Chapter 29
29
On Tuesday, Elsie goes to her sister’s for dinner. She doesn’t do that enough. They do family dinners, but that’s everyone, busy and loud. It’s nice sitting with Danielle and Matthew and Declan, who’s two and a half and so freakin’ cute Elsie could die.
After dinner, Matthew gets Declan ready for bed and Danielle cleans the kitchen and Elsie connects her laptop to the TV in the living room. When the other two are ready, she’s got a presentation to practice.
With the amount of eggplant lasagna Elsie shoveled into her stomach, there’s no room for anxious butterflies. And again, this is practice. She doesn’t have to be perfect. Still, she breathes a sigh of relief at the end, when her sister and brother-in-law applaud. Danielle even lets out a little squeal.
“That was great,” Matthew says.
“Seriously, Elsie, it’s so good,” Danielle says. “I knew it was going to be good, but you exceeded my expectations.”
Danielle isn’t one to bullshit, so she must mean it.
“Lemme see the logo again.”
Elsie takes a seat on the sofa—she felt like she should stand for the presentation itself—and clicks BACK on her laptop, balanced on the arm of the couch.
“I really love it,” Danielle says of the logo. “I assume Ginny helped, yeah?”
Elsie wasn’t ready for that question.
“Oh, uh.” She swallows. “No.”
“Well, what do they think? They’re the graphic design major, after all.”
“I, uh—I don’t know.” Elsie tucks her hair behind her ear. “I haven’t shown it to them.”
Danielle narrows her eyes. “What do you mean?”
“Exactly what I said. I haven’t shown it to them.”
“Why not?”
Elsie shrugs. “No particular reason.”
“Bullshit. Neither of you does anything without the other knowing. What’s going on?”
“Nothing!” Elsie insists, though this is clearly a losing battle.
“I’m, uh, gonna go check on Declan,” Matthew says, rising from the sofa. “It was a great presentation, Elsie. I don’t know how your dad could say no.”
Elsie’s smile feels wobbly. “Thanks, Matthew.”
He flees the room. Danielle is still looking expectantly at Elsie.
“Explain,” she says.
No one else knows what happened on the trip.
Or—maybe Ginny told someone. Elsie doesn’t know. Elsie doesn’t know about anything Ginny has done in weeks. Most of the time, she can convince herself that’s fine. That Ginny is taking their time and will reach out when they’re ready. But under Danielle’s suspicious but kind eyes, Elsie crumbles.
“We basically haven’t talked since the trip.” She barely gets the words out, her voice cracking around a sudden lump in her throat.
“Els,” Danielle says, moving to sit next to her on the couch.
It’s supposed to be comforting, but that’s what Ginny calls her, what they used to call her anyway, and the tears welling in her eyes overflow down her cheeks.
Danielle rubs her back. “What happened?”
Elsie sniffles. She hates crying in front of people. She focuses on Danielle’s hand, moving in small gentle circles, and doesn’t respond until she’s managed to stop her tears.
“We hooked up on the trip.”
It sounds so trivial when she puts it like that, but that’s what happened.
“Finally,” Danielle says, so quietly Elsie doesn’t know if she was meant to hear it.
“What?” Elsie rubs at her eyes. “What do you mean, finally ?”
“Nothing. Why haven’t you talked since the trip?”
“No,” Elsie says. “What did you mean?”
Danielle’s hand stills. She tilts her head like she’s weighing what to say, but when she finally speaks her tone is no-nonsense. “Elsie, come on. The two of you have been in love for like as long as you’ve known each other.”
Elsie swallows. Danielle raises her eyebrows like she’s daring Elsie to deny it.
Elsie’s not sure she can, though. Maybe they have been in love this whole time. Elsie wanted to kiss Ginny before their first kiss. She wanted to kiss Ginny after. She wanted to go to the dance with them in tenth grade. But they were best friends, and that was more than enough. She tried not to think about what she wanted. The possibility of messing up their friendship was too scary.
And then that was exactly what happened. Elsie overcame her fear, convinced herself not to be so scared. Elsie got what she wanted. And now everything is ruined.
“I think you’re right,” she tells her sister. “But it doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it matters.”
