“I know. Thanks.”
“Look, do you mind if I sit down with you?
I’m due for a break. And I could use some pho, too.”
“Uh, sure.”
He’d agreed! Jo felt a little bad for being
pushy with him since he was so obviously uncomfortable, but if he
didn’t want to hang out with her, he could totally have said no.
Maybe Terrell Hubbard had never had a girlfriend at school because
he wasn’t one to make the first move.
It wasn’t too hard to convince her supervisor
to let her take a break now. She stressed that she’d come in as a
favor on a day she always had off, and emphasized that one of her
friends was in the restaurant and she really wanted to eat with
him. Before long, she was walking out into the dining room bearing
a tray of pho and condiments, her chest full of hope.
“How’s your cousin?” Jo asked.
Terrell relaxed immediately. “She’s good. She
broke up with the jerk today. I tried to get her to come out with
me tonight, but she wanted to spend time with her mom.”
“She broke up with the jerk!”
“Yeah. I’m proud of her.”
They grinned at each other. Jo took the
opportunity to probe for more information about him. “So, have you
had some nasty breakups?”
“Huh? Yeah, I guess.”
“I always wondered why you don’t date
anybody. Did some girl break your heart years ago and ruin you for
the rest of us?”
Terrell did that sliding movement again. Jo
realized it was an effort—possibly unconscious—to put some distance
between the two of them. That knowledge crashed down on her with
humiliating force. She
was
pushing him into hanging out with
her when he didn’t want to. She didn’t know what was wrong with
her, but Terrell Hubbard didn’t want anything to do with her.
Jo set her jaw so her lips wouldn’t tremble
and tried to figure out a way to make a graceful exit. “I’m, uh,
I’m embarrassing myself,” she said. “I can go eat in the break
room. It’ll just take me a minute to clean this stuff up.” She
reached for her tray.
“Wait,” Terrell said. “Hang on.”
She glared at him. “I’m not trying to get
your pity. It’s cool. I promise.”
“No. Wait.” There was something so intense
and steady about his gaze that Jo found herself sitting still. “The
last nasty breakup I had, I was dating someone from the
college.”
He was opening up to her!
Jo folded
her hands in her lap and tried to present the right mix of
sympathetic and attentive. “What happened with her?”
“Well…” Terrell cleared his throat.
“
He
straight out dumped me. When he figured out that I
wouldn’t let him just yank me around.”
Jo blinked, stared, then blinked again.
“
He
.”
“Yeah.”
Relief rushed through her. There wasn’t
anything wrong with her. She smiled. “Thanks for telling me
that.”
It was Terrell’s turn to blink and stare.
“That’s your reaction?”
“Yes…” Jo began to second-guess herself. This
was the second person in twenty-four hours to come out to her, and
she’d had no idea either time how she was supposed to respond. “Did
I screw that up and say the wrong thing?”
“No.” Terrell shook his head and leaned back
in the booth. “No, that was a really great response, actually. I
appreciate it.” He flashed a smile at her. “If I’d known that’s how
it would be, I’d have told somebody sooner.”
Jo coughed. “You haven’t told anybody?”
“Well, obviously my boyfriends knew. Other
than that, no.”
Jo thought of Daisy and all the ways she’d
avoided revealing the truth. Jo had been hurt by that. She’d
thought that Daisy ought to have told her best friend sooner
instead of lying to her and starting up a weird relationship with
Riva Corley on the side.
“Don’t you have…I don’t know. Friends?”
“I’ve got friends!”
Jo realized how insulting that had sounded
and quickly lifted a hand. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it
like that. I was just thinking. I wondered why you would tell me
first. You don’t really know me.”
Terrell shrugged. “When the time is right, I
guess. Some people around me have been struggling with these
things, and it’s been on my mind. I didn’t want to make it about me
while talking to them, so I’ve been holding it back. I guess I was
ready to say something, though. Finally.”
Jo nodded. “You’re talking about Riva and
Daisy.”
“My cousin told you what’s going on with
her?”
“Daisy did.”
He exhaled slowly. “Okay. Then, yes. That’s
what I’m talking about. I didn’t want to be spreading rumors about
them.”
