Chapter Sixteen
Sharon
I Think We’re Alone Now by Tiffany
We walk in silence to the bus stop. And we stand there in silence too.
It’s just late enough at night that buses don’t come as often as I’d like, so the conversation-less minutes stretch out awkwardly, leaving me with far too much time to wonder how we ended up here when the evening started so well.
Of course, I have some idea. It’s my fault. I clammed up when Kate talked about going for some food together. I panicked at the idea of her and I being in a scenario that resembled a date. A first date.
Yet I don’t really know why I panicked. Was it because I hated the thought of going on a date with Kate?
Kate who had thawed considerably earlier this evening from that frosty nurse matron who runs her ward like a tight ship, to a creative, free-thinking, confident woman literally dressed like a superhero.
I should count myself lucky to even be regarded as a suitable dinner companion for her, be it a date or otherwise.
Which is why it’s a lot more likely that I panicked because I liked the idea of going on a date with Kate.
I liked the idea of sitting opposite her in some restaurant, perusing a menu together and arguing over which wine to order.
I liked the idea of us sharing starters and maybe even main courses.
I liked the idea of us choosing four different desserts because we couldn’t decide which ones to pick.
And I really liked the idea of other people looking at us and wondering if we were friends, or more…
And that’s probably when I shut down. Because to be on a date with Kate would mean being on a date with a woman for the first time.
It would be putting myself in a situation I’ve never been in before.
And all those eyes on us, all those people thinking we’re together…
as much as that excites me, thrills me, it also petrifies me. It makes me want to run and hide.
It’s hard to believe I journeyed through all these feelings in just a few short seconds after hearing Kate ask me about dinner, but it’s what happened. And it’s what got us into this mess when I decided that fear was my final destination.
Although that’s not what I want. It’s the very opposite of what I want.
“It’s my fault,” I blurt out suddenly, surprising both Kate and myself.
“What is?” She turns to me, her arms folded across her body tightly. She looks cold.
“The whole dinner thing and saying I didn’t want to go with you for food.”
“Oh.” She shrugs. “Okay.”
When she turns away from me again, looking in the direction of the oncoming traffic, where our buses should be coming, I feel a new but familiar emotion rise in me. Anger.
“Don’t you want to know why it’s my fault?”
Kate turns back to me and rolls her eyes in a way that has my blood boiling. “I don’t really know what you’re talking about so it’s neither here nor there if I want—”
“God, you’re annoying!” I pretty much shout at her, grateful we’re the only two people standing at this bus stop. Or maybe I shouldn’t be. Maybe if there was someone else standing with us, I would have held back my outrage.
“I’m annoying?” She points at her chest.
“Yes,” I spit back. “I’m trying to explain and apologise for my behaviour earlier and you don’t even care. You’re not even vaguely interested, which is just rude when I’m trying to…”
Words fail me. What am I trying to do? Bare my soul? Share my deepest, darkest fears? Be more vulnerable with Kate than I have been with almost everyone in my life?
“Sharon, I don’t want to hear why you don’t want to go for dinner with me. You may be a glutton for punishment, but I like to take my rejection like I take my alcohol. Neat, short and to the point. There’s no need to explain.”
“I wasn’t rejecting you!” I raise my voice further. “I was… rejecting myself!”
Kate blinks at me slowly. “What?”
I sigh and with that long exhale, I lose a lot of the aggression I was feeling just a second ago. “I’m not like you, Kate,” I confess. “I’m not comfortable being… gay in public.”
“What does that even mean?” Kate asks, and I wait for it to feel like an interrogation but actually it’s delivered with a softness and a curiosity that have warmth.
“It means, I’m not…” I sigh again and start over. “I’m not out as a lesbian at my work. Only Danny and a handful of other friends know I’m gay. My mother is the only member of my family who knows and she basically kicked me out of her house for it. So, yeah, it’s hard for me to be… gay.”
Kate starts off nodding her head very subtly but then the movement gets bigger, more pronounced. “I understand. But Sharon, I have to say something that I hope you don’t take personally. I just feel like I need to say it because I’m trying to understand.”
“What? Say it.”
“You do know that you look very gay, don’t you? Like, really gay. Very, very lesbian.”
Her face cracks into one of her most playful smiles and it instantly melts away all the horror I felt at hearing her say what she just said.
“Very, very lesbian?” I start to laugh with her despite trying to stop myself.
“Very.”
