Chapter 17
Sapphire
“How’d it go?”
Britt’s voice was chipper down the phone as I picked up, sliding my bag up my shoulder as I pushed away from the café. I stopped at a traffic crossing next to an old man who was also on his phone, and somehow, it made me feel more like I fit in. Like I was a bona fide Chicagoan, waiting to cross the road.
“Bad,” I said, my voice bright. “Don’t think I’m getting this one either.”
“Ah, hey. You’ve got to rack up the failures to get to success. I think Sun Tzu said that.”
“Um… did he?”
“At any rate, you sound like you’re pretty okay with it, so maybe you feel the same way.”
I did. But there was also the aspect that I had a date tonight with Madeleine, and that made everything better, but it wasn’t like I was going to just up and say that to Britt. Neither I nor Madeleine would ever hear the end of it if I did. “Yeah,” I said, as the light changed and I hurried across the street. “It was kind of… less bad than the last one. She mostly just seemed really skeptical that I didn’t have any work experience, and not that I said anything dumb this time. So that’s progress, right?”
“Girl, that’s definitely progress,” Britt said, as someone chattered in the background. I turned down the street on the other side, sticking close to the wall with a paranoid arm down over my bag, holding it close so no one would steal it. Madeleine had warned me about that one. “Besides, you’ll be doing Haley’s makeup soon, and she’ll pay you for that or I’ll kill her, so you can put that down as work experience too. You’re a freelance makeup artist. Bam, bam, bam. Be getting job offers left and right.”
“Um. We’ll see about that.” I paused. “I don’t think that really counts as work experience. Can I put that down?”
“You can put anything down as experience if you feel comfortable justifying it in an interview. We’ll have practice interviews where you can justify it to me, if you want. But it’s totally a thing,” she said, as something clattered on her end of the line, someone shouting close by. “You know, independent, self-starter, reliable, good at getting effective work done…”
“Britt, are you, like, in the middle of something?”
“Oh, yeah. I’m at work. Don’t really want to be, though, so I’m slacking off in hopes they fire me and give me a huge severance package.”
Was that… a thing? Could you have just slacked off to get fired and collect a big severance package? Wouldn’t everyone do that? It seemed like an obvious loophole… “I feel like I should let you do your job.”
“Ugh. Fine. You and Mads still prettying up that new place of yours later tonight?”
I blushed, ducking my head as my face prickled, a bus rushing past on my left at least providing me some cover to take a second responding. “Yeah… you are coming by tomorrow, right? I’m really counting on your design sense.”
“Yeah, for sure. I already swung by Michael’s and got something you’ll love for it.”
“Oh.” I paused. “Um… who’s Michael?”
“He’s… he’s my new boyfriend.”
I stopped, rounding on the phone. “You have a boyfriend?”
“Yeah, I think he’s the one. Trying to get him to propose.”
“Oh my god, I was with Madeleine for, like, two days, and you’re trying to—” I stopped, scrunching up my face, hearing the way she suppressed laughter. “Britt! Oh my god. Who is Michael actually?”
“Michael’s is a crafts store, baby, darling,” she said through laughter. “I’ll take you later, tons of stuff you’re going to love for your new place.”
“O-oh… right.” I stuck out my tongue, as if she could see, just to make myself feel better. “You keep lying to me for fun, maybe next time I won’t put together an entire party singlehandedly for you. What will you do then?”
“Ah. Please. I beg forgiveness. Have any other interviews coming up?”
“Not yet, but… applied to a whole bunch of jobs last night, so I’m hopeful one or two of them might turn into something. We’re going to see, you know?”
“You sound like you’re doing better, having a place of your own to fall back on. You’re doing great,” she said, and it contrasted a little bit with a sound of glass breaking close by.
“Um… do you need to attend to that?”
“Ugh. Probably. Nothing in this world worse than customers. Anyway, enjoy your date with Mads, and I’ll talk to you later.”
“Thanks, see you later,” I said, and I hung up before realizing with a feeling like I’d gotten stabbed in the gut that I was supposed to say no it’s not a date, and if I just said thanks —
Oh, god. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I hovered my finger over the call button, second-guessing myself—would it just make it more suspicious if I called her back to correct myself? Maybe I was just supposed to text? Or—was I just supposed to let it go?
