Chapter 12
12
Esther
E sther tapped the toe of her boot against the gravel parking lot of the marina and debated leaving for the thousandth time. After staying up late last night only to be woken for eight a.m. Mass by Uncle Pete—you can’t skip on All Saints’ Day—she wanted nothing more than to crawl back into bed, pull the covers over her head, and forget the world. She checked her phone again. Maybe Uther forgot. She’d canceled brunch with him every week for a month. She wouldn’t blame him if he’d fallen out of the habit and forgotten her.
She hadn’t told him about the whole Ashley-is-a-vampire thing, and her sense of keeping Ashley’s confidence warred with her loyalty to her friend. And what made her think he would believe her to begin with? Uther had stuck with her for over a year, despite her recent flakiness. She’d only known Ashley for a couple of months, and they were what? Classmates? Acquaintances?
Her mind flashed to a night by a lake almost a month ago now, the water lapping at the shore as Ashley’s lips coaxed softly against Esther’s. She regretted having to wash the lipstick off her forehead this morning. It felt like rubbing off the ashes from Ash Wednesday before school so your classmates wouldn’t ask about the smudge on your face, even though the point was to leave it on. But it was scary to broadcast something that intimate to the world.
“Esther, I’m here!” Uther trudged up the path, pulling up the collar of his coat and pushing sunglasses tighter against his face.
“Hiding from the law?” she asked.
“Not so loud.” He cringed and massaged his temple. “Who knew board game club was that into Halloween?”
“Hey, about last night?—”
Uther held up his palm. “Please, can we get a seat and some coffee first? I am not a full human being at the moment. It’s much too early for brunch.”
“It’s eleven. I don’t think this place even serves breakfast. Why are we here?” The waterfront bar and grill was just opening for the day as they pushed through the door. There were more nets among the myriad of random fishing supplies crowding the ceiling and walls than there were customers.
“My parents took me here a few times as a kid, and I need greasy food right now. Lay off.”
“Wait, you grew up here?”
“Esther,” he grumbled, pulling the collar of his coat so it covered his face. “Of all days for you to be interested in talking about personal stuff. My parents are history teachers in Burlington.”
“Burlington?” She stopped and looked him over. “Vermont? You grew up across the lake this whole time, and I never knew?”
In lieu of a response, Uther grumbled indecipherably as he stomped over to the bar. “So much coffee please.”
He snagged two menus and took a seat at the back near a window overlooking the lake.
Esther followed, carefully pulling out her chair and flipping through the novel of a menu in silence until someone plopped two steaming cups of coffee in front of them with a dish of sugar packets and another of creamer cups.
Uther took a long drag from his mug and sighed, slumping back into his chair. “All right, I’m ready. Go ahead.”
Esther paused while reaching for the creamer. “Sorry, what were we talking about again?”
“Fish and chips,” Uther called across the room to the waiter headed their way then pointed to Esther. “And a quesadilla with the sour cream on the side.”
“What makes you think you know what I want?”
Uther tilted his head. “I pay attention. Besides, I was planning on splitting with you—hence the sour cream on the side because I know you don’t like it.” He tapped the side of his nose, as though this was a witty yet obvious observation. “Don’t worry. The quesadilla is amazing. And by amazing, I mean cheesy, which is just what I need.”
He knew she didn’t like sour cream, and she didn’t even know where he was from. Over a year of claiming to be his friend and Esther hadn’t even cared to ask the most basic questions. But if she had, she’d have had to answer the same questions in return. That was how conversations and friendships worked. A give and take, tit for tat.
“Well, don’t leave me in suspense,” he said. The coffee must have kicked in. He even removed his sunglasses. “What happened last night? I passed out on the couch after calling you. Like, Char had to help me inside. Did you find the keys all right?”
“Right, sorry.” Esther fished in her pocket and dropped the keys on the table. “Thanks again for letting me borrow your car.” Her mind wandered to that ride with Ashley. To feeling the softness, the weight of her, as she helped Ashley up the steps to her house. She was inhuman and yet so real.