“No, listen,” Elsie says.
She explains everything. The pact to speak up for what she wanted. The promise nothing would ruin their friendship. The sex—not in explicit detail, but enough to make it clear that it was different, somehow. That it felt bigger than anything Elsie had ever done before. And then she explains the email. The lie. The fight.
Danielle interrupts, then. “Can I say something you might not like?”
“Well, now you have to because I need to know what it is.”
“I just… I feel like maybe you overreacted about the job thing?” She says it like a question. “I can understand why Ginny wouldn’t tell you about it.”
“I can now, too,” Elsie admits.
It’s easier to understand, explaining it to Danielle. It’s easier to understand, outside of the moment. Outside of the terror that they’d just agreed to flip their relationship upside down, and it’d been based on a lie.
“But at the time it felt like what Derrick had done,” Elsie continues. “Like someone I loved doing something they thought was right on my behalf.”
“But it was their job, not yours.”
“No, I know. But I was nervous about dating—excited, yeah, but it was this huge new change, and I was afraid it wasn’t going to work. And Ginny had spent the whole week telling me that what I wanted mattered. That I shouldn’t automatically put other people first. But then it felt like they did that.” Elsie shouldn’t have admitted any of this. It’s embarrassing, and painful, and she doesn’t want to talk about it. More words come out anyway. “And it just—the trip didn’t feel like real life. And Ginny quitting their job reminded me of all the obstacles in real life. And even if now I can understand why they didn’t tell me—they lied to me. For a week. More, even—I don’t know exactly when they quit. How could we start a relationship like that? All my fears came back.”
“So you lashed out.”
“I lashed out.” Elsie looks at the floor. She tries to swallow the rock in her throat. The fight itself was bad enough, but the next part is worse. “But I apologized. I apologized and tried to be friends again and Ginny said no.”
“What?”
“They said I was right. And we needed time apart. And we haven’t talked since.”
It hurts to say. It hurts to think about.
“Talk to them,” Danielle says, like it’s that simple. Like it doesn’t feel like fifteen years of friendship have gone up in smoke. “Tell them you want to be together.”
Elsie shakes her head. She can’t do this right now.
“Let’s talk about this later.” Her voice sounds sure, even while the words feel more like a plea. “What do you think about the presentation? What questions should I be prepared for from Dad? I don’t want to fuck this up.”
“Elsie.”
“Please, Danielle.”
Her sister sighs, but they go back to the brand refresh.
Danielle asks questions, tries to poke holes, find weaknesses in Elsie’s arguments. But unlike everything with Ginny, Elsie has all the answers.
As they say goodbye, Danielle hugs Elsie, long and hard.
“I just want to make sure you know what you’re doing,” she says quietly.
“Thanks for dinner,” Elsie says.
But she thinks about that on the way back to their parents’ house. What is she doing?
She’s doing what Ginny wants by giving them space. But it’s not just that—she’s taking the space, too.
Elsie had been comfortable. Before the trip, she didn’t think much about what she wanted. Her life was fine. Her relationship was fine. Her job was fine. She liked her life well enough. She loved her lunches with Ginny. Loved any time she got to spend with Ginny.
But Ginny can’t be the only thing in Elsie’s life that makes her happy. That’s not healthy, for either of them. So this space is for Elsie, too. They’re both taking time to learn how to be themselves without each other. And Elsie is figuring it out. She’s doing things she’s never done before, all by herself. She’s focusing on herself right now, and that’s important. What she wants matters. Both separate from Ginny and when they’re involved.
Because yes, she has wanted to be with them. For years, she wanted to, but she was scared. Now, it’s not fear that holds her back; it’s knowledge. The knowledge that if they try for a romantic relationship and it doesn’t work, they’ll lose their friendship, too. Because that’s what happened. Romance, sex, all that—it ruined the friendship. The trip was amazing. It was everything Elsie thought it could be. Holding Ginny’s hand in public. Kissing them. Just getting to be with them. It was wonderful. But it wasn’t worth it. Nothing would ever be worth losing Ginny as a friend.
So Elsie doesn’t want to be with Ginny. She just wants her friend back.