Maybe she didn’t notice. I was probably worrying too much. Right? I was worrying too much. Or maybe now she was going to start harassing Madeleine about why she would date me of all people. God, I needed to—
I wrote out a text explaining that actually it was just an outing and we weren’t on a date, before I realized our cover story was that we weren’t on an outing at all but just at my place, and I rewrote it to say actually Madeleine was just staying at my place and we weren’t going out, and then I realized that sounded skeezy and just—
Someone bumped into me from behind, and I fumbled, accidentally sending a half-deleted text that just said I was , and Britt replied almost right away with, girl, same.
I could never look her in the eye again. Or anyone. It was fine. I’d just go jump in the river.
I sent a text apologizing explaining I was trying to text Madeleine and hit every wrong button, and I headed into my complex, putting everything behind me and taking the elevator up to my floor. Madeleine responded to my text by the time I was out of the elevator—I’d texted her first thing after the interview, but she was at work too, and my heart fluttered a little seeing her reply.
Sorry it was a bust, but it definitely sounds like you’re making progress! You’ll get the next one, and then, and progress is still something that deserves celebrating with ice cream, with a little heart emoji, and I fluttered all the way back to my apartment, crashing on the couch as soon as I was inside—the couch I still couldn’t believe I could call my sofa.
Was this what we were? Heart emojis and cute little celebrations together? Going on dates? We never really talked about, like… what are we or anything like that, and I didn’t know how much I dared to hope, dared to dream.
But we’d kissed. And, well—done more than that. And we’d both been too busy yesterday to do anything together, but tonight we had time together again, and I didn’t know what I was supposed to be expecting, thinking, feeling. Would we kiss again? What would it mean if we did?
I sent her a message back telling her I couldn’t wait to see her tonight, and I agonized for a long time over whether to put a heart emoji on the end, and I eventually decided to just mirror her and put a single heart at the end too, and I was a full-on blushing mess for zero reason by the time I sent it. I think I was going the rest of my life still thinking back to how it felt the night before last, her in my bed, her on top of me, her… her.
Which was not the best mental state to be in for what happened next, because that was when I got a knock at the door, and I tensed up, all the fun thoughts going out the window and being replaced with catastrophizing, imagining all the worst possible everythings.
I was just paranoid. Just freaking out over nothing. It was probably something to do with the fact that I’d just moved in after this place was vacant for however long, and they wanted to check I wasn’t a squatter. Or something like that.
But when I got up and put myself together, I checked the peephole, and my stomach dropped at the sight of Andrew on the other side, one hand in his pocket, the other looking down at his phone, a casual look about him like he was just making a friendly social call—and I didn’t get time to spiral or dwell on it, because he looked up, and I didn’t know how he knew I was there, but I saw the recognition in his eyes as he looked at the peephole, and I wrenched back, my heart pounding.
“Sapphire,” he said, his voice muffled through the door. “Everything okay in there? Please tell me you didn’t just walk in and start living in the place as it was.”
Oh, god. I wasn’t getting out of this. Could he see through the peephole? I guess I’d never checked it from the other side. I thought the point was that you could only see through from one side? No, but—I guess you could see if someone was blocking the light through it. He was probably just assuming it was me in here. God, I shouldn’t have looked. Should have pretended I wasn’t here. Should have—
“What are you doing here?” I said, my voice low and shaky, and he spoke in a relaxed tone.
“Making sure you’re alive. Running away doesn’t make you any less my responsibility, and I don’t want you getting any infections from whatever pests might be there.”
I swallowed, and I leaned back against the door, clenching my fists, regulating my breathing, slowly. I’d… I’d told Madeleine about this already. They could try to show up, but it wasn’t like they could just haul me away. I wasn’t scared. They only had as much power as I gave them.
“It’s all good,” I said, finally. “My friend helped me fix the place up. Um… was actually in pretty okay condition. So… thanks for the home and all that. I’m good in here. Nothing you need to worry about.”
“What do you want me to tell your parents?”
I closed my eyes. “Tell them whatever you want. I’m not going anywhere.”