“You’re welcome.” Uther pulled the keys back and stuffed them in his pocket. “And I mean that for more than just the ride.” He gave her a wink and a quick finger gun.
“What’s that?” She gestured to all of him. “What are you doing? What’s going on?”
“For being your wingman, obviously.” He lifted his coffee to his lips and gave her a saucy look, doing something funny with his eyebrows. She wasn’t sure she liked it.
“Wingman?” She hadn’t meant to shout the word. The couple at the table in the other corner looked over at them. Esther ducked her head to the level of her coffee, as though a lower elevation would save her from observation. “What do you mean wingman?” she hissed.
Uther opened his mouth to answer.
“That’s fish and chips for you.” A poorly timed server dropped a basket of fried things in front of Uther, whose eyes grew wide and shiny. Esther shot back up in her seat. “And quesadilla for the lady. Anything else I can get you?”
“No,” she snapped.
“I think we’re good for now.” Uther gave a charming smile, and the server left.
When she was sure he was out of earshot, Esther started again. “What do you mean wingman?”
“I mean, okay, so I was a little drunk at the time….” He paused, looked at the items on the ceiling, then crammed a steaming chunk of battered and fried fish in his mouth, pointing to his face and shaking his head.
Esther glared at him. “You can’t chew forever.”
He did his best.
She started in on a slice of her quesadilla while waiting, and unfortunately it was quite cheesy and delicious, and she couldn’t hate Uther for ordering something she actually liked.
Finally, he swallowed and reached for another bite of fish.
“Uther, I’m warning you”—she shot a finger at his face—“if you take one more bite, I will make sure you regret it.”
He gulped, but his hand dropped from the basket. “Okay, so don’t hate me.”
“That’s not an encouraging way to start a story.”
“Yeah, well, that wasn’t a promise to not hate me.” He took her plate and divided their food, shoving a generous pile of fries onto hers. “So, you know how we’re both amazing people, but we’re also kind of wallflowers?”
“Just get to the point.”
Uther pushed her plate, now piled with food, back to her side of the table. “You don’t talk about personal stuff, Esther. And that’s totally fine. You don’t owe anyone your backstory.” He paused to eat a fry. “It’s just that we’ve been friends for a year and you haven’t opened up about anything. So, I figured it was me and maybe if you had a more outgoing friend, you would feel comfortable talking to them. And you and Ashley, I thought I saw something there. Some natural chemistry.”
“That’s not—” But she didn’t know how to finish that thought. She didn’t open up because she didn’t open up. No one was interested, and she shouldn’t be imposing more on people’s lives. If she shared personal anecdotes, the next thing you knew, she’d be giving advice and someone could get hurt. She could ruin lives, and she couldn’t be responsible for that again.
He waved off her half-comment. “I was drunk and not thinking straight. I saw Ashley being so comfortable in a crowd and everyone engaging with her and thought, hey, why not hook Esther up with a better friend? So, when she fell in the pool, it seemed like the perfect chance…”
“Uther.” She took his hand. The warmth of it startled her. Had they ever done this before? They weren’t hand-holding friends. She took her hand back again. Touching was too much. “You’re already a better friend.”
But that wasn’t enough. Uther was right. She was holding back, and maybe it was fine to trust him with her secrets. She was struck with the sudden realization she could lose him—his friendship—and she didn’t want that.
“Sorry, I wasn’t trying to fish for compliments, but thanks all the same.” He plucked a fry from the pile. “So how was the ride? You got her number, right?”
“She kissed me.”
Uther coughed on his bite of fry. “She did what? Do I need to have a word with her? I mean, she was drunk, but that’s no excuse to get handsy without consent.”
“No, not last night.” She wasn’t sure what made her mention the kiss. Clearly, the whole agreeing-to-be-Ashley’s-pretend-girlfriend was a more pressing matter. Or maybe the whole vampire thing. Maybe all of it was a pressing matter and she should start from the beginning. “She kissed me about a month ago. While we were both sober. I’ve had her number for over a month now.”
