Chapter 3 #3
Susan spills some chickpeas onto her lap. “Shit,” she says, grabbing a napkin. “Oh, nothing. I just, I matched with someone I know from high school, and we’re hanging out tomorrow. I’m a little freaked-out, I guess.”
“Oh, damn,” Mia exclaims. “That’s juicy. Was she gay back then?”
“Sort of?” Susan says. “I actually don’t know. She was a friend of a friend.”
“Can I see her?” Mia asks, and Susan hands over her phone, the Tinder photo pulled up. They often do this after work in the evenings; evaluating each other’s dates is how they bond.
“Gorgeous,” Mia declares. “Good for you. I can’t wait to hear about it.”
“You know I’ll spare you no detail.”
When she finishes dinner, Susan excuses herself to her room to begin her deep dive into Eliza. But when she flips open her MacBook, it occurs to her that she doesn’t know who to search for.
She texts Katie. “Did we ever figure out Eliza’s last name?”
Katie writes back, “lol no”
Susan says, “what do you think it is?”
Katie replies, “what do I look like?”
Susan groans and tosses her phone onto the bed.
The next night, after spending hours deliberating over what to wear, Susan decides that simpler is better and lands on high-waisted black jeans that are ripped at the knees, a soft white T-shirt with a black bra under it, and a thin gold necklace.
They’re meeting at a bar in Greenpoint that has overpriced, overembellished cocktails, and Susan gets there first on purpose.
She wants to settle in before Eliza arrives, check her makeup in her phone camera, drink some water.
The bar has white marble cocktail tables and dark hardwood flooring that signals how trendy it is.
Nearby, men wearing black-framed glasses are on dates with women in colorful tights.
She wonders if she should have picked a lesbian bar—Ginger’s, with its chill post–softball practice vibes, or even Cubbyhole, known for being somewhat of a tourist trap—so at least they could be around other queers. It’s too late now, though.
Within minutes she sees Eliza walking through the doors, looking around. She’s so pretty, it’s a hate crime against average-looking people. Susan feels the edges of her vision blur with anxiety.
Somehow she manages to lift her arm and wave. Eliza smiles and crosses the bar to get to the small table where Susan has already poured two waters.
Eliza is wearing an outfit almost identical to Susan’s, and they both laugh as Eliza approaches.
“Twins,” Susan squeals, because she doesn’t know what else to say.
“I look like the boy version of you,” Eliza says, and it’s true; where Susan’s shrunken white tee is see-through and flimsy, Eliza’s is thick and sturdy, oversize. You can’t see anything through it.
“It’s really good to see you,” Eliza says.
Susan musters the strength to stand, and they hug.
It occurs to her that this is the first time their bodies have touched, though she’s imagined it happening more times than she cares to count.
Eliza’s waist is small, like Susan could wrap her arms around her several times.
She smells like that expensive, woodsy Le Labo perfume everyone trendy has been wearing lately.
She looks nothing like the girl Susan drove home almost a decade ago, and even less like the girl with purple hair on the subway.
There are so many versions of her. Susan wonders which Eliza is the real one.
There’s something surprisingly masculine about her, too, Susan observes while they finish hugging and sit down.
It’s not just the shaved head, it’s how she moves.
Eliza sits with her legs spread, puts her elbows on the table, and leans forward.
Like a prayer to the ancient balance of butch and femme, Susan crosses her own legs, folds her hands in her lap.
She’s only partially aware that she’s doing this, that she’s hoping to be whoever she needs to be in order to be right for Eliza.
“So, Susan,” Eliza says, grinning, confident. “Tell me everything.”
“What do you want to know?” Susan is thrown off by how at ease Eliza seems, how she’s jumping right in. If it were up to Susan, they’d spend twenty minutes just staring at each other.
“I mean, how are you?” Eliza laughs. “How was your day?” Eliza’s laugh reminds Susan of a wind chime.
Susan blushes. She’s not sure how to make small talk with Eliza, who she has already decided she’s in love with. “I’m good,” Susan says. “How are you? How … was your day?”
“Fine,” Eliza says, still laughing. “Do you work?”
Susan nods. “I do social media for an indie media company.”
Eliza grins and claps her hands. “Yay,” she says. “I love the MySpace-girl-to-social-media-manager pipeline.”
“What makes you think I was a MySpace girl?”
Eliza raises her eyebrows.
“Was it that obvious?”
“Yes,” Eliza says. “But also, I know because I looked at your page.”
“Oh, god. You did?”
“Of course I did. I looked you up after that night we met.”
“How did you even find me?” Susan wonders what search terms Eliza used that maybe she should have thought of, in lieu of last names.
