CHAPTER 24
“No way,” she said.
“Harlow?” Laurel replied, looking at her in shock.
Harlow had just entered the bowling alley and had been looking around for Samantha.
She’d turned toward the main counter, where she’d pay for time on the lane and rent some shoes, and there was Laurel, her ex-girlfriend from six years ago.
Laurel was one of the women she’d moved in with, and just seeing her standing there, looking wildly out of place in a bowling shirt with her name stitched on it, khaki pants that looked designer, and the best tight French braid Harlow had ever seen, brought her back to their breakup for a moment.
“Do they even make designer khakis?” she said.
“What?”
“Nothing. What are you doing here?” she asked, trying to deflect from the fact that she’d accidentally made her khaki comment out loud.
“What are you doing here? You bowl now?”
“A friend invited me,” she said and moved to the counter. “I was looking for her.”
“Her? Larissa?”
Harlow sighed and said, “No, not Larissa. Her name is Samantha. I guess she comes here a lot. Maybe you know her or what lane she’s on. Well, probably two lanes. She said she plays with seven other people.”
“Oh. Samantha and her friends are on lanes seventeen and eighteen. Yeah, I know them. They’re here once a week or so.”
Laurel pointed to the lanes, and Harlow turned around and found Samantha standing by the screen where they were entering their names.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, turning back to face her ex-girlfriend.
“I work here. See me behind the counter, wearing this horrible shirt?”
Laurel tugged on the shirt at the left breast pocket.
“But why do you work here?”
When they were together, Laurel, who was four years older than her, had worked at some big corporation, the name of which Harlow was blanking on at the moment. Laurel had been in events, planning the ones the company held for employees and the other ones like trade shows and conferences.
“I needed a job.”
“And you found this one? Sorry; we were together for over a year, and we never went bowling. I don’t think it even came up once as a possible date activity.”
Laurel’s family had been in real estate, but not like Larissa’s dad, who bought beaten-down houses, fixed them up, and flipped them.
Laurel’s parents had several properties all over the state and a few outside of the state, too.
They didn’t flip them. They added them to their portfolio, or was it called holdings if it was real estate?
Harlow didn’t know. Laurel had grown up with money and was supposed to eventually take over the family business and share it with her brother, but if she was working here, that meant something bad had happened.
“I needed a job, and they were hiring. I got laid off from my old one about a year ago, and I tried for a few months to find one in my field, but times got tough, so I started to apply anywhere. This place called, okay?”
“What about your company?”
“It’s my dad’s company, and he’s still in charge.”
“But he couldn’t get you a job?”
“We… had a disagreement.”
“Disagreement?”
“I finally came out to my family. I even introduced them to my fiancée, thinking everything would be fine. They loved me, and I was their only daughter. But no, it wasn’t fine.
I was supposed to marry a nice guy from their church, who runs in their social circles.
I wasn’t supposed to be gay. I definitely wasn’t supposed to be in love with a woman I plan to marry.
” Laurel held up her hand, and Harlow saw the modest ring.
“I should’ve come out to them sooner, I know.
You felt lied to when I asked you to move in with me, and I treated you like my roommate and asked you to play the part whenever anyone from my family was around.
I know you thought I needed to tell them, and we fought all the time because of it. ”
“You also cheated on me, so there’s that.”
“I’m still sorry about that. I’ll never forgive myself for it. You were my first real girlfriend, and when I met someone else who liked me, I was very, very stupid, but things weren’t working with us anyway by then, and I think we were just trying to be nice to each other by not ending it.”
“Maybe, but I didn’t deserve that.”
“No, you didn’t. And I haven’t cheated on anyone else since.
Not that that makes a difference to you, but it’s true.
My family didn’t like me being gay, and my dad decided that he didn’t want me to take over the company just yet.
He still hasn’t retired. I didn’t care at first because I had a job anyway, but when I got laid off, I asked him for anything – not even management or leadership, just anything, and he said no.
My brother told me he’d hire me on when Dad retires, but I’m convinced that my father, who had always talked about early retirement, will now hang on until he’s ninety just to prevent that.
I didn’t see it coming, and maybe I should have, but I work here now.
