Chapter 10 #2
“I promise,” I said, “I’m happy enough!”
“So may I ask?” Aisha’s tone was light but I knew that I was definitely not off the hook yet regarding this entire subject. “How’s everything going with Rebecca?”
“Confusing,” I said, instead of fine, which was certainly what I’d meant to say.
“Confusing how?” Aisha asked. “And do you want wine while you’re touching raw chicken?”
I did, so she held up my glass for me like a mom plying her child with alcohol.
“It’s nothing. She’s just—she’s very nice.
And she’s great at her job. Which doesn’t surprise me, but seeing someone in this new—anyway.
It’s as if nothing that happened back then matters to her now, but also whenever the two of us are talking—”
“Oh,” Aisha said in a knowing tone.
“Don’t oh.”
“You still like her,” she said.
“I don’t!” Then I drank more wine from the glass as she held it, which wasn’t necessarily a forceful position from which to maintain a level of authority.
“She says she doesn’t,” Andy said, practically chugging his own glass. “Let’s leave it alone.”
“Sounds good to me,” I said. “For the record, though, it would be ridiculous to like her.”
“And you never do anything ridiculous,” Aisha said, basically pouring the rest of the glass into my mouth, an unfair tactic and even more unfair moment in which to employ it.
“You know what I mean.” I sighed. “Fine! She’s very attractive, which is annoying. That doesn’t mean that I like her. Though of course I like her professionally.”
“Of course,” Aisha said, and I chose to ignore her sarcasm.
“It’s only that—” I stopped, but reminded myself that these were the two people who were there for me no matter what.
“She’s so kind. She’s funny, like, so funny.
She’s thoughtful. And—and I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense how normal it feels and also how I did what I did and she can be like this to me now. ”
“It was a long time ago,” Aisha said. “Remember how Andy ghosted that poor girl who works at Lassens? She got over it before too long.”
“I didn’t ghost her!” Andy said. “I told her I’d see her around. That gets the message across, doesn’t it?”
“I didn’t just ghost Rebecca,” I said. “No, I guess that’s what I did. A large-scale ghosting. The kind you can’t take back.”
“It was over ten years ago.” Andy leaned against the counter. “Whatever happened, people get over stuff. And you’re working together. It necessitates it, right? You’re both adults.”
“Right,” I said.
“What aren’t you saying?” Aisha asked me and poured more wine. Into my glass first, then into my mouth. I wasn’t even touching the chicken anymore, but I didn’t point that out. Sometimes it was nice to be taken care of.
“Nothing,” I said, instead of everything.
“You two need so much therapy,” Aisha said.
Andy shook his head. “How’d I get pulled into this?”
“Can we please just go back two weeks, and you two act like I never told you anything about Rebecca?” I asked. “Or myself?”
They both gave me their eyebrows-extremely-high concerned looks again.
“A lot of people would kill for my life,” I said, carefully adding chicken to the medium-high pan. “No one gets everything they want.”
At the Applewoods hangout that night, approximately one million years ago, after Cory had mocked Rebecca and after Rebecca had made Cory look like an idiot, with that beautifully delivered I’m a lesbian, everyone had laughed.
It was clearly at Cory’s expense, thank god, and things had moved on.
Me, though, I couldn’t stop thinking about the way she’d said it.
It wasn’t only that she hadn’t been kowtowed by Cory—the opposite, if anything.
It was how comfortable the word was for her, how certain she was of her identity.
When the night wrapped up, I’d stared at her in wonder the entire walk back to our dorm.
We’d become friends so quickly that in some ways it felt like I was catching up from the whole thing—how we could never stop talking once the lights were out, how Rebecca wanted to hear everything about Juilliard from the masks to the speech and voice work to the Alexander Technique, and of course the way she’d handled herself that night like the most confident person I’d ever met.
There were so many swaggering egos in acting, but underneath most of us were anything but.
Rebecca, though, was made from something different.
I thought you knew, she’d said, because it must have been exceedingly obvious that I hadn’t. I’d unlocked our door in silence, and she’d waited behind me instead of filing in alongside me, as had been our usual since we’d arrived.
Is this weird for you? she asked. I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable now.
I’d muttered something inane like I feel super comfortable!
while shuffling around the room, pretending to suddenly find the window and the closets fascinating.
Rebecca had laughed but there’d been a note of something else, and I knew that it was my fault.