“I honestly don’t remember,” Eliza says, to Susan’s disappointment. “I do remember that I kept thinking maybe you’d reach out.”
“I didn’t know how to contact you,” Susan says. “And I didn’t think you’d want to hear from me anyway.”
“I get that,” Eliza says, serious now. She rests her face on her fist.
“And then we had that run-in on the subway.”
“We did?”
Susan is confused. “You don’t remember? It was maybe five years ago.”
Eliza shrugs. “I don’t think so, no.”
Susan is shocked. “But we talked to each other. Well, sort of. You said my name. You had purple hair.”
“I believe you,” Eliza says. “I’m sorry.”
“I even wrote a Missed Connection for you.” Susan blushes again.
“You did?” Eliza says, like it’s the most romantic thing she’s ever heard. “Susan, that’s so nice. I’m sorry I didn’t see it. I never check those kinds of things.”
“I figured.” Susan shrugs, like it’s not a big deal, though of course it was at the time.
“It was too late, anyway, I guess. I should have just tried harder to reach out in high school. But never in a million years did I think it was an option. You were so different from us. We were such dorks and you were, like, popular and mean.”
Eliza gasps, incredulous. “I was mean?” She shakes her head. “Name one mean thing I did.”
Susan combs her memory and comes up empty. “It was a vibe,” she says. “You didn’t have to do anything.”
“Please. You were the most pretentious little shit I’d ever met in my life.”
Susan’s mouth falls open. No one has ever said this to her face. It feels so far away from how she sees herself. “I was a total loser,” she insists. “You were way too cool to be out with us.”
“I mean, I was pretty basic,” Eliza says.
“Oh my god.” Susan laughs. “I wish we’d had that word in high school. Imagine?”
“It was invented for suburban millennials in the early aughts,” Eliza agrees. “The olden times when you could make up an entire personality for someone based on whether or not they were wearing Ugg boots.”
“Did you wear Ugg boots?”
“I didn’t know another shoe.” She grins. “See? Basic.”
“Maybe. But you were still hot.” Susan didn’t mean to say this, but she doesn’t want to take it back.
Eliza looks directly at her. “Were?”
Susan feels herself begin to turn red again, but decides to power through how nervous she feels. “Are. You are still hot. I like this version of you.”
“I’m still me,” Eliza says. She gestures to her clothes, her hair. “Gender is a drag.”
“I feel like things ended really badly between us,” Susan says, unable to hold back. “I’m really sorry.”
“Oh, it’s totally fine. We were young and stupid.”
“I wasn’t judging you for the photo,” Susan says.
“I think I misinterpreted it. I didn’t realize that…
” She pauses, wondering if it’s too soon to say this, but continues on anyway.
“That you didn’t want it to be taken. I think it freaked me out, the idea of that being done to you. It shook my world. I was pretty naive.”
“I mean, it was essentially kiddie porn,” Eliza says, her voice containing none of the anger it had the last time they talked about it. Instead, she sounds generous, understanding. “It was normal to be shocked by it.”
Despite how forgiving Eliza is, Susan doesn’t know what to say. The words kiddie porn hit her right in the stomach, sending uneasy shock waves up into her throat.
The server comes over at last to take their drink orders.
Eliza says, “Can you recommend a cocktail?”
“They’re all good,” he says. He’s wearing suspenders and a bow tie and looks exceedingly bored.
“Okay,” Eliza says. “Uh, this first one.” She points to the menu.
“Me too,” Susan says, and he nods and leaves.
Around them, the space is filling up, an after-work rush bringing more people in suits. It’s getting louder and louder. Patrons standing at the bar have begun eyeing their table, as though trying to gauge how long they’ll be sitting there for.
“So tell me about you,” she says to Eliza. “Tell me everything you’ve been doing since the last time I saw you.”
“Oh, there’s not much to tell,” Eliza says, but by the way she says it Susan suspects that’s not true. “I ended up dropping out of high school.”
“Oh,” Susan says, pretending to be surprised.
“I took a few years off to, um”—she hesitates—“find myself. Went down a few wrong paths. Then I got my GED and put myself through college at New York Institute of Technology by bartending and crashing with friends.”
“Wow,” Susan says. Not what she’d expected to hear. “So when you say crashing with friends…” She trails off, unsure if she’s allowed to ask the question.
“You mean, was I homeless?” Eliza replies, reading her mind. To Susan’s relief, she doesn’t seem bothered.
Susan nods.
“I guess technically,” Eliza says. “But I was never on the street, so I don’t really feel like that word accurately describes my situation. I always had people to stay with. I made a lot of friends in college especially, and they really helped me get through everything.”