We’re going to have a small wedding because we can’t afford much, and we live in a one-bedroom apartment that sucks, but it’s also kind of great. ” Laurel smiled.
“It is?”
“Yeah. When you moved in, I was in a three-bedroom townhome owned by the company, and it never really felt like mine. We’re still only renting the apartment, but we found it together and bought cheap furniture that we picked out.
It’s nice, having that with someone I love.
The small space forces us to spend more time together.
You and I never had that in a giant house. ”
“Then, I’m happy for you,” Harlow said.
“I’m still trying to get out of here, though. The smell in this place… I have to touch all the shoes after people wear them and spray them with this disinfectant, but you know it doesn’t get everything out of there.”
“Thanks; I’m about to put a pair of those shoes on. Can I get a size eight, please?”
“I’ll spray them again for you just in case, but make sure to really clean your feet in the shower later. Are you wearing thick socks?”
“I’m wearing normal socks,” she said a little laugh.
“Hey, how are you? We’ve only talked about me. How’s Larissa?” Laurel asked before she turned to reach for a pair of shoes in a dark-blue, red, and white pattern with black laces and held them out in front of her as if they required a hazmat suit to handle.
“She’s good. Why?”
“And how are you two doing?”
Laurel sprayed the shoes and scrunched up her face in disgust, which had Harlow laughing and rolling her eyes.
“We’re both good. Separately, we’re both good.”
“Oh. She’s with someone?”
“No. Why?”
“Are you?” Laurel asked.
“No, I’m single.”
“So, not Samantha?”
“We used to date, but it’s been a long time. I think we’re going to be actual friends now.”
“Do you know why she doesn’t like to be called Sam? I called her that once, and she corrected me.”
“She just doesn’t like it. Never has. I’ve only ever used it when I was in a hurry. Sometimes, there were glares in my direction, but she let it go. I don’t think there’s a story there, though.”
The shoes were placed on the glass counter.
“So, you’re not with Larissa?”
“No, I’m not,” she said and took a deep breath.
“Why not?”
“I’m getting really tired of answering this question.”
“Other people are asking you the same thing?”
“I know we had reasons why we broke up, as in plural. We fought. You cheated. We weren’t right for each other. You didn’t want to come out. I was ready to be with someone who was out. All of that.”
“Yes, all true.”
“But was Larissa another one you never told me about?”
“Honestly?”
“Why the hell not? You’re engaged,” Harlow said. “We haven’t seen each other in five years, and we were good as friends before we started dating.”
“I don’t think I realized it until after we broke up.”
“Realized what?”
“That she was one of the reasons,” Laurel said.
“Not until after?”
“Nope. But when I realized it, I also realized that it had been there all along. The night I first… well, cheated on you, it was a night when Larissa had been over at the house. You two were on the couch laughing about something when I got home from work, and I got this really slimy feeling that maybe you’d just been in our bed or something. ”
“What?”
“It was like this thought that you’d just run out of the room and down the stairs to the living room so you wouldn’t get caught.
Even then, I didn’t realize it was because I actually thought that was possible.
I figured it was more about me than it was about you.
I wanted to sleep with someone else. We’d been flirting, and she wanted to.
You had Larissa and didn’t seem to need me how I needed you.
So, I lied about needing to go to an event for work, and I changed and left.
I met her, we had a drink, and you know the rest. I felt horrible about it after that, but it didn’t stop me from doing it again and again.
I wanted to explore, but I later determined that I also wanted to punish you for loving her when you were supposed to love me. ”
Harlow looked down at a green eleven-pound bowling ball under the glass of the counter.
“And you’ve realized it, too, right?” Laurel checked. “I don’t know where you’re at now with it. Maybe you two gave it a try, and it didn’t work. But you figured it out, too, didn’t you?”
“I knew I loved her before you and I met. I figured it out right away when we were in college.”
“You knew, and you still moved in with me?”
“I did. I’ve dated a lot of women in my life.
And I know it’s bad, but the ones I’ve said the three very important words to, like you, Laurel, I meant.
I meant the words. I just also felt them for Larissa.
And no, I’m not over her. We didn’t try.
She doesn’t even know I have feelings for her because I’ve never told her. ”
“Wow! Really? Harlow…”