Chapter 3 #7
“I’ll take that,” Eliza says. “Though I feel like Sinéad is too punk for Chanel.”
“Chanel!” Susan repeats. “So you paid like eight hundred dollars for shades.”
“You can take the girl out of Long Island,” Eliza says, and they both laugh.
“Tell me about your week,” Susan says.
Eliza describes the commercial she produced, the long hours on set, the demanding client, and the expensive talent. The budget spreadsheets, the catering, the coordinating.
“Do you like it? All that pressure?”
“I love it,” Eliza says. “I like being in charge.”
“What do you usually do after work?”
“I collapse in bed. I’m useless after a twelve-hour day.”
“I get that,” Susan says. “I used to always go to shows during the week, but now I’m, like, tired.”
Susan merges onto the highway, being a little extra careful to check her mirrors as she does. She has precious cargo with her.
“Are we old?” Eliza asks.
“I’m old,” Susan says. “You’re still a spring chicken.”
“I’m one year younger than you!”
“There’s a big difference between twenty-six and twenty-seven,” Susan says.
“I can’t tell if you’re kidding or not.” Eliza laughs, and then she takes Susan’s hand and gives it a squeeze.
“I’m kidding.” Susan grins, momentarily taking her eyes off the road to look at Eliza, who is smiling and looking out the window.
It’s a gorgeous day, the sky so bright and blue she’s squinting behind her sunglasses. Susan says, “Do you mind if I put my road trip playlist on?”
Eliza says, “You must.”
Susan hits play and the first chords of a song by the New Pornographers fills the car.
“Miss Goldstein.” Eliza gasps. “Please don’t tell me you have the exact same taste in music that you did in high school.”
“It’s not my fault that music peaked in the years 2002 through 2006,” Susan says. “Hey, can you look at the GPS and tell me how much longer we have?”
“Four hours,” Eliza says. “What time is the dinner?”
“Six,” Susan says. “Fuck. Katie’s going to fucking kill me.”
“She can’t blame you for traffic.”
“No, but she can blame me for being a bad planner and leaving so late.”
They slow to a stop, the traffic stretching out as far as she can see. Susan rests her head on the steering wheel.
“Maybe this isn’t the right thing to say, but I’d be a little relieved if we missed the dinner,” Eliza says. “I don’t really want to have to share you with anyone.”
Susan lifts her head and smiles. “Well, it’s not the wrong thing to say,” she says. Then there’s another silence, so Susan racks her brain for questions, coming back to the image of Eliza she saw on Tinder and all the clues within it. “Oh, I’ve been meaning to ask,” she says. “Do you smoke?”
“What?”
“Cigarettes? Do you smoke them. There was a pack of American Spirits in your Tinder photo.”
“Okay, Special Agent Susan,” Eliza says. “I used to. Do you?”
“No. I was always too afraid I’d get addicted.”
They’re quiet again. Susan worries that it’s awkward between them, that she’s not entertaining enough to keep Eliza’s attention.
“When did you come out?” Susan asks.
“I’m not sure I ever really did,” Eliza says. “As soon as I was on my own, I was dating girls. I didn’t really have anyone to tell.”
“Not your parents?”
“We don’t really have that kind of relationship.”
Susan waits for her to elaborate, but she doesn’t.
“Sorry, it’s the world’s most anticlimactic coming-out story. How about you?”
“Oh, I came out like three days after I met you,” Susan says. And then she brings a hand to her mouth. “Fuck. I didn’t mean to say that. Too much?”
Eliza grins. “No, I’m honored. Really.”
Susan glances at the GPS. Every time she looks at it, their ETA gets later and later.
“I just had never met anyone who, like…” Susan searches for the words, wanting desperately to look at Eliza but needing to keep her eyes on the road. “I don’t know. We flirted, didn’t we?” Her heart catches in her throat, wondering if she’s taking it too far.
But Eliza replies, “I mean, I was trying to flirt with you. You were really awkward about it.”
Susan laughs. “I’m sorry. I was terrified.
” She can breathe normally again, now that it’s been confirmed.
“It was a big turning point for me. Like, I knew gay girls existed, but I didn’t realize that hot gay girls existed.
Or that hot gay girls might be into me. I told Katie pretty immediately.
I was like, You’ll never believe this, but I think I’m actually a lesbian.
She was like, Oh, no, I definitely believe it.
” Susan laughs at the memory. “She was also totally supportive. I made her keep it a secret until we went to college, though. I wanted to just get through senior year with my head down. Not make myself a target.”
“I get that,” Eliza says. “We didn’t grow up in the most welcoming place.”
