Fourteen
The week of Thanksgiving had rolled by in a blur of work, travel, and family, giving Gillian little time to catch her breath. It didn’t help that Christmas decorations were already going up all over Buffalo by the time she rolled into work and her clients were in full-blown holiday stress mode.
“No,” she whispered. It was just another Tuesday, and Tuesdays were always busy.
Voices down the hallway accentuated the point.
It was after eight o’clock at night, and while Robin had left, Brooke and Tegan were still in the building.
From the sound of people shuffling across the hall, Daphne must be around, too.
Daphne.
The tension crept back up Gillian’s shoulders.
She wouldn’t have thought it possible to be even more aware of her, but in the week since Friendsgiving, she’d noticed her touches everywhere, from her “snuggle bug” mug near the coffee machine to the sound of her voice, always light and enthusiastic, to the lingering hint of her scent of coffee and clean laundry in the hallway.
Even when Daphne wasn’t around, Gillian’s mind wandered to her in the rare, quiet moments between clients, on the treadmill, and, most disconcertingly, each time she woke up from a restful night’s sleep.
She hadn’t had the prom dream. She hadn’t had any dreams at all. It was as if she’d traded peaceful sleep for this woman occupying her mind in every waking hour.
She couldn’t stop fixating on their last conversation.
Had she really gotten it so wrong for so long?
She was reasonable enough to at least intellectually understand that communication was always bound to be imperfect, particularly in an emotional situation between two teenagers.
Only she hadn’t relegated the experience entirely to adolescence.
She’d carried it to college with her, first in fear, and then in an almost methodical kind of defiance.
She’d dated several women early on to just to prove she could.
And while she wasn’t proud of that, she felt even less comfortable with how the memory had affected her recently.
She’d had the dream multiple times since Daphne’s return, and it had no doubt informed her cold shoulder over recent months, not to mention the way she’d withheld things from her most trusted circle of friends.
How could she allow herself to be so influenced by something she’d so fully misunderstood?
She prided herself on being self-aware, clinically direct, unflinching in her assessments.
If she’d missed the mark here, what else had she gotten wrong?
Someone cleared their throat, and Gillian about jumped out of her skin.
“Sorry,” Brooke said from the doorway. “I didn’t mean to startle you. Everything okay?”
Gillian forced a smile. “Of course. Mentally unpacking the day. You heading out?”
“Yeah, I’m done. You?”
“Not hardly.” Gillian noted the concern in her best friend’s eyes. Brooke would listen, she’d be there for her, she’d be great, if only Gillian would let her. “You got anything planned?”
“For when, tonight?”
Gillian nodded.
“Um, Tegan’s in the car. We were going to eat ice cream and watch some mindless TV. I could run her home and come back, or meet you somewhere. Or you could come over.”
“No.” Gillian waved off the suggestion and the reminder that Brooke’s life and schedule weren’t entirely her own anymore. “I need to get a few things sorted, then I’ll head out, too.”
“You sure?”
“Totally. Tell Tegan good night for me.”
Brooke hesitated for only a second. “Okay, Tegan has the keys. Would you mind locking the door behind me?”
“Sure.” She followed her friend to the door and gave another fleeting thought to saying something, but she didn’t know what. Besides, Tegan was waiting. She held the door for Brooke.
Her friend nodded to the keys in her hand. “Sorry we’re still on edge about this.”
“It’s not your fault. It was never your fault.”
Brooke forced a smile. “Parts of it were, but we’re moving on. You sure you don’t want to come over?”
Not after that reminder. “I’m good. See you tomorrow.”
She locked the door and released a heavy sigh as she watched Brooke climb into her car. Then, turning back toward the office, for the second time in about as many minutes, she jumped.
“Sorry,” Daphne said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“I’m getting that a lot.”
“Because you’re twitchy?”
“I’m not sure I’d describe myself that way, but for the sake of moving forward, sure.”
“Is it because of whatever you and Brooke were talking about so gravely? I didn’t want to intrude.”
Gillian shook her head. “No, that’s old news.”
Daphne didn’t appear to buy it. “Old news has ways of coming back to bite us all in the ass, but I won’t push anymore tonight.”
“How very unlike you.”
Daphne grinned. “And yet, that response is very on-brand for you. Are we going back to our regularly scheduled program of taking swipes at each other? I think I preferred being avoided.”
“I’m not avoiding you.”
Daphne rolled her eyes.
