Chapter 29
Clara tells me not to be weird again.
She says it with a kind smile, stirring her coffee, but her eyes are serious. Clara always knows when to soften a blow.
“I’m not being weird. She was the one who—”
“Di.”
“You don’t understand. She was so angry.”
“You don’t know what’s going on in her life,” Clara points out. “Not everything is about you.”
“I know that,” I say, trying not to let that sentence hurt. She doesn’t know that everything in my life is about Lily. “I don’t want her to hate me again.”
Clara reaches across the table and squeezes my hand. “She doesn’t hate you. She just doesn’t want you to criticize her yard furniture.”
I lay my head on our hands with a groan. “What does that even mean?”
“It means that you shouldn’t take it personally. And you definitely shouldn’t try to fix it by being weird.”
I look up with a glare. “It’s not weird, Clara. She told me where the spare key is.”
That’s how I end up at Lily’s house later that morning, letting myself in with the spare key under a faded turtle statue, while she’s at the farmer’s market.
I tell myself I’m helping.
I want her to come home to a clean house, that’s all. And, as a bonus, to mend the rift between us.
I put on some music and start with the dishes. I wipe down counters, straighten the shoes by the door, clear off the table, gather empty mugs from all around the house.
It feels good, doing housework, if you can believe it.
Clara never lets me help.
I take out a few boxes she’d piled near the front door, things she’d mentioned wanting to donate to a local thrift store, mostly full of clothes she hasn’t worn in years, all while humming along to the music, letting myself relax for the first time since our fight.
Halfway through folding a blanket on the couch, my phone rings.
“Hi, Mom,” Emma says, cheerful as always. “I have a problem.”
“What kind of problem?”
“I’m going out tonight, and I have nothing to wear.”
I smile, leaning against the back of the couch. “Is this a date?”
“Maybe… He’s really cute. And on the baseball team!”
“Okay,” I say, slipping into mom mode. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
We go back and forth, jeans versus skirt, maybe even a dress, and whether she should wear a jacket. “You should look like yourself,” I tell her. “Not like you’re trying to be someone else.”
“So… the pink dress and the silver necklace? I’ll send you a picture, hang on.”
I wait, listening to her stumble around her dorm room, when I notice the door at the end of the hallway.
I’ve been in Lily’s house many times this summer, but I’ve never noticed that room. Clara’s voice echoes faintly in my head, don’t be weird.
But curiosity gets the better of me.
Emma says something into the phone, but I’ve completely forgotten our conversation. “Em,” I force myself to say. “I have to go.”
“Is everything okay?”
“Yeah,” I lie, staring at the crib. “I’ll text you later.”
“Di?” Lily calls from the front of the house. “You here?”
I don’t answer.
The walls are pale yellow. There are hand-painted clouds and flowers and a little bunny, all done by a younger version of Lily. A crib sits against the wall, white, a little dusty, but untouched. There are boxes in the center of the room on a white rug, and picture frames stacked on top of them.
I can’t breathe.
“Diana?” Lily calls again, close enough this time that I can hear her bare feet on the hardwood.
And then she pauses.
I hear her stop walking and the sharp inhale.
She’s standing in the doorway, brown paper grocery bags falling from her hands onto the floor. She doesn’t look angry like she did the last time I saw her. She doesn’t have her usual clenched jaw and narrow eyes.
She looks open, unguarded.
Heartbroken.
“What are you doing in here?”
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have— I wanted to help clean up, I—”
“I don’t,” Lily says, but her eyes aren’t on me. They unfocused, sliding over the crib, the boxes, the walls. “I don’t go in here.”
The shock of what I’ve found drains out of me all at once. I’ve never seen Lily like this. She’s always been sharp, so in control. And right now, she looks lost.
“Hey,” I say, taking a step toward her with a hand out. “It’s okay. You don’t have to explain anything.” She doesn’t look at me, her eyes are glued to the crib.
“I shouldn’t have left the door unlocked,” she murmurs, but it sounds more like she’s talking to herself than to me.
“Lily, look at me.”
Her breathing is shallow, but too fast at the same time. I recognize it. I’ve felt that feeling before, when I was alone, and no one could see.
But I’m not leaving Lily alone in this.
I close the distance between us, gently taking her wrists, grounding her. She stiffens, but doesn’t pull away. “I’m here, you’re okay, I need you to look at me.”
Her eyes finally meet mine, wide and glassy.
“I can’t—” She pauses, her gaze threatening to shift back to the room until I tilt my head to block her view. “I can’t be in here.”
“Okay, then let’s go.”
I guide her backward until we’re both out of the room, reaching behind me to close the door. Her eyes squeeze shut, and she makes this wounded sound that has tears threatening my own eyes.
Seeing Lily hurting is the worst thing in the world.
“I didn’t want you to see in there,” she whispers, leaning into me, her forehead pressing into my shoulder. I wrap my arms around her, holding her there.
“I’m so sorry.”
“Come on,” I say gently after we’ve been standing in front of the door for way too long. “Let’s go sit down.”
When we make it to the couch, she sits on the edge of it, elbows on her knees. Her shoulders start to shake the second she puts her face in her hands.
I sit beside her, rubbing slow circles into her back.
She drags her hands down her face, sniffling as she tries to pull herself together. “This is embarrassing,” She says with a huff. “I hate crying in front of people.”
“It’s me, Lily.”
That seems to get through to her, because next thing I know, she’s throwing herself at me. Her head rests against my chest as her arms curl around my middle in a tight hug.
I hold her too, pulling her even closer.
