shirt.
“You know me, I run hot,” she said smiling, but then looked at the distance between them on the couch.
“Why are you so far away?” She scooted into Diana’s space, curling up beside her like she always did.
The feel of her settled something in Diana.
She wrapped an arm around Jay’s frame, softened by hormonal therapy and time, and the other woman leaned into her.
“So how are you, really?” Jay asked, taking a sip of her wine.
“You know me, same old same old,” Diana said nonchalantly.
“So just still in love with your decades-long situationship who now lives what, like ten minutes from here?”
Diana took a sharp breath. So they were getting right to it then. “You don’t waste any time,” Diana said, and Jay laughed against her.
“Why waste time when you two have wasted enough?” Jay asked, her question cutting into Diana, echoing with all of the ridiculous thoughts that she’d been tossing around since Maggie had left.
Of course she’d had other lovers, she’d been married, had a daughter, a whole life, and yet there was something inside of her that had never let go of Maggie, in the same way there was something in her that had never let go of Jay.
Jay leaned into her on the couch and Diana began drawing small circles on one of Jay’s thighs.
“Kids are in bed, hope you don’t mind, I helped myself to some wine, gotta reset my sleep clock pronto,” Michaela said as she entered the living room. Her long twists were piled on top of her head and Diana was struck by how effortlessly regal the woman was. Jay had certainly pulled a ten.
“Not at all, come join the party my love,” Jay said, gesturing for Michaela to join them on the couch.
The other woman walked over and settled between Jay’s legs so that one was behind her back and the other across her lap.
Diana always found it funny that with her, Jay had always wanted to be the little spoon, but Jay always wanted to be the big spoon with Michaela.
“So what are you two talking about? Star crossed lover shit?” Michaela said, taking a sip of her wine and turning a knowing look at Diana, her lips curved up in a sly smile.
“Oh my god, we aren’t star crossed, that doesn’t even make sense,” Diana said, laughing slightly.
“I don’t know, I just know there is hella drama,” Michaela said.
“Your Californian is showing,” Diana shot back teasingly.
“Never left to be honest,” Jay said. “But yes, we are just getting started on the tea.”
Diana sighed. “She’s divorced, our kids are grown, she’s back in Maplewood, it’s like, what the fuck?”
“What the fuck indeed,” Michaela agreed, and Diana knew she’d always liked her.
“Yeah well, let’s see, she’s been through a lot eh? Like she just got divorced right?”Jay asked.
“From a fucking lavender marriage,” Diana said, sounding more exasperated than she’d intended.
“Okay, but a marriage is still a marriage, and let’s be real, any woman who could go that long staying in the closet, well there’s definitely bound to be some bones in there,” Jay said.
“You’re not wrong, it’s just, like, fuck, we are in our mid-forties you know? Like what are we doing?”
“I can’t believe you had the fortune of meeting two of the loves of your life so young, and the misfortune of all this time away from one another,” Michaela said sadly, “at least you and Jay are good.”
“Yeah but it’s not the same—” Jay began.
“Oh I am well aware, the comets that you are,” Michaela said, and Diana shook her head, not willing to get into Michaela’s woo woo talk. She was not drunk enough for Michaela to bust out the star charts and latest philosophies surrounding love and relationships.
Deciding to keep with the topic at hand, Diana said, “Yeah I don’t know what’s worse, going your whole life not finding them or finding them and only living on the scraps they give you.” Diana closed her eyes.