Chapter 3 #8
In the morning, Susan’s left shoulder aches, but it feels good, like pain she earned.
Lying in bed together, Eliza massages it absentmindedly. “Top shoulder.” She smiles.
“You know, I’m not usually the top,” Susan admits.
“I’ve always found that topping and bottoming are situational,” Eliza replies.
“That’s a good point.”
“But,” Eliza adds, “I’d be happy to top you if that would make you more comfortable.”
“I won’t say no,” Susan says, as her cheeks flame the color of a raspberry. “But the truth is I’m thrilled either way. However you want me.”
“Wow, maybe you are a bottom,” Eliza teases.
They stay in bed to drink coffee, watching the sunlight filter through a white curtain.
They’re both naked but for their underwear.
Eliza’s is a small black triangle over what appears to be a freshly waxed bikini line.
Susan’s is somewhere in between high-waisted and granny panty, and she’s never waxed a thing in her life.
She’s too happy to feel self-conscious about it. And anyway, Eliza doesn’t seem to mind.
“Should we start getting ready?” Eliza says.
“Sure. You shower first. I’m going to try to get ahold of Katie and see if she needs anything.”
But while Eliza showers, Katie doesn’t answer her phone.
Susan calls once, twice, three times, then texts: “Just checking in!” How could the friend she once had milkshakes with to celebrate her first orgasm not want to talk on her wedding day?
Susan has a sinking feeling that she tries to ignore.
Katie’s not having a bridal party—she said it wasn’t worth hurting anyone’s feelings by excluding them.
Instead, they kept it simple and just family; Greg, Katie’s twin brother, is Jake’s best man, and Jake’s sister, Jenny, is Katie’s maid of honor.
So Susan isn’t sure what Katie’s morning is like.
She’s probably just busy getting her hair and makeup done, or whatever it is brides do on the day they get married.
The wedding is in a barn in the middle of a large field, surrounded by dead grass and mud and a few patches of snow here and there, blinding white puzzle pieces.
Susan and Eliza have accidentally worn matching outfits again, silk button-downs and wide-legged black trousers, though Susan’s shirt is green and Eliza’s is light blue, and Eliza is wearing boyish loafers while Susan wears high-heeled boots.
They laughed about it briefly as they got dressed, buttoning up their shirts like mirror images of each other, but this time it was less of a surprise.
Susan’s heels sink into the wet grass as they enter the barn.
Inside, it’s warmed with heat lamps and decorated with string lights and mason jars with white flowers and handwritten chalkboard signs that say KATIE any softness left over from adolescence is long gone, replaced with a sharp jawline. His hair is still in that same swoop across his forehead as though emo never died.
“Oh, hey,” Susan says.
He looks at Eliza. “I guess this means you’re not homeless anymore.”
“Excuse me?” Eliza says.
Susan holds her breath. This comment might be her fault.
Five years ago, Susan remembers, she may have told Katie that Eliza looked homeless on the subway.
Had Katie told Jake? Had Jake told Kyle?
Was this the consequence of a poisonous grapevine, a game of telephone she’d accidentally initiated by confiding in Katie?
She shouldn’t have been so careless in sharing her snap judgments.
Kyle gestures to their clasped hands and says, “You know, this doesn’t surprise me one bit.”
“What doesn’t?” Susan says, but she has a sinking feeling in her stomach, and she already knows what’s going to come out of his mouth next.
“The two of you together,” he says, shaking his head in feigned amazement. “I should have known you were both dykes.”
Dykes. The word hits like a gut punch, though Susan often uses it herself. Kyle’s homophobia is akin to the kind of hipster racism that white people their age often think they can get away with: ironic, like it’s just a joke.
“Not everyone who doesn’t want to fuck you is a dyke,” Susan snaps. “But I guess you were right.”
He laughs.
Eliza starts squeezing Susan’s hand a little too tight.
“There’s just one thing I don’t get,” he says.
Susan braces herself.
“Which one of you is the man? I had imagined it would be you, Goldstein, but, Klein, you’re looking pretty butch.”
Again, that horrible sense of irony. As though if someone were to call him out, he could insist he was kidding, in on the humor. Like being familiar with the idea that there are different kinds of lesbians gives him license to weaponize it.