CHAPTER 29
“You didn’t kiss her?” Aggie asked.
“God, no, Aggie,” she replied and locked her car. “We didn’t kiss.”
“Why the hell not? You’ve been basically dating but not since you were twenty-two years old.”
“Because it was our first date, and we’re technically living together right now. It was an amazing date, and we held hands and cuddled on the couch. It was great. When we got tired, we walked down the hall together, and we… hugged.”
“You hugged the girl?”
“Aggie!”
“What? She’s waited so long, Larissa.”
“You’ve never been Harlow’s number one fan. Why are you trying to get her kissed now?”
“I wasn’t her number one fan because I watched her go from girlfriend to girlfriend, when she was in love with you.
Yeah, I’d never officially confirmed that by talking to her, but it was obvious to everyone but you.
She broke hearts, Larissa. And normally, that would’ve been fine.
Relationships don’t always work out. But she knew she had feelings for you and still dated other women.
I wanted her to knock that off and stop being a coward.
I wanted her to tell you. I felt like if she finally did, you’d wake the hell up and realize that life can be more than science and books.
You… You know I think you deserve more than that.
I want you to get done with school, yeah, but not if it’s making you miserable; not if you don’t want that.
I just want you to be so happy. And I’ve always thought Harlow could do that if she only told you.
Now that she has, and you feel the same way, I guess I just don’t get why you’d hold back. ”
Larissa stopped next to the door and decided to finish the call out there since it was possible that Samantha was right inside.
“We’re not holding back. We’re just not rushing ahead.
I know it probably feels like we’ve known each other forever, so we should be able to jump into bed because that’s really the only thing we haven’t shared, but I don’t want to rush this.
I only just figured out how I feel. I know she’s been there a lot longer, but she wasn’t ready for a kiss last night, either.
It was Harlow’s idea to hug at the end of the night, Aggie. You’ve got to respect our process.”
“It’s a relationship, Larissa, not a scientific study, but you’re right. I get it. I guess I just got excited thinking that my sister has a girlfriend, and I know that girlfriend is loyal and kind and loves the shit out of her.”
“Mama, what’s shit?”
“Ah, fuck,” Aggie said.
“Was that Nathan?” Larissa laughed.
“Yes, the boys are in the car with us. Henry’s driving us to dinner, and I forgot for a moment where I was.”
“What’s fuck?” Junior asked.
Larissa laughed louder and replied, “Well, this one you can’t blame me for. Oh, and thanks for telling me that your husband and children are hearing about my love life.”
“It’s not a love life yet. It sounds like a life with a lame ending to a first date. Kiss the girl, Larissa.”
“I will. I will. God, go to your dinner already,” she said. “I have to go anyway. I’ve got another interview.”
“So, you’ll get to see her soon, huh?”
“No, actually. Harlow had to go to her new apartment. There was some problem with the transfer of the security deposit, so they needed her to run over an actual check. She’s skipping this one so that she doesn’t lose the apartment.”
“Okay. Well, I’ll let you go, but since you’ll see her later tonight, I expect an update on the whole kiss thing soon.”
“Bye, Aggie,” she said and hung up on her sister.
Then, she walked inside the building, where she saw Samantha sitting at the desk, staring at her computer.
“Hi, Samantha.”
“Hey. Your guests aren’t here yet.”
“No problem.”
“Harlow running late or something?” Samantha asked.
“No, she’s not coming to this one. She had something to take care of.”
“Oh, okay. I was going to see if she wanted to go bowling again. I guess I can just text her.”
Well, this was interesting. First, Larissa felt her smile disappear.
Then, she felt the jealousy kick in. After that, she felt the rational part of her brain turn on and tell her that she had nothing to be jealous of.
Finally, she smiled at Samantha and hoped she hadn’t noticed any of what had just happened.
“Are you okay?” Samantha asked. “Your face just did a whole thing.”
“I’m good. If you want me to ask her tonight when I get home, I can. About the bowling, I mean.”
“Sure. Not a big deal. We’re going again next Tuesday, and we usually have eight, but one of my friends is pregnant, and her doctor just told her that she shouldn’t be bowling anymore, so she’s just going to hang out with us, but not play. I thought maybe Harlow would be interested.”