“No, you’re not.” She bit her lip. “Look, can
I ask you something? It might not be the best question to ask right
now.”
He quirked his lips. “I can cuss at you and
jump up from the table if you make me mad.”
The sound of her laughter startled her. It
felt like a long time since she’d done that. Really long if she
searched her mind for a genuine instance rather than the laughter
she’d put on to impress Declan. “If you did tell a friend, someone
really close, how would you want them to respond?”
“I don’t think this question is about
me.”
She admitted the truth. “It’s not. Things
have been weird with Daisy lately. I feel like she doesn’t trust
me. I’ve tried to be there when she needed me, but it’s like I
always say the wrong thing. I know I’m hurting her feelings, but I
don’t know what I’m doing.”
Terrell leaned forward. “Did she come out to
you?”
Jo rolled her eyes. “Last night. After, like,
weeks of her obviously liking someone and refusing to tell me
who.”
“I know you two are close, but I promise it’s
not easy to come out to somebody—even if you trust them. Maybe
especially if you trust them.”
“What do you mean?”
Terrell shrugged. “If you’d reacted badly, I
never had to see you again. I could stop coming to this restaurant,
avoid you in school, whatever. If the guys on the basketball team
get weird around me, what do I do? Give up the sport I’ve been
playing my whole life? Go to the locker room every day and get my
face rubbed in how things have changed? Watch guys who used to be
my friends whisper about me? I don’t know Daisy, but I bet she was
scared that telling you the truth about herself would change how
you acted around her.”
“The way she avoided me changed the way I
acted around her.”
“It’s not easy to figure that stuff out.”
Terrell lowered his voice and glanced from side to side. “Can I
tell you something else? Something only my mom knows about me?”
She gave him an impish smile. “Sure. I mean,
since you’ve gotten started, why not?”
“I do know about food. I’m a great cook. I
love that more than basketball. I got offered a scholarship to a
school with a good team, but I really want to go to culinary
school.”
Jo cocked her head. “Okay, that’s a tough
decision maybe, but I don’t get why it’s a big secret.”
“You don’t think it sounds gay? Being a guy
who cooks?”
Jerking her head toward the kitchen, Jo
frowned. “Most of our cooks are guys. I think that’s how it is in
most restaurants. Hearing you like to cook just makes me want to
eat your food.”
The air rushed out of Terrell’s lungs with a
whoosh
. He dropped his chin to the table, a sheepish
expression on his face. His pho bowl was bigger than his head.
“Stupid thing to worry about?”
“Uh, yeah. I think so.”
“My mom’s been telling me that for years. But
she was also telling me that the way I cook was going to get me a
girlfriend.”
“You should tell your mom about
yourself.”
“You think so?” Terrell laughed.
“What’s funny?”
“I made my cousin tell her mom what was going
on with her, but my mom doesn’t know jack about me.”
“No, I don’t believe that,” Jo said. “She
knows about your cooking, right? And she has to know what a good
guy you are. If you tell her you’re…” She still wasn’t comfortable
saying the word. “If you tell her that, you know, that guy from the
college broke your heart, isn’t she just going to think about what
she can do to help?”
“You don’t know my mom.”
“I can see how she is from the way you talk
about her, though.”
“So what about you? What should you be
telling your mom?”
Jo whistled and shook her head. She prodded
at a jalapeño that hadn’t made it into her soup. “No, there are a
lot of things my mom doesn’t need to know. I’d be grounded for,
like, the rest of my life. I really
don’t
think she’d
understand.”
“My turn to ask you a question,” Terrell
said.
“Only fair.”
“What were you doing trying to get with me,
anyway? I thought I saw you with Declan Brady. He’s a good
guy.”
She shook her head, feeling sad. “I screwed
that up. I was looking for something new.”
“What did you do?”
She sighed, tears coming to her eyes from the
memory. “I spent, like, an entire day crying in front of him.”
“He didn’t like that?”
“No, he was totally nice about it.”
“Then how did you screw up? By being
real?”
She laughed bitterly. “Yeah. I guess.”
