8. Tess #3
“I don’t know what it was about him,” I admit.
“It was one of those things where you just seem to stick to someone and you don’t know why.
We’d get drunk at parties and have dumb philosophical arguments.
He pissed me off as much as he made me laugh, and I think I confused that with passion.
I was eighteen, you know? Part of me thought he was also my last shot at maybe liking men.
It sort of felt like I wasn’t supposed to give up on the possibility until I’d given it a try, which is bullshit, but again, I was eighteen. ”
Jacinthe just nods, her expression attentive with no trace of judgment.
There’s always a part of me that wonders if other lesbians will give me shit for having a kid with a man, like Shel’s mere existence somehow tethers me to an unbreakable bond with heterosexuality, but Jacinthe doesn’t show any signs of that.
“So how long were you together?” she asks.
“Oh, we weren’t together.” I grimace at just the thought of it. “It was, as the kids say, a situationship. We had other relationships while finishing our degrees, but we’d always find each other at a party or something when we were both single. It was very on and off.”
Until we really were tethered together in an unbreakable bond.
“Then one night early on in our final year of school, the condom broke. I was seven months pregnant when I graduated.”
Jacinthe blinks.
“Oh. Wow.”
I nod.
“Oh wow indeed.”
I go to pick up my glass, but I’ve already finished my beer. I stare down at the foamy remnants for a moment before I continue.
“I thought about ending the pregnancy, of course, and I fully support anyone who makes that decision,” I explain.
“Everyone should have access to abortion. For me, though, I just…I just knew, somehow, that as shitty as the situation was, someday Shel would turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to me.”
I can’t keep myself from smiling as I say it. That’s how I knew I wanted to go through with everything. Even when I was at my most terrified, the thought of her always got me smiling.
“She’s pretty great.”
I look up from my glass and find Jacinthe is smiling too.
“She is,” I say, my grin stretching even wider. “She’s fantastic. She’s my favourite person in the world.”
My throat gets tight, and I wish I had a few more sips of beer left to swallow. Jacinthe finishes her own drink and then starts fidgeting with the edges of her coaster.
“So is this Baron…around?” she says. “If you don’t mind me asking.”
“He gets her on alternating holidays and for a few weeks in the summer. He wanted more at the start, but he’s…”
I pause for a moment to try and find the best words to describe Baron’s overall presence in his daughter’s life.
“Well, to be frank, he’s turned out to be an irresponsible dirtbag, and he’s let Shel down so many times that he and I have both settled on that being all he can handle.”
Jacinthe huffs.
“Irresponsible dirtbag,” she says with more vehemence than I expected. “I get that.”
“You do?”
She runs her thumb along the edge of the coaster a couple more times and then sighs.
“My dad…left.”
I wait for her to add more, but that’s all she offers: just hollow resignation and a single word.
“I’m so sorry,” I murmur.
She shrugs. “It is what it is. We’re better off without him.”
She flinches and then gives me a guilty look.
“Not saying Shel shouldn’t see her dad of course,” she adds. “I didn’t mean?—”
“I know you didn’t.”
I catch her eyes, holding her gaze for long enough my heart begins to pound.
Maybe I could learn to handle the rest of her, but those eyes are going to be a serious problem.
“So, seems like we’re both losers without girlfriends, huh?” Jacinthe says.
I nod. “Yeah, seems like it.”
She rests her elbows on the table and props her chin on her hands.
“It’s nice that you, you know, get it,” she tells me.
“Maddie is always asking me why I don’t just go on some dates and telling me I’m never going to have time unless I make time, but when you’re the one who takes care of somebody, it’s…
different. It’s not about you anymore, you know?
And all that ‘you deserve to be happy too’ stuff, it’s just…
it’s hard to talk about it with people who don’t get it. ”
My heart lurches at the sound of some of my most private thoughts echoed back to me from someone else’s mouth.
She’s right. Other people don’t get it. I lost touch with almost all my friends when Shel was born.
It was like they were waiting for me to bounce back to being who I always was, with maybe the occasional addition of a baby on my hip.
They couldn’t grasp how much such a vast responsibility changes you, how it rips the very sky above your head to pieces and then stitches it back together as something new.
“Yeah,” I mumble. “It is hard.”
Jacinthe reaches across the table. My mouth drops open as I wonder if she’s about to squeeze my hand, but instead, she snatches my empty glass.
“Can I buy you another drink?”
I’m about to protest her paying again when she adds, “To say sorry for my haunting smile?”
She does an exaggerated version of her creepy grin from earlier. She looks so ghoulish I can’t stop myself from laughing.
“Okay, fine,” I give in. “Maybe more alcohol will stave off the nightmares.”
She chuckles as she gets to her feet. With both our glasses tucked under one arm, she heads back over to the bar.
I stare at the back of her hoodie as she goes.
Maybe it could be like this. Maybe the two of us could sit out on the porch at night and shoot the shit sometimes.
Maybe we could laugh at things that aren’t supposed to be funny and admit some things the rest of the world makes it hard to say.
Maybe we could even be friends, or at least friendly acquaintances who share a house.
Maybe this could work.