“Oh. Oh!” His gaze flickered across her face, assessing. “Esther, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know you were avoiding her. I never would have… I would have called someone else to get her. I swear. I just thought…”
“No, no! I wasn’t avoiding her.” She bit her lip. How to explain that Uther’s call to get Ashley, to be in a vehicle with Ashley like they were people that rode in vehicles together, had shot through Esther’s system faster than coffee ever had?
Uther nodded and ate some more of his fish, giving her time before asking, “Did you want to talk about it?”
She nibbled at a fry. “What do you mean?”
He was sipping his coffee and looked out the window, as though this wasn’t the most terrifying conversation Esther had been a part of in recent memory. “What happened after she kissed you?”
“Well, then I told her I was straight.” Maybe it was nice he wasn’t looking at her. She couldn’t make eye contact with anyone right now.
There was a pause as he took another sip of coffee. “Why’d you tell her that?”
“Well, because…because I thought it was true?”
He nodded and went back to eating. And for a while, that was where they left it. No pressure to say more. She could change the subject if she wanted. The pause was long enough that it wouldn’t seem odd. And it was Uther. He wouldn’t judge her if she didn’t say anything. But he wouldn’t judge her if she did either. They finished their food in silence, Esther both unsure how to continue and also not ready to change the subject. So, she left it floating there until she was eating her last bite of quesadilla and the check materialized.
“Toss a coin to your server,” sang Uther, while pulling out his wallet. “Oh, valley of plenty.”
Finances settled, they stood to leave.
“Uther?”
“Hmm?”
“How did you know? I mean, I guess you always knew. And if at some point you didn’t…know. Or something different. I don’t think I’m saying this right.”
“I’m going to be honest,” He held the door for her. “I’m not sure what you just said, but I have a good idea where this conversation is headed.” He nodded toward the lake. “Did you want to take a walk?”
Esther turned to the lake and took one fortifying inhale through the nose and out through the mouth then nodded. “All right.”
The gravel crunched beneath their feet as they walked to the shoreline. The summer season was long past, and most of the boats were dry-docked for winter, the piers along with them. They took the path through a miniature forest of boats and masts, following the gravel jetty out into the lake.
“So, you like Ashley, huh?” Uther kicked at a rock, sending it skidding to the edge of the water.
“Okay, so…” Esther grabbed the rock and hurled it as far into the water as she could. It made a satisfying plunk and inspired her to look for more rocks. “I never considered dating a woman before, or…I guess I was only considering men? I was interested in them so—you know, the men, I mean. It’s easy to just not think any harder about it.” She found another rock and threw it. This one sounded more like a pink than a plunk. “There were probably signs. Occasionally, I’d think ‘that girl is hot. I’d like to be her friend,’ and then be flattered when the friendship got territorial. I can’t be friends with that other person because I’m already friends with her. You know, girl stuff.” She threw a stick this time, and it made an unsatisfying splash and floated to the surface. She watched it bob for a while. “And even if it wasn’t just girls being girls, that’s a handful of cases to a lifetime of Orlando Bloom posters and Sadie Hawkins dances. I mean even if I am…”
Gay . The word echoed in her head, pushing to come out, but if she said it out loud and to another human, it would be real. Recorded in history for all time. In her head, it was a rough draft. Something bold to consider, but maybe too hastily written for the final draft.
“How much is enough to count?” She braved looking up and found Uther seated on a discarded, plastic chair under one of the two trees, one leg resting across the other.
“Okay.” He steepled his hands, squinting at something invisible in front of him like he was using his mind to unravel the tangles of Esther’s life. “I think the best analogy I’ve heard for this discussion is the purple metaphor.”
“Okay.” Esther nodded like this was the most normal conversation in the world. Uther was her gay Jesus speaking in parables, ready to present her with all the answers.
