Thirteen #4
She couldn’t help but smile at Gillian’s assessment and the formality with which she always seemed to face such things. “Fair, but I’m not sure what about this particular memory brought that to the surface. We seriously didn’t kiss.”
“Correct.” Gillian pinched the bridge of her nose. “We didn’t kiss.”
“I’m getting the sense that the absence of an interaction doesn’t equal the absence of meaning making.” Tegan waded in carefully. “And Gillian, the mention of shame about something that’s clearly been carried for two decades seems worth circling back to.”
“Undoubtedly.” Gillian reached for her wine glass again only to find it empty, then frowned before going on.
“What Daphne’s been dancing around is that I tried to kiss her on prom night, only to be rebuffed.
I’m not sure if she’s withheld that fact due to the enjoyment she always gets from my discomfort, or out of pity. ”
“I’m not sure we need to ascribe emotions to anyone else,” Brooke said.
“And most of us have shot our shot with someone, only to come up short, for any number of reasons,” Robin added. “Not being someone’s size of snack isn’t cause for shame.”
“Of course not,” Gillian clipped. “No one owes anyone attraction. A rejection, however delivered, is always the risk associated with reaching out.”
“Wait.” Daphne held up a hand. “That’s the second time you’ve suggested I rejected you. I think we remember this night very differently.”
Everyone turned to her, and she faltered under their collective and intensely interested gazes. She wasn’t used to having so much active listening employed on her at once. “It was a long time ago, but I distinctly remember Gillian turning on a heel and marching away from me.”
“After you laughed at me,” Gillian snapped, her voice no longer hiding the raw emotion. “And of course, it is perfectly within a person’s purview to laugh at someone else’s awkward first attempt, but—”
Daphne’s heart swelled all the way into her throat. “That’s not what happened.”
“I remember the laughter as surely as you recall my retreat. It replays in the form of my most frequent nightmare during times of insecurity and insufficiency in my life.”
Daphne’s stomach dropped. The statement contained her normal brand of stuffiness, but it was delivered with a blunt kind of sadness to suggest she wasn’t exaggerating. “Is that what you meant earlier when you mentioned me in your dreams?”
Gillian’s face flamed crimson, and she turned away, confirming the suspicion.
Still, Daphne couldn’t fathom the idea. She’d never, even in her best attempts, been able to ruffle this woman for more than a few seconds.
The idea that something she’d done inadvertently in her youth had the power to fill adult dreams didn’t compute, and she didn’t want it to.
She hadn’t wanted to hurt her then, and she didn’t want to now, but all she could manage to say was, “I didn’t laugh at you. ”
Gillian threw up her hands. “So I just imagined my most formative high school experience? Conjured it up from nothing to torment myself?”
Every therapist in the room jumped in at once, seeming to want to say the same thing, but in tripping over each other, the younger two ceded the floor to Brooke.
“It is possible for two people to experience the same encounter entirely differently. Her memory of the event doesn’t lessen the legitimacy of what you feel about yours. ”
Gillian’s throat constricted visibly, but she nodded curtly. “I’m aware. It’s silly. A joke. It was all a joke that didn’t matter—”
“No no no.” Everyone jumped in at once again, but this time Daphne was among them, and she wouldn’t surrender her own voice in the crowd.
“I did laugh,” she clarified, “but not at you.”
Gillian rolled her eyes. “I don’t recall anyone else around to spark your response.”
“No, and that alone was crazy. Everyone was inside. All your fans and disciples. You’d been the center of the room.
The first out lesbian of the school. The first girl to wear a suit to prom.
You’d just been named valedictorian. You were the toast of the school, and I was the weird, awkward art nerd wearing a vintage 1940s skirt with combat boots. ”
“Sounds wicked cool,” Sawyer muttered, and Daphne sent them a silent bit of gratitude for being the only other non-therapist in the room.
“There was no reason for you to follow me into the parking lot,” she continued.
“I went outside to sit on the hood of my car and stare at the stars alone. Then suddenly you were there staring at me like I’d stared at the night sky, interested in a way no one had ever been interested in me.
It hit with sudden clarity that I was about to be kissed by my archnemesis on prom night. Didn’t that strike you as absurd?”
“No. At the time it seemed exactly the thing to do. Though, now that you mention it, I suppose there’s more than a hint of cliché there, like some melodramatic teen rom-com.”
“Exactly,” Daphne exclaimed. “Crazy, over the top, and unbelievable. And yet, against all logic, it was happening. So out of character for you, but I loved weird and wild, which is why I laughed. It’s what you do when you’re seventeen and it’s all too much to make sense of.”
“Is it?” Gillian arched an eyebrow.
“Yes.”
She didn’t seem to want to take Daphne’s word for it and glanced to Brooke, who merely shrugged.
“Okay, maybe not you,” Daphne admitted. “Maybe you were never really seventeen. Maybe you sprang from some business lesbian’s forehead fully formed, or were gifted with some overgrown sense of decorum, but the rest of us needed a little time for our frontal lobes to develop.”
Gillian pursed her lips as if considering the idea.
“I didn’t laugh at you,” Daphne reiterated.
“I laughed at life, at the situation, at how wonderfully unexpected it could all be, and then it ended. We never even talked about it. You disappeared as quickly as you materialized, and everything went back to being exactly as it had been. No character break, no shift in the social order, no first kiss.”
“No humiliation,” Gillian said softly. “No risk, no need to carry trauma or second-guess everything for years.”
Daphne shook her head. “I’m sorry you thought there was.”
“I’m sorry, too.” Gillian sighed. “For a great many things, including ruining game time and Friendsgiving as a whole.”
“Are you kidding?” Tegan smiled. “That was the greatest thing to ever happen to any Friendsgiving anywhere. Don’t apologize for showing up like that. I’m in awe.”
Sawyer laughed. “I’m not in awe, but I am sorry you two never got to make out on the hood of Daphne’s car.”
“It’s not too late,” Robin cut in. “She’s parked right downstairs.”
“Too far.” Brooke pushed back from the table. “I think everyone’s done enough reauthoring for one evening, but as is generally the case, I agree with Tegan. You two did something amazing tonight, and I’m grateful to have shared it. I suggest we all leave it at that and get some rest.”
“I think my option’s more fun,” Robin mumbled, “but I’ve got a big week of clients, clients, and more clients, and wrapping up with a dinner with Sawyer’s mother.”
Everyone grimaced as they began cleaning up the table, but Daphne stayed seated a second longer, watching Gillian across the table as she took a few more steadying breaths before meeting her eyes.
There were still questions there, plenty of emotions, too, but in grand Gillian fashion, she managed a small smile, only this time it wasn’t the usual, politely neutral version.
This expression carried something Daphne had never seen there before, exhaustion, relief, gratitude, and perhaps a hint of lightness that hadn’t existed between them for twenty-two years.