But I also couldn’t figure out why I kept straightening things, brushing aside dust, finding excuses to keep moving.
Tess, she’d said, because we hadn’t known each other well enough yet for her to call me anything else. Are you drunk?
No, I’d said, because this had nothing to do with that, but also, yes.
Rebecca had laughed and walked over to stop me from continuing my loop around our room. Hey.
It was then that I knew, this thing I’d been running from.
If I kept busy, I’d decided, I could hold it at bay.
And it had been easy enough; boys always liked me and girls never seemed to know.
Here, though, looking into Rebecca’s golden brown eyes, I didn’t want to run.
It washed over me, like I’d been sent to another planet and thought I’d never meet anyone from back home. But there she was.
I am too, I’d said, and then, at least I think I am.
Her expression had shifted, and shifted again, and again, like my loop around the room putting my hands onto everything that didn’t matter.
In the past I’d never kissed someone first, always been kissed, but I’d tried it, standing on my tiptoes and leaning into her.
She’d curved into me and by the time our lips met it couldn’t have felt more like an idea we’d come up with together.
I’d felt greedy for her, a hunger that was brand-new.
Rebecca kept letting me lead, even though I’d been sloppy and impatient and accidentally dropped her glasses on the floor when I yanked off her shirt like a horny idiot.
I’d never been a horny idiot before was the thing.
Rebecca had been so patient, though, as I flailed—both figuratively and a little literally.
She hadn’t laughed when I’d confided I’d never had an orgasm and thought maybe I couldn’t, medically or whatever?
, hadn’t even looked smug when she disproved that theory only a few minutes later.
In the morning I hadn’t known what to say to her, but then she’d rolled over and smiled at me, and all I wanted to say was everything.
Applewoods made it easy, even inconspicuous, to be inseparable.
We had so many responsibilities in addition to acting.
During the day we helped paint sets and swept lobbies and taught local kids how to fake a punch.
At night we performed in the play of the week.
And even later at night, Rebecca and I had sex and talked about our childhoods and planned out our dreams, and before long she told me about the tiny apartment in Brooklyn that she split with three-to-five roommates, depending on everyone’s current romantic entanglements.
A few weeks after that she suggested after the summer was over that I split that tiny bedroom with her—I only have a twin bed but we’ve made that work all summer—and up that total roommate number to four-to-six.
We were constantly busy, but when there’d been time for spare thoughts, I thought about that tiny bedroom, that twin bed.
I thought about going back to New York, running into classmates at auditions and parties, telling them who I was.
I thought about calling Andy and explaining that plans had changed and I was willing to blow up all my promises for a girl I’d known for weeks.
I thought about how my parents voted and where they went to church and wondered if I could still come home every year for Christmas.
And then I’d climb into bed with the girl of my dreams and forget all of that, for at least several hours.
Because the thing was that Rebecca was everything.
She was funny and talented and had read all the books I’d read.
She had strong opinions about theatre and storytelling and the way art could bring people together.
She listened when I talked, told me I was beautiful, stole extra bags of Fritos whenever they showed up in the mess hall because I once had referred to them as my guilty pleasure.
She was astonishingly, staggeringly, mind-bogglingly good in bed, or at least it felt like that to me, the girl with little experience and a determination to make up for lost time.
I loved her and she loved me and I could add up all the happy moments in my entire life and none of them felt like this, to be loved by Rebecca Frisch.
When fall was nearer and Rebecca’s plans grew more concrete—I warned my roommates about you and all they said was you can’t keep your hair stuff in the bathroom, there’s not enough space—I kept starting conversations with Andy in my head.
We’d had our LA plan for over a year, but also Andy would be fine without me.
He would have been surprised, I knew, but he would have understood.
I let myself daydream about introducing them.
He would love Rebecca; she was so no-nonsense and competent and low-drama.
She would ask him a million questions about plants and hang on to his every answer.
I never could get it together to call him, though. Typed Hey to him in Messages so many times, but never more, always backspaced. And when he texted his firmed-up plans to pick me up to take me home so we could finish packing for LA, I replied that I’d see him then.
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t leave a note.
I didn’t text. I didn’t try to explain because I didn’t know how to explain.
And then, like the biggest fucking coward in the entire world, I’d carried my things out while Rebecca was at lunch, waited for Andy’s truck, and rode back to Illinois like nothing had happened at all.