“So purple is thought of as blue and red, right? But the proportions aren’t set in stone. Like fifty percent blue and fifty percent red is called purple, but so is twenty percent blue and eighty percent red. Lavender, plum, fuchsia, electric purple. They’re wildly different, but if we were told to pick a Roy G. Biv category, we’d stick them all into purple. Right?”
“Yeah, that sounds right.” Esther was pacing along the shore, nodding like a bobblehead ready for him to wrap this up with something all-knowing and personal to her life. She waited. And waited. “Is that it?”
“Oh. Did I need to spell it out for you?”
“Damn it, Uther. You just gave me an art lesson on the color purple. I learned this in grade school.”
“It’s called bi, Esther. Or pan or queer or whatever label you’re comfortable with. You can like men eighty percent of the time and women or any other gender the other twenty percent, and it’s still enough to count. There isn’t a cut-off on how gay you need to be to fit. Labels are inherently a social construct made to both help us understand and categorize ourselves and also to needlessly stress us the fuck out.”
“Oh.”
“The label doesn’t matter, Esther. So stop stressing over it. Just be you and know, whatever that looks like, it’s all right.”
“Okay.” She was back to nodding and pacing. Taking in everything he’d said.
She knew gender and sexuality were on a spectrum and also the labels used for them were all social constructs. Anthropologists, sociologists, and plenty of others had written on this concept for decades. But hearing it out loud, that labels don’t matter? She felt like a balloon freed from its tether. Both exhilarated and terrified.
“Okay, thanks” she said. “I can live with that.”
“You feeling good?” He scrutinized her. “Did you need to talk about it some more?”
“No.” Esther shook her head. “No, this is plenty to process already. Let’s move on.”
“Great.” He jumped up from the chair and skipped over to her. “Friend level, upgraded. Now, on that note, can we talk about my problems?”
“Oh. Sure, what’s happening?” She dusted off her hands, retuning to the sharp change in focus.
“I have man problems. Did you think this conversation was going to pass the Bechdel test?”
“I, umm…no?”
“Are you free this afternoon?”
This felt like a trap. But he’d just talked her through her fumbling identity crisis.
“I was going to work on my final project some,” she said. “Why?”
“August is being suspicious. He’s invited me to this ‘gardening club’” —Uther used finger quotes— “but he was all cagey and nondescript about it. Something is afoot.”
“Oh.” Esther shrugged. “Maybe it’s a date.”
“To a gardening club?” Uther raised a skeptical brow.
“I don’t kn?—”
“In November?”
“Okay, well, it does sound a little weird.”
Uther snatched her hand. “Can you come with me?”
“What?” Esther pulled her hand back. “Uther, I’m not going on a probable date with you and August.”
“But, Esther.” He propped his hands under his chin to emphasize how large and puppy-like his eyes were growing.
She glared and pointed at his face. “Stop it.”
“Esther, my one true friend and the apple of my eye, come to this thing with me that’s probably not a date for moral support.”
She huffed, resting her fists on her hips. “And if it turns out to be a date?”
Uther scoffed, waving away her concerns. “It’s not a date. You just said. Who takes someone to a gardening club as a date?”
“ I didn’t say it wasn’t a date! You said that.”
“Esther.” He took her hand and dropped to one knee.
Her eyebrows shot up to her hairline. “Uther,” she hissed, looking around to see if anyone was watching. “People are going to think you’re proposing.”
“I am proposing.” Uther pressed one hand solemnly to his heart. His other remained a vice on hers. “I’m proposing we spend the afternoon together at this gardening club.”
“Stop it. All right, fine. Get up, and I’ll go with you, okay?”
“Yay!” He leaped to his feet and wrapped his arms around her, spinning her so fast her legs lifted from the ground. “She said yes!” he shouted to the two people smoking by the backdoor of the restaurant.
They cheered their support and Esther’s face heated.
She would not smile and encourage his antics. “This better not be a date.”