Chapter 9 #2
“Uhh, ok…,” Rowan began while she thought about her response, “what about ‘you must have swallowed a magnet because I’m so attracted to you right now.’”
Juniper turned to her and started giggling, and Rowan loved the look and sound of that.
“Wow, you’re fucking smooth.”
“I know.”
Juniper jabbed Rowan’s side and rolled her eyes. Rowan reached a hand up and twirled a piece of her hair around her finger. She pressed her luck again. “You’re so hot you would make a nuclear reactor melt down.”
“Oh my god, Rowan, why are they all science related?!” Juniper exclaimed through their shared laughter. “This is not promising!”
“What? I have a hard time believing you wouldn’t give me a shot with those.”
“Even without pickup lines, you have to know you’re so attractive.”
Rowan’s fingers stopped combing through her hair for a few pounding heartbeat’s worth of time as their eyes met.
Her thoughts were flying through her head.
Earlier she was cute, now she was attractive.
Had Juniper been feeling this too? It had been so long since they had been this close.
Physically, of course. But emotionally, it also felt like they were on a precipice, leaning so close to an unknown edge.
“Maybe…” she hesitated. “But I think most women who have been interested in me, in the past, only saw the external version of me. Not how I look I mean. My image.” Rowan went back to stroking her hair. She just couldn’t help herself. “Ah, I have a good one. You ready?” Rowan asked.
“No, but please carry on,” Juniper joked.
“Are you copper? Because I could Cu,” Rowan said as she traced the letters Cu from the periodic table into the air, “coming home with me tonight.”
Rowan could feel Juniper’s body tense. There was a pause before she asked, “Did you bring a lot of women home with you, living in the city?”
Picking up on the atmospheric shift between them, Rowan was unsure how to respond to that question.
Juniper continued, “I mean it’s okay. I’m just wondering.”
Rowan sighed softly, “No.”
Juniper looked at her pointedly and what rattled out of her mouth next felt more like an accusation to Rowan than anything else.
“You must have. There’s no need to lie or cover it up.
I’ve seen you in your suit and tie on tv, the way you look on social media.
I’m sure you could have any woman eating out of the palm of your hand. ”
Did she really have that low of an opinion of her? That Rowan would flex her internet presence to fuck some fangirl? So she might be attractive, but she was still a shitty person – something Juniper wasn’t going to let her forget.
“Actually, I felt lonely most of the time.”
She watched Juniper’s eyes soften in surprise.
“Lonely?”
Rowan picked up on the sad tone in that question but was at a loss on how to respond in a way that could make sense as to why, both to her and for Juniper.
She stared into the sky trying to find the words to convey what it felt like to experience intense love, then a loss so painful it felt like grieving, all while navigating a long struggle to understand her identity, in more ways than one.
She had never shared those identity struggles with Juniper.
She hadn’t really ever shared them with anyone.
Even though Rowan had enjoyed a vibrant social life, when she wanted to be social, and had relationships with a few women, she could never get past the six-month mark.
She never saw the point in making the transition to something more long-term when she didn’t feel the connection would end up leading anywhere more significant.
Her relationships all felt like they had run their natural course, and then they were over.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to assume.” Juniper added.
“Don’t worry,” Rowan interjected, “please.” She dropped her arm from Juniper’s hair, their arms grazing each other.
“I guess I never expected that you would have felt that way. I thought you were living it up, living your dream. You went to a prestigious school, then law school, then became this kind of famous person following your passion. At least to us, here. And you’re so good at it.”
“That’s the power of social media, right?
The highlight reel. I never tried to put out that kind of image.
I wanted to use it to show the work we were doing, how important it is for people like us to be at the front of the climate justice movement.
It makes sense all anyone could see was the good stuff.
I didn’t know it would grow into what it became. ”
She paused and looked over to Juniper. “I’m sure it’s weird that this shy kid you used to know ended up where I’m at now, but that’s such a small snippet of my life. You know I’ve never been a very… open person. I’ve always found it easier to conceal my true self,” Rowan explained.
“It’s funny because on the opposite end, I have always felt like you could see right through me. Like glass.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I mean even just now. I said something that was not kind, but you didn’t take offense to what I said or how I acted.
It’s like you knew exactly what I was getting at without even having to try.
I wish I wasn’t like this, so reactive. I try to work on it.
But it’s hard when you’re used to defending yourself,” Juniper explained.
“I know,” Rowan responded. And she did know.
She knew all of that about Juniper, the experiences from her childhood that made her that way, and didn’t judge her for any of it.
She never had. “We’re pretty similar though, you know?
We both have our defense mechanisms. Yours is to attack or act on impulse.
Mine is to retreat or close myself off.”
Juniper looked down at the long grass poking up between her knees. “Retreat or close yourself off. That feels familiar.”
Rowan pondered that for a moment, even though she knew exactly what Juniper was getting at.
She didn’t say it aggressively, or even as an accusation.
It was just an acknowledgement of how she felt.
Rowan felt maybe this was the time to finally talk about what had happened between the two of them.
It would be cowardly for her to not own up to what she had done.
How could they possibly move forward, as friends, if she didn’t?
Especially when Juniper was the one opening the moment up, like Rowan hadn’t been able to do, ever.
Rowan felt a nervous shock course through her as she felt the words tumble forward. But she was done with being a coward. And Juniper deserved to know the truth.
“I really was in love with you, Junie.”
◆◆◆
Juniper had not been expecting this turn of events. She studied Rowan’s eyes, narrowing her own, trying to make sense of what she was hearing.