“I’ll ask her when I get home… where she’ll be because she’s living with me… at my house.”
“O-k-a-y,” Samantha replied, lengthening the word and looking at Larissa like she was acting strange. “You seem different today.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. You just… You seem different. Happier, maybe?”
“I do?” she asked.
Samantha nodded and said, “Wait. Why do you seem happier?”
“Oh. Well, no reason,” she lied, unsure if Harlow would want Samantha to know that they had gone on a date. “Just excited for this interview. I’m working on a book, you know?”
“I know. Harlow told me all about it. That’s pretty cool.”
The door opened then, and two women walked in.
“Not members, so I’m guessing they’re here for you,” Samantha said.
“Beth? Theresa?” Larissa asked.
“Yes, that’s us,” one of the women replied.
“I’m Larissa Hanson.”
She held out her hand for them to shake one at a time.
“I’m Beth,” the one with short blonde hair said.
“And I’m Theresa,” the brunette added.
“Nice to meet you both. Shall we go to the conference room I reserved? Do you need to use the bathroom or grab water or coffee first?”
“I think we’re okay,” Theresa said.
“Okay. Great.”
She walked them back through the members-only door and then into the conference room, where she sat down and got herself ready while the women sat in the usual chairs for the interviewees.
Larissa glanced over at Harlow’s empty chair and realized that she missed her.
She had started only one interview without her and would do this one on her own, but she preferred to have Harlow with her because she always thought of different questions than Larissa.
She would have to try to put herself inside Harlow’s brain tonight and do the best she could because Harlow was probably driving in traffic to give her new landlord a check for an apartment.
“Well, thank you for coming tonight. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me.”
“No problem. We’ve really never had a chance to talk about our relationship with someone. When we start trying to explain things, people usually get judgmental or start asking us questions,” Theresa said and wrapped an arm around the back of Beth’s chair.
“I will be asking questions. Is that a problem?”
“I don’t imagine yours will be the same as theirs,” Beth replied.
“Probably not. Maybe we can start by reviewing your questionnaire? Is it okay if I record this for my notes?”
She held up her phone.
“Sure,” Beth replied.
“Okay. So, your questionnaire was interesting to me because you addressed a lot in the open comments field.” Larissa pulled out her notebook where she’d written down what she’d wanted to say.
“It said, and I’m quoting here, ‘We met on a blind date and didn’t hit it off at first. Friends set us up on a long weekend vacation after that, and we still didn’t get along, but when we got back from the weekend, we met again by chance and liked each other then.
I know, weird. We’ve been together for twenty years, and long-distance for ten of those years.
We live in the same city now, but not together, and we’re not married.
We don’t have any plans to move in together, and people think that’s strange.
We decided to open up our relationship about two years ago, and it’s going well so far, but there’s some jealousy, mainly on Theresa’s end.
This is Beth writing this, by the way.’ Well, that’s a lot,” Larissa noted and set the notebook down.
“Yeah, I tend to be long-winded,” Beth said.
“Did you know she wrote that?” Larissa asked Theresa.
“The jealousy part? Yeah, I was there when she filled it out.”
“And people judge you because of what, exactly?”
Beth laughed and said, “I think it’s a shorter list that they don’t judge us on.”
“We’re both gay, so that’s already part of the problem.
Our families tolerate, but don’t accept.
They also never understood why we would want a long-distance relationship for more than ten years and were happy when Beth finally moved here because they thought we would move in together and get married, but we didn’t.
Beth wanted her own place, and I like my independence.
It works for us. Neither of us wants to get married, and we’ve never wanted kids, which is also strange to a lot of people.
When you add to that that we now have an open relationship, it’s like brains blew out of skulls. ”
Larissa chuckled and said, “We can go back to the beginning in a minute, but what has inspired the opening of the relationship?”
“Eighteen years is a long time to be with someone. We started having some miscommunication and went through more than one rough patch, so I suggested we open things up for a while, with the thought that we could always close them up again when we wanted to,” Beth said.
“It’s not like we’re going on dates every week or anything, but recently, I got a girlfriend.