“Is that a good or a bad thing?”
“Oh, it’s a good thing. A great thing. I hate it when I can’t tell if an attractive woman is queer or not.”
That promptly halts my laughter, like a train screeching into an abrupt stop.
“Yes, I find you attractive,” Kate clarifies. “I thought I’d said as much earlier.”
So she was flirting…
“But honestly, I didn’t suggest dinner as a date,” she continues. “I suggested it as… well, whatever we are.”
“Yeah,” I scratch my short hair. “What exactly are we?”
It’s Kate’s turn to sigh. “I don’t know. I thought we could be friends earlier, but then you went all weird again and I—”
“I didn’t go weird. You were the one who got all obsessed and aggressive about Lady Phantom and the Director getting together. Demanding all those answers from AJ like he owed you them.”
“Well, I did spend hours and hours dressing up as his character.”
“But he didn’t ask you to!”
Kate opens her mouth and her finger lifts, poised in a straight point at me. But her lips level into a smile and she drops her hand.
“We’re arguing again,” she says.
“We seem to have a habit of doing that.” I move so I can rest my back against the bus shelter. I wish there was a bench like the one at the stop outside the hospital. I’m suddenly very, very tired.
“Yeah, we do. And we’re pretty good at it,” she muses, like she’s commenting on our ability to play tennis together.
Silence falls as she moves to stand next to me, also resting her weight against the shelter.
“So how do you… if you don’t like being seen as gay.
How do you meet women? How do you go on dates? ”
I swallow around a thick lump in my throat. The urge to lie presents itself but I’m too damn tired to take it. “I don’t.”
“What do you mean, you don’t?”
“I’ve never been on a date with a woman.”
“Never?”
“No.”
“Have you…” Kate snaps her mouth shut. “No, that’s rude.”
“I’ve never kissed a woman, if that’s what you were going to ask.”
I know she can figure out the rest from that confession.
She turns her body so her back is pressed against a map of bus routes.
“That’s a fucking shame,” she says and there’s no pity there. She states it as factually as can be.
“Yeah, it is,” I agree and I feel just how much of a shame it is. How much I want it. How sad I am that it hasn’t happened yet.
“But you will,” Kate says, her dark eyes holding mine in the dim light.
“What?” I’m so taken aback by her comment, I need her to repeat it even though I heard her loud and clear.
“You will meet someone. And you will go on dates with her. And you will kiss her, endlessly, and one day, you will be proud to be holding her hand in public. And then you’ll take her home and do things together that will teach you that there is nothing more beautiful than two women making each other feel good. ”
I don’t know when it happened, but at some point as Kate just spoke, my gaze dropped from her eyes to her mouth and my eyes stay there, glued to the plump pink of her lips. A tightening sensation between my legs has me pressing my thighs together.
“Have you… have you had girlfriends?” I ask.
“Not exactly. I’ve had… affairs, I guess you could call them, with women. Flings. Lots of that beautiful sex, but sadly not much of the hand-holding in public.”
“Because you were scared? Or they were?” I ask and it’s embarrassing how much hope is audible in my voice. I’m craving for Kate to admit she feels it too. This fear of being seen. Of being known as something that so many people hate.
“Maybe they were,” she shrugs. “I don’t think I was, but I guess that’s possible too. It’s more that things just didn’t work out. Wrong time. Wrong person. Wrong place.”
“A woman will hold your hand proudly, one day,” I tell her. It’s not as poetic as what she told me, but I hope it holds as much meaning to her as her words gave me.
“Maybe,” she shifts to face me again. “Are you okay after what AJ said, about his friend Julian?”
I can almost physically feel her hand on my arm again, exactly where it was when she placed it there while hearing that story.
“Yeah,” I say. “I mean, it’s awful. Tragic. And of course I thought about Danny. About all the men on that ward. But Julian died before they knew what was going on. Danny will have more time.”
Kate’s silence says more than any other response she could give me.
“Why didn’t you tell AJ you’re a nurse working with AIDS patients?” I ask.
“Do you tell everyone what your job is?” There’s only a hint of defensiveness in her tone but it’s enough for me to feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
“No, but he was talking about AIDS.”
“Well, you didn’t tell him about Danny.”
“I hardly think that would have gone down well. He was literally talking about losing his friend and how much that hurt.”
“Fair enough,” she says, and then a small sigh leaves her lips as she shivers.
“You’re cold.”
“No shit, Sherlock.”