He paused. I couldn’t make out what kind of pause it was. There was something almost more uncomfortably vulnerable about doing this through a door. “You know you’re going to provoke them more and more at this rate.”
“And what? They’ll send an assassin?”
“I don’t understand why you’re doing this, Sapphire. Are you making a point? Because it’s been received.”
I squeezed my hands tighter, my fingernails digging into my palms. Felt a little queasy, like I might have thrown up a little, but I was learning that the situations that made me want to throw up from fear, I needed to move towards those situations, not away from them. “It’s not your business to worry about, Andrew.”
“It quite strictly is. This is precisely what I’m being paid to do.” He paused. “And it’s more than just business and being paid. You don’t watch somebody grow up and then shrug your shoulders and say oh too bad when she runs away.”
“I’m not running away from home like some… rebellious little kid. It’s called moving out of my parents’ home, and it’s pretty normal and common for adults.”
“As you like, Sapphire, but normally moving out of your parents’ home doesn’t look like this.”
I sighed, a long, shaky sound, and I tried to force myself to relax. Mixed results. “They didn’t want a… a lesbian daughter,” I said, the word lesbian hard and clunky, difficult to get out of my mouth, like it didn’t normally know how to make those sounds. “So now they don’t have one.”
He was quiet for a long time, and I felt like I’d be sick—my heart pounding, hands shaky, and I thought I’d pass out. I shouldn’t have said anything, I knew right after the words had left my mouth, but I had to do something.
Finally, after hours and hours and hours, he spoke quietly, and he said, “They told you that?”
“In… in so many words, yeah.”
He sighed, hard. “Sapphire, your parents… well, they just have a very traditional view of some things—”
“I don’t care,” I snapped, the words wrenching themselves up out of my mouth before I could think them through. “What’s done is done. That’s what you can tell them.”
“It’s not that they don’t love you and care about you—”
“I don’t care. ” My blood was boiling now, like I’d poured from the tea kettle straight into my body.
“They just… need some time—”
“I gave them time,” I snapped, gripping the door handle for support. “You think I just now told them?”
He didn’t say anything. Was that a relief or was it torture?
“They had all the time in the world,” I said. “Not… one… moment in it all did they give any indication they’d ever change. At what point are you being patient and at what point are you being defeatist?”
He didn’t say anything. Now it burned enough to make my head spin. Could he say anything? A single word? Just one?
“So now they have consequences,” I said, my voice raw and ragged. “And if they care now, well, it’s too late.” My voice wavered at the end, clipped, and I recognized that hoarse, hot feeling in my throat—I tried to push the tears back, but I knew they’d already shown on my voice.
Andrew spoke, finally, quietly. “I’ll… talk to them.”
“Talk all you like. Say what you want. I don’t care.”
He was quiet for a long time still, and I’d started to convince myself he’d walked away quietly and I was about to collapse on the floor, when he said just what I needed him not to. “I’m sorry… that they treated you like that, Sapphire.”
I felt my stomach lurch, and I squeezed my eyes shut. “I don’t really care,” I said, my voice betraying how much I did care.
“I, er… are you with someone? Do you have a girlfriend?”
I was going to be sick. I forced in and out, one shaky breath after another. “You don’t get to know that,” I managed to say, and he was quiet for a while longer again before he spoke.
“I think you should be able to be with whoever you want to be with.”
“I don’t care,” I said, just an automatic reflex this time, wrenching itself up from my throat.
“It’s not right to—”
“I don’t care.”
He sighed, and I heard him push away from the door. Apparently he’d been leaning on it, too. I hadn’t even noticed we were doing the same gesture… that I still subconsciously mimicked him, I guess. Why wouldn’t I? He was my parent more than my parents were. “I’ll think about what to tell them,” he said, finally. “Take care of yourself, Sapphire.”
“I don’t… care,” I mumbled, but I didn’t know if he heard me—didn’t care if he did. Just slid, slowly, down the door, until I was sitting on the floor.
I was raw and bleeding inside. But I’d said it… to him. Gotten it out there. Forced the itchy, bloody scabs that were those words off of my body so I could heal.