Chapter Seven #2
I stared, dumbfounded. She’d been so tucked into herself that I hadn’t even seen that she had the book with her.
My stomach pitched a little, just like every time someone asked for my autograph.
“Of course.” I went to grab a pen. “I had no idea you…” I knew I was babbling, so I let the sentence trail off while I left the room.
Now came the hard part. I turned to the first page, to the clean white emptiness.
What the fuck should I write? I started with her name, to make it look like I knew what I was doing, but after that, the wheels in my brain spun.
Everything either sounded dumb or suggestive.
Ollie and I love visiting you in your beautiful front lawn, I finally wrote.
She was in my house now, and she’d read my book.
She’d read more than one, since she said this was her favorite.
Looking forward to many more years of friendship.
Hoping that wasn’t too forward, I scribbled my name, skipping anything like love or the half-assed heart I added for most of my friends.
I finally handed it back. “It’s my favorite too. ”
She set it on the arm of the sofa without reading the inscription. “You’re probably so used to that, but I think it’s cool.”
“It still freaks me out after all this time. How did you know?”
“I’d been reading your books for years…Like before we even moved in. I was looking to see if I’d missed any of them and googled you and was like, hey…”
“That’s the weirdo from down the street with the strikingly handsome dog.”
“That’s exactly what I thought, except for the weirdo part. Next, you’re going to ask me why I’m reading lesbian novels.”
That was exactly what I wanted to know. This was a mystery instead of a romance, though, so I shrugged. “A lot of my readers are straight.”
“Well, I’m not.”
Silence. Silence like I’d never experienced before. I needed to say something, and fast, but I said nothing, just sat there staring like an idiot. And, of course, when I finally did, the dumbest thing came out. “What?”
Lisa laughed a little and curled tighter into herself. “The husband throws things off, doesn’t it.”
“Well, yes, kind of.” I blinked at the coffee table, letting everything sink in.
In one split-second, she had just become infinitely more attractive, if that was possible.
I wanted to know everything: why she was with Corey, how long they’d been together, and if she’d ever been with a woman before, but I couldn’t find the guts to ask. “Are you just separated now?”
“We go to court in three weeks. He’s moving in with his girlfriend,” she added thickly. “He’s been fucking around forever.”
“I’m sorry. Did you know it?”
She nodded. “I called him on it a couple times, but I was stupid, you know? His stock answer was that he’d made a mistake and it’d never happen again and please take me back, baby, you know?”
“And you took him back.”
“And I wasn’t being entirely level with him, so yeah, I took him back.”
I nodded like that made sense, even though I could wrap my head around nothing. “So does he know about you?”
“Yes.”
“But…” I waved my hand ethereally. “Are you bi, then?”
Lisa broke eye contact with me and consulted the floor.
“Pretty sure I’m just gay. I was with women in college, but people found out and shit blew up and…
I don’t know, I freaked out. Corey and I were friends forever and he kissed me one day and I was like okay, this would solve all of the problems. I really thought I could make it work, you know? ”
I didn’t know personally, but I knew several people who had done just that. “I’m sorry.”
She shrugged. “Like I said before, it is what it is. He’s gone and I’ve got this second chance now, you know? To get things right.”
“That’s a lot.”
She laughed to herself, but her voice went higher. “It is a lot.”
“You’re brave.”
“I’m not.”
“You are. You just came out to me like it was the easiest thing in the world.”
“I knew you’d be okay with it.”
I couldn’t stand seeing her swipe at her cheek with the back of one hand.
Now Lisa, cute, fresh-from-being-married-to-a-man Lisa from down the street was sitting in my living room crying.
Shit. I wanted to hold her, but that seemed really forward.
I didn’t know how to make it better. My heart was pounding one million miles a minute.
I chewed my lip, wishing I had any idea of what to do. “It’s still hard to say it out loud.”
She grabbed the throw pillow from the other side of the sofa and hugged it to herself. “I feel like I’ve been lying to everyone and I don’t know how I got here.”
“You weren’t lying, you were surviving. And you don’t need to tell everyone all at once. Let your feelings about Corey settle. Ease into it.”
“I know, but like…I’m tired of living as this person, this Mrs. Sutherland, this facade.”
“Do your students call you Mrs. Sutherland?”
She shook her head. “They call me Ms. Lisa.”
“Well, there. That’s not going to change. And you don’t have to call up your family and tell them this instant. Or ever.”
“That’s no big deal. I text my sister, that’s about it most of the time.”
“Phone calls on Christmas and birthdays?”
She gave me a lopsided smile. “We don’t really do Christmas. It’s a long story. I’m just…I don’t know. In this day and age, this shouldn’t be so hard.”
“Do any of your friends know?”
“No. All of my friends are either Corey’s friends too or people that I work with.”
“And it would complicate things with Corey’s friends. Which school are you at?” I knew exactly which school she was at, but I didn’t want to sound like a stalker.
“St. Mark’s. It’s not as stifling as you’d think. The other two pre-K teachers are cool and the kindergarten teacher is a big furry gay man.”
“Furry? Like with the costumes?” The best friend of the main character in my latest romance novel was a bunny rabbit furry named George. The research on that one had been fun.
Now, Lisa laughed for real. “No, like he’s round and has all this fuzzy curly red hair. I mean, I guess I don’t know that he’s not a furry.”
“This is deteriorating.” I could tell she was feeling better, though, and at that moment, Ollie hopped up on the sofa next to her and started licking the tears off her cheeks.
She tried to move away but it was pointless. The dog was on a mission. “Totally deteriorating.”
“You want a glass of wine?”
“Yes, please.”