“People who love you aren’t supposed to leave you. Not like that,” Juniper managed to say.
“Fuck, I know, Junie, but I was so confused. You had been my best friend our whole lives. And a lot of things about myself were confusing at that point in my life.”
“You don’t think I was confused? After everything we’d been through, everything we’d meant to each other.
We had this whole summer of tension building up.
And then we finally kissed, and it was like you disappeared off the face of the earth.
The next day I was going to tell you that I loved you!
” Juniper noticed her pitch increasing with every word.
She grasped at the long grass and felt bad for tearing some from the earth.
“I’m so sorry. I never meant to hurt you.
And I never meant to go that long without saying anything.
I closed myself off behind this wall of self-pity and days turned into weeks, then to years, and it just became easier to keep going…
” she trailed off as she looked away. After a moment, she turned back to Juniper and met her eyes, now beginning to glaze with wetness. “I regret that so much, Junie.”
“I was in love with you, and you left me,” Juniper’s voice broke, “here, to fend for myself. I was so lost without you, Ro. That’s what hurt me the most. If you didn’t end up loving me back, then that’s fine. I could have figured that out. But you left, and I lost all of you.”
Tear after tear fell, like a levy barely holding back the saltwater it was intended to abate finally lost its battle.
Rowan brought Juniper to her and enveloped her into an all-consuming embrace.
She wanted to fight the relief it made her feel so badly, every fiber of her being telling her to push back, make it keep hurting, make it hurt worse than it already did.
She was safe in her anger. It was righteous.
Instead, she tucked her face into Rowan’s neck and her hands clutched at her shirt, then her back as she curled further into the relief she found.
She pressed into her, wrapped herself around her.
Rowan held her tightly back, moving her legs to each side of Juniper so Juniper could slide in even closer.
Juniper was transported right back to that one day in her memory that was relentless in its haunting of her.
Her heart beat wildly with emotion. She was desperately fighting the urge to kiss Rowan now, to feel her lips on hers again, to feel more of her this time.
It would be so easy to push her back onto the blanket and show her everything she couldn’t say, everything she’d wanted to say for so long.
She could share who she was now, who she still wanted to be.
Her plans for how she was going to get there, get somewhere closer to where Rowan already was.
Maybe she could find the courage to tell her there hadn’t been a day that passed where she didn’t think about her.
That even when she had dated other women, unsuccessfully, she knew no one could ever compare to her.
She might have followed Rowan’s public life with some level of resentment that she was able to live a fulfilled life in the way she hadn’t been able to.
But there was more to it than that, and she knew it.
Juniper’s imagination used to run wild picturing how Rowan’s life must be and if she could ever fit into it, if she could ever be enough for her new world.
She imagined how vibrant and interesting it was, always meeting new people and experiencing all of the diversity a city had to offer.
She had imagined how proud she would feel to be by Rowan’s side, how unbelievably hot it would be to watch her fix the world’s problems knowing she would be the one Rowan came home to after.
She daydreamed about what it might feel like to adjust her tie before she went off into the world, or how it might feel to slip into the shirt Rowan had taken off later that night.
She had spent years suppressing her feelings to her subconsciousness, but if she searched for them, she always found that truth. The truth of how deeply in love she had been with Rowan, how easy it would be for her to find that love again.
A burning in her chest ignited, and she pulled back quickly out of self preservation. She could feel the wildness in her own eyes, reflected in the concerned trepidation in Rowan’s eyes looking back at her.
Too intimate. She warned herself, red alarms firing off in her head.
“I’m so sorry, Junie, I will never be able to express how sorry I am for doing that to you. If I could change one thing about my life, it would, without a doubt, be that.”
“So you would go back and not fall in love with me, not kiss me then? That’s what you’re saying?” Juniper asked, her reactive, defensive nature thrashing its way outward again in spite of how she was feeling inside.
“No,” Rowan breathed out, “I wouldn’t have run away.”
Juniper had to tear her gaze away. She sniffled, faced forward again, and dried her final tears with the back of her hand.
She didn’t want to hear any excuses for why Rowan felt the need to run away.
She didn’t want to be reminded of how she didn’t mean enough to her to even warrant a goodbye then.
All she could do was show her who she was today and hope there was some path forward where they could rebuild their friendship.
Suppressing the tangled garble of confusing emotions she felt moments before, she absolutely refused to explore any ideas of something beyond friendship.
In a world that seemed resolute to tear her down, she vowed to keep her tight grasp on her self-respect.
Sometimes it felt like that was the only thing she had left.
Friends, though. That sounded good. Juniper rested her head against Rowan’s shoulder, and Rowan wrapped an arm around her.
They sat there, together, for a little while longer, savoring the rest of the sunset, and Juniper felt the relief that passed through their bodies to each other.
Neither of them could change what had happened, but they could learn how to be in each other’s lives again.
She resorted to humor to finally break the silence.
“Let’s make a deal that we won’t go fifteen years without explaining ourselves again. We’re getting too old for that.”
“Deal. And for what it’s worth, you don’t look a day over 33.”
Juniper shoved her shoulder and smiled. “I’m definitely feeling a little older than that from sitting on the ground for so long.”
Rowan chuckled and stood up. She held her hand out for Juniper to grab. “We are getting a little old now, aren’t we?”
In reality, Juniper felt more alive than she ever had. Rowan folded the blanket back up, and they trudged their way back up to the truck together.
“Hungry for something sweet?” Rowan asked as she tucked the blanket back into the storage box.
“Always.”
“Gas station ice cream bars?” Rowan offered with a shrug and a knowing look.
Juniper smiled. “Say less.”