She’s been the longest relationship I’ve had, outside of Theresa, obviously, and it’s caused some problems.”
“The jealousy?” Larissa asked.
“When it was just dating, I didn’t have a problem with it, but she has a girlfriend now. I’m her partner. I’m trying to figure out where I fit in, so we’ve been talking to someone. We go once a week, and it’s helping me understand.”
“Open relationships are confusing,” Beth added, placing her hand on Theresa’s lap. “We have rules, and it’s still confusing.”
“Rules?”
“Theresa is my main relationship and always will be. My girlfriend understands that and doesn’t have a problem with that now, but she also knows that if she does at some point, I’m not the woman for her.
I won’t leave Theresa to be with her, so if this isn’t what she wants, that’s okay, but I love Theresa.
She’s my partner, and I plan to keep her as long as she lets me. ”
Beth smiled over at Theresa, and Theresa smiled back.
“Would you mind if we go back to the beginning for a moment? I’d love to talk about how you met. You didn’t like each other at first?”
“God, no.” Theresa laughed loudly, and it was almost too loudly for the small room. “I couldn’t stand her.”
“You want to maybe say that without cackling, babe?” Beth asked with a little laugh.
“Sorry, but it’s true. At first, it was just a blind date gone wrong.
I didn’t really feel any chemistry, but I also didn’t want to be her friend.
Then, at the weekend where our friends in common decided to invite us both without telling us that the other one would be there, I really couldn’t stand her.
She had to have an agenda for everything.
Breakfast needed a plan. Lunch needed one.
Dinner – another. Every day, it was the same.
Like, if we were going to play some board games, it was from seven to nine at night or something and then the movie would start.
I’m pretty go-with-the-flow, and it was supposed to be a fun, relaxing weekend. She drove me nuts.”
“And she was supposed to help cook breakfast the second morning but decided to sleep in, so I had to do it all myself, and there were eight of us. It was a disaster, and she just walked down the stairs acting like nothing was wrong,” Beth added.
“So, how did you get to the point where you actually liked each other, then?” Larissa asked with a soft laugh and made a note.
“We bumped into one another in therapy,” Theresa began.
“We went to different doctors but in the same office, and I guess our appointments ended at the same time. We laughed about us both clearly needing therapy, and there was a café next door. I offered to buy her coffee to make up for the whole breakfast thing, and we ended up talking for a long time. She explained why she liked to plan things, and I told her why I don’t.
We both listened for the first time, and I asked if she wanted to grab coffee again sometime. She said yes.”
“Listening did it, huh?”
“Yeah. Weird, right?” Theresa laughed. “On that first blind date, I don’t think I did any of that, and I didn’t give her a chance.
I’d just gotten some bad news at work and should have canceled or, at least, postponed, but I didn’t.
I remember thinking about work for most of that date, which wasn’t fair to her.
If we hadn’t bumped into each other later, I’m not sure we’d be together right now. ”
“I thought you were long-distance initially.”
“We were. I moved right after that,” Beth explained.
“I hadn’t wanted to go on the blind date because I’d gotten a new job right before it, but my friend just told me to go, and if it didn’t work out, no harm, no foul.
It didn’t then, but I was also pretty on guard the whole night of that blind date.
I knew I was leaving, so there was no point.
The long weekend thing was a bit of a going-away event for me, and that therapy appointment was the last one with that doctor.
I went to one more coffee date with her before I moved, and when she visited about a month later, we decided to give distance a try. ”
“So, you were both blocked off to the idea of the blind date actually working out?”
“Yes. I wanted to focus on my career and wasn’t looking for a relationship; definitely not one in the place I was moving away from,” Beth added.
Larissa could relate to the being blocked off part.
Her previous relationships hadn’t been a priority, which was why they’d all ended directly or indirectly and probably also why she’d blocked off her now obvious feelings for Harlow.
She finished the interview and showed the two women out of the office.
Then, she picked up her phone and sent a text.
Larissa: Heading home now. Need anything?
Harlow: I’m good. I’ll be home in about an hour.
Larissa smiled, sent another message, and walked to her car. Her phone dinged while she was putting on the seat belt, and she read the response.
Harlow: I miss you, too.