“You know what I’ve been thinking the past
couple days? Wouldn’t we all have an easier time if we stopped
pretending so much?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
He slapped his palm against the table. “I’m
convinced. You want to eat my food? I’m going to have a big party
and cook for my friends. Anyone who thinks it’s gay…well, I guess
they’d be right about me.” He grinned bravely, though even Jo could
tell he was shakier about his idea than his confident tone
suggested.
She smiled back. It was hard to imagine what
her life would look like if she stopped pretending. There would be
a lot of anger and crying. She’d have to do things that weren’t
pretty. Maybe she’d have to take some risks she didn’t like—such as
trusting a guy to do more than have fun with her. “Well, I don’t
know what I’m going to do,” she told Terrell. “But if you’re
inviting all your friends, make sure to count me in, okay?”
He nodded and stood from the table. “Come
here,” he said.
Jo stepped into Terrell Hubbard’s arms,
surprised by how pleasant the warmth of friendship felt.
* * * *
After hanging out with Emmy, Daisy went for a
long drive. She thought about all the people she’d been hanging out
with lately and tried to figure out what she wanted to be doing
with her life. She knew that, above all else, she was sick of
hiding and pretending. She was also tired of settling for less.
She liked Riva, but she didn’t like what had
happened with Benton. She didn’t like the emotional roller coaster
she’d been on the night before, either.
Daisy turned the radio up loud and made her
way to the beach. There wasn’t time to hang out there much if she
wanted to get home and cook dinner with her mom, but she needed to
feel the breeze and smell the ocean salt.
Since the day was winding down, there was
plenty of space available in the beach parking lot. Daisy got out
and sat on the trunk of her car. Despite the heat of the day, the
chill wind off the water made her shiver.
Even from some distance away, she could hear
the rhythmic crashing of the waves. Its familiarity comforted her.
Everything about her world felt different lately, but she’d been
coming here all her life, and this place was still here for her,
unchanged. She lay back, enjoying the heat coming off the car.
She’d told Emmy she’d definitely help set up
the gay/straight alliance. Emmy had pointed out that she didn’t
have
to come out to do that. She could present herself as an
ally if she wanted to. Daisy had said she didn’t want to take that
easy way out.
She tried to imagine how people would
react—the girls on the volleyball team, girls she knew through Jo,
teachers, guys who’d tried to date her. Emmy had talked a lot about
how lonely she’d been, and how she hadn’t liked being seen as some
sort of official representative.
Right now, Daisy didn’t care about any of
that. Being herself seemed like it would be such a relief that any
price she had to pay would be worth it. The person she’d worried
about most was Jo, and now that Jo knew, she didn’t feel scared
about anyone else.
Daisy felt ready to deal with rumors. She
pictured herself walking down the hallway, hand in hand with Riva
Corley. It was a nice vision, but now that she and Riva had kissed,
the idea didn’t feel the way it used to. Now she knew Riva wasn’t
perfect, and that being with her wouldn’t magically resolve Daisy’s
problems. Kissing her wouldn’t teach Daisy how to be a lesbian.
Riva Corley had stopped being a fantasy for Daisy. She’d become a
real person.
In telling the truth to her, Daisy had
discovered that she was a lesbian whether or not she kissed Riva
Corley. She always had been—there was no particular act she needed
to do to make that real. She’d felt for so long that she didn’t
know how to be herself, but that wasn’t true at all. She’d been
herself when she’d watched
I Can’t Think Straight
over and
over. She’d been herself when she’d come out to Jo, but also when
she hadn’t.
As if on cue, Daisy’s phone buzzed in her
purse. She pulled it out and saw that Riva had finally answered her
text. She shielded the phone from the wind and gave her a call.
“How’s your day?” Daisy asked when Riva
answered.
“I broke up with him, Daisy.” Riva’s voice
sounded thick with tears but also flat and numb.
Daisy paused, trying to think of the proper
thing to say. “I think that was the right thing to do,” she said
finally. “Not just for selfish reasons.”
“Thank you,” Riva said. “I also told my mom
everything. Including the truth about you.”
Daisy’s heart jumped into her throat. This
was the first time the fact of her orientation had spread on its
own. Riva’s mom was the first person who knew who Daisy
hadn’t
told directly. Daisy could see why Riva had opened up
to her, but she couldn’t help feeling panic. It felt weird for the
truth about herself to be out in the world, outside of her
control.