“Crazy, right? An hour from NYC but, like, twenty-five years in the past. I didn’t know any queer people until I left.”
“That you knew of,” Eliza points out. “What did your parents say?”
“They were surprisingly chill. Like, not surprised or mad. They were just like, We love you no matter what, and that was that.”
“That’s so nice,” Eliza says.
“Yeah. But they also didn’t want to hear about it beyond that. We haven’t talked about it since. They’ve never met anyone I’ve dated. Not that I’ve really dated anyone seriously enough to take them home. I don’t know. Sorry. Now I’m rambling.”
“You don’t have anything to be sorry for,” Eliza says.
Still, Susan worries she’s shared too much too soon. She feels vulnerable, telling Eliza how much she meant to her, about her dynamic with her parents. They’re quiet again. The traffic seems to extend out in all directions.
“So, uh,” says Eliza, breaking through the silence and changing the subject. “How’s work?”
“Actually something happened yesterday,” Susan says. “My coworker—or I guess she got fired, so my former coworker—wants me to help her take down my boss.”
“Oh yeah? What did he do?”
“You mean other than sexually harassing every woman who has ever worked for him?”
“Ah,” Eliza says. “I’m familiar with the type.”
“I’m worried because I really like my job and I’m afraid of losing it. But I know something has to change. We can’t go on like this.”
“I get it,” Eliza says. “And I mean, not to sound like the problem, but if it’s just sexual harassment and not, like, assault?
At a certain point, I feel like you just have to accept that men are problematic and get through it.
It’s what we all have to do. You don’t want to get a reputation for ruining men’s lives.
Especially not a man who has presumably helped your career. ”
Susan changes lanes, eyeing Eliza quickly as she checks her blind spot. She’s looking out the window, turned away.
Susan’s stomach twists. “That is not what I was expecting you to say,” she says.
Eliza sighs dramatically. “Sorry if that’s not what you wanted to hear. Okay, let’s say you help take him down. What’s the worst that can happen? You get fired? He hates you and never speaks to you again? You get another, better, job and move on with your life?”
“I’ve already made up my mind about it,” Susan says, trying hard to ignore how patronizing Eliza sounds. “It’s just a matter of when I help her, not if.”
Still, she can’t unhear Eliza’s first point: If Susan speaks out, she’ll be the whistleblower, forever known as the girl who took down the boss. It’ll overshadow everything else. It might hold her back. She’s fought so hard to get to where she is.
But not saying anything would be betraying Heather, and that might be worse.
They do miss the dinner, in the end, but Katie seems too busy to be mad, and Susan takes them straight to their Airbnb, a studio above someone’s garage, up in the mountains. The window looks out over a frozen pond.
“This is nice,” Eliza says, putting her bag down and lying on the bed. “Is there anything you need to do tonight?”
“Nothing we didn’t already miss,” Susan says.
“Then do you want to come over here, or what?” Eliza says, and Susan does.
Eliza pulls Susan by the collar of her T-shirt down to the bed, wrapping her legs around her hips, and Susan presses herself into Eliza as their mouths collide.
Eliza tastes like coffee and she smells like Santal 33, that same Le Labo perfume she wore on their first date.
Susan wonders if she’ll ever smell it without thinking of Eliza again.
Susan’s hair hangs down, making a dark cave around their faces, their mouths.
Eliza lifts Susan’s T-shirt off, unbuttons her jeans. Susan removes her socks with her feet and then yanks Eliza’s sweatpants off, tossing them to the ground. Eliza takes her own tank top off. Susan kisses her neck, her shoulder, her stomach.
Eliza stays on her back, which means Susan holds herself up in a one-armed plank until her shoulder is weak and trembling.
She doesn’t mind. She likes feeling in control, especially now, when she’s so nervous.
This is the third time they’ve had sex and Susan still can’t believe it’s happening, can’t believe Eliza wants to be kissed and touched and held by her.
Eliza’s specific desire for her makes her feel like she’s floating, hallucinating.
She doesn’t quite trust it, but even so, she can feel it with her hand, Eliza’s body insisting that it’s not only real but urgent.
A wet spot is growing underneath them. She can feel it on her legs.
She briefly wonders if she’s going to get charged an extra cleaning fee, but before she can worry about it too much she’s already lost again in Eliza, as they’re both getting sweatier and hungrier for the moment when the intensity can’t possibly build any further, and then it explodes, too soon but also at the exact right moment.
“Fuck,” Eliza says, when she can catch her breath.
“Right?” says Susan, and then they both begin laughing, infectious giggles so intoxicating that Susan feels high on the smell of Eliza’s skin.
There’s a leftover pulsing between Susan’s legs like her whole body is smiling.