“I’m not. I’ve been busy, the holiday, and—”
“And an emotionally wrought conversation to not unpack.”
“Just because I haven’t aired my laundry with you doesn’t mean I haven’t unpacked it,” Gillian snapped.
Daphne laughed. “Come to any conclusions worth sharing?”
“I think the conversation itself was a conclusion.”
“How so?”
“I was wrong. I based a great deal on a miscommunication, and I’ve lived with the consequences. That is, if what you said last week was true.”
“It was,” Daphne said softly. “I didn’t remember the night like you do. I never meant to make you feel mocked in that moment.”
“But you have in other moments.”
Daphne shrugged. “Sure, there are plenty of other options to choose from, but I’m serious about prom night. I was happy. I was present. You could’ve kissed me.”
“Thank you for saying so. You could’ve tortured me if you’d wanted to.”
“Sounds like you’d done enough torturing for both of us. Does it feel any better to know the truth?”
“It should,” Gillian said. “In some ways I guess it feels good to know the young and tender version of me wasn’t dismissed or found lacking, but now I’m wondering how I could’ve been so wrong about something so formative. And if I got this one wrong, what else have I built on unsteady foundations?”
“Oh Gillian, you’ve just found a new angle for the old torture. Honestly, if I’d known you were this good at tying yourself in knots, I might not have spent as much time trying to do it for you.”
“I think self-reflection is a worthy pursuit, and I take my responsibilities seriously—”
Daphne pressed her lips together, and Gillian’s mind wandered to them.
She hadn’t really let herself notice how lovely they were, not with the way they were always curled in mocking or tight with annoyance.
She remembered the first morning on the mattress, before she’d seen the full scope of the woman above her, how the sight of those lips overrode her frustration for a second …
like they had now. She’d completely lost her train of thought in favor of fixating on Daphne’s lips.
Stepping back, she shook her head. “Excuse me. I don’t know why I’m acting like this.
It’s not your fault. It’s mine. Apparently, so much of this has always been my fault, which is only to say I’ve been wondering, perhaps to the point of distraction, what might’ve been different if I hadn’t misread the situation. ”
“You mean how might our lives have been different if you’d stuck around long enough to kiss me, or if I hadn’t laughed and given you a reason to run in the first place?”
“It’s silly.” Gillian tried to shake the thought. “We were kids. It couldn’t have changed much, not in any practical way.”
Daphne seemed to consider the question. “Who knows, maybe one of us would’ve been the world’s greatest kisser and we never even knew it.”
“And now you’re teasing again?”
Daphne smiled, making the answer clear, but, for some reason, Gillian’s gaze was drawn to one upturned corner of her mouth again. God, what was wrong with her?
“I don’t know what else we can do,” Daphne admitted. “We can’t know. And really, how many kisses have changed much about your life?”
Gillian could remember several good ones, maybe a handful that shifted her trajectory for a while, but never for long. “I guess odds are we would’ve been awkward and made things worse between us.”
I don’t know,” Daphne admitted. “I may’ve liked you more if I’d seen any hint of awkwardness in you. Maybe a bad kiss could’ve at least let us part on better terms.”
Gillian gave that some thought. “What do you think that would’ve meant for us now?”
Daphne thought for a moment. “It’s weird to wonder what it’d be like if we weren’t constantly on edge around each other, but I guess if we’d left on better terms, we might’ve reunited differently, too. Probably not as friends, I mean, you’d still be uptight as fuck.”
“And you’d still be an agent of chaos with a bed in your office,” Gillian shot back, but this time without any venom.
“Obviously.” Daphne chuckled. “But instead of active animosity and outright tension, maybe it could’ve just been a quirky thing.
I would’ve introduced you to Hugh and Izzy as someone I used to know, and you would’ve told your friends a silly story about high school.
Then we would’ve gone about our business, though my business would still rub you the wrong way. ”
“Probably,” she admitted, but she didn’t hate the softer edges on the story. Maybe if not for her and Daphne’s shared history of animosity, she would’ve felt safer being curious instead of defensive when she’d learned about the whole snuggery thing.
“We’ll never know,” Daphne finally said.
“No way to tell.” Gillian agreed, but her eyes once again dropped to that mouth across from her. “Unless.”
Daphne raised her eyebrows. “Unless?”
Gillian shook her head. “We’re entirely different people.”
Daphne’s smile spread. “For a second there I thought you were going to take Robin’s advice.”
“Something I very rarely do.”
“Why? Is she a bad therapist?”