We sit like that, cuddled up together on the couch, for who knows how long, being together.
When I’m starting to think I should say something, try to apologize for upsetting her, or ask about the room, Lily beats me to it, with three words that change everything.
“Me and Pat…” And in that moment, something sharp and so very painful clicks into place.
Pat.
Her best friend, the person she always relied on, even more than me. He was there for her in ways I never could be, he helped us with everything that whole summer.
She’s never mentioned him.
And I was so wrapped up in Lily that I didn’t even question it.
“We were gonna have a baby,” she sniffs, drawing in a trembling breath. Her hands shake as she attempts to wipe her cheeks, even though it’s pointless.
“We were getting up there in our thirties, and neither of us had settled down, so we decided, what the hell. Why not give it a shot? We bought this old place, fixed it up. You should have seen it when we moved in if you think it’s bad now.”
I don’t say anything. I can’t. I sit there, letting her speak, letting her tell me this story that I know doesn’t have a happy ending. And the weight of it… it’s so much. The room, the crib, the nursery.
Lily doesn’t have a baby.
Where is Pat?
My throat threatens to close, but I still make myself say, “What happened to him?”
She hides her face in my neck. “I don’t even know how to say it. It was so… stupid. Drugs. He worked at this bar for,” Her voice cracks. “For us. Some extra money. And he was hanging out with this guy and…”
Her sentence breaks off on a sob. “And then he was gone.”
To imagine Lily going through this alone, I can’t hold my own tears back anymore.
I hold her close, and she clings to me just as tight. “I’m so sorry, Lily. I can’t even imagine.”
“I should’ve been able to love him,” she says, a calm self-hatred taking over. “The way he loved me.”
My chest tightens.
“He wanted more, but he never pushed. Never made it my problem. He said he was fine with the way things were.”
“Lily—”
“But I know that if I could’ve given him that,” she continues, looking up at me. “He would still be alive.”
She says it like it’s a fact.
A conclusion she’s come to in her head that she knows is true.
And that’s unthinkable. That Lily has been carrying around this grief and this blame for twenty years. I take her trembling hands in mine and sit up, making her look at me. “That’s not fair, Lily.”
She shakes her head. “I loved him so much, Di. Just… not like that. I couldn’t,” She looks at me, frantic, trying to defend herself for something she didn’t do.
I squeeze her fingers, a plea for her to listen to me. “You loved him as much as you possibly could. Pat knew that. You wanted to have a baby with him. You bought this house together. Do you honestly think he cared about how much you wanted to kiss him?”
Her breath falters.
“You didn’t owe him a version of yourself that wasn’t real, and I know he wouldn’t have wanted that.”
She closes her eyes, a fresh wave of tears slipping free anyway. “After he died, I prayed. I prayed so hard. I thought if I was pregnant, if there was something left of him, of us, then maybe I could survive it.” She shakes her head. “I wasn’t.”
I don’t pretend to have words for that kind of loss. I let her fall back into me and hold her the way she needs.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper into her hair. “You didn’t lose him because of anything you did. You lost him because the world is cruel and unfair. And you’re allowed to hurt, but you are not allowed to blame yourself. And Pat would tell you the same thing.”
She nods against me, a small movement I barely feel before whispering, “I wish he was here.”
“I know. I do too.”
“Lily?” I ask into the quiet that’s settled over us, cautious, but curious nonetheless. “You… you said that you wished that you were pregnant. Does that mean that you and Pat—”
She cuts me off with a groan. “Are you seriously being jealous right now?”
“No!” I protest. “I’m not jealous. I don’t understand. How does that even work? You don’t like men.”
She responds with a little laugh that makes my heart flutter.
I missed that sound today.
“Di, it wasn’t some crazy thing. It was sex. It wasn’t even that bad.”
She rolls her eyes at my confused blink, sitting up to look at me, her cheeks finally dry.
“He was respectful. And not all that horrible, honestly. I actually came.” She shrugs with a smile, like it’s no big deal. “I acted like I didn’t, but…”
I stare at her with a mix of admiration and jealousy for a completely different reason. “You didn’t care that he was a man?”
“Not really. I mean, it was Pat. I wouldn’t do it again, but I didn’t hate it.”
I let that sink in, shaking my head in disbelief. And before I even make the conscious decision to do so, I’m admitting something I’ve never told anyone.
“I really hate sex with men.”
“Maybe Scott sucked?” she suggests with a shrug.
I shake my head, though. “It wasn’t his fault. It’s me. I can’t get into it. I can’t imagine a single circumstance where I could actually… you know,” I pause with a gesture of my hand. “if a man was touching me.”
Her frown deepens, but there’s no judgment in her eyes.“Hm.”
That gives me the courage to say what I’ve been thinking since the day she told me about her own sexuality. I haven’t wanted to give it words, to acknowledge it, but right now, I have to.
“I think… I think I’m… "
“A lesbian?” She provides, and I nod, looking away, scared to see judgment in her eyes.
Me? A lesbian? At this age? Who would have thought?
“Maybe.”
“Why are you being so calm about this?”
She shrugs, reclaiming her spot against me. I guess that’s allowed now.
When she looks up at me, she grins, mischief sparking in her eyes. “I knew you liked eating me out too much to be straight.”
My brain freezes, no idea how to process that. “L-Lily!” I stutter out, “What the—”
She cackles, throwing her head back into my shoulder, unbothered by my shock and horror that she would bring that up. “Oh my God, Di, you should see your face!”
I can’t help but relax a little at her laughter. Because yes, I’m mortified, but Lily is smiling again, and that’s the only thing that matters.