“Yeah, you do, and another thing, Tor?”
“Yeah?”
Here it comes, I thought, the speech about whatever it was that I was fucking up or playing the wrong way or just simply not smart about.
“There are two reasons you’re nursing a hangover instead of a black eye,” she said matter-of-factly.
Since that hadn’t been what I’d expected to hear, I nodded in dumb surprise.
“Nina loves you and forgives you.”
“Yeah, well I love her too. I mean—”
“Then you’ll understand why I’m going to ask you not to do that again.”
I began to protest—I wasn’t ever going to do that again, but Sam held up her hands and went right over me. “I don’t mean the kiss, Tori. I mean the angry third degree too.”
“I’m really sorry about the whole thing. I was just…so…and then I drank on top of it and—”
Samantha finally gave me a tiny grin and actually put a hand on my shoulder. “I know, Tori, I know. But I need you to understand…” She leaned over, her gaze intent on me.
I stared back, almost mesmerized. Samantha’s eyes snapped with crystal fire, and for the first time that day, I saw what looked like a real smile.
“She’s pregnant,” she almost whispered.
I stared in shock and the gears in my head engaged, sorting through all the things about Nina I’d noticed in the last month or so. And she hated ginger ale. She was a Coke fan through and through. The pieces all fit together with everything I’d been learning in class, and in that second I felt absolutely nothing emotional, only the answer, shining brightly in my mind like a trophy on the shelf, and I reached for it. “Second month?” I guesstimated.
“Eight weeks,” Samantha agreed with a nod. A mixture of love, pride, and joy swam across her face, and I honestly couldn’t think of anyone else who’d earned it more.
Then it hit me. My cousin, my friend, my role model, my secret rival and big sister was going to have a baby. That—that was…“Awesome, Sam!” I smiled and impulsively hugged her.
“Thanks,” Sam grinned after briefly returning the hug, “but I’m not the one who has to give birth.” She got out of the car.
“Ah, true that, but…I’m sure you had a hand in it.”
I was pleasantly surprised to see Samantha blush and gaze down at the cement, which made me smile even more as I closed the door and stepped onto the sidewalk.
“Oh, hey, last thing?” Samantha asked as I approached the stairs.
“Yeah?”
“No one knows yet. Nina wants to wait another few weeks.”
I nodded as I thought about that—it made sense to me. It was still early, and anything could happen. But again, in light of what my mother had told me all that time ago about Nina’s issues with her parents, there might have been other reasons too. Either way, my cousin and her partner were more than entitled to their privacy; I wouldn’t be the one to violate their confidence.
“Sure, I won’t say anything.”
“Thanks.”
She clapped me on the shoulder and stared at the steps with me. “You ready?”
I swallowed. “Yeah, yeah, I’m gonna do this,” I said, kicking the sidewalk a little.
Samantha pulled her cell phone out of her jacket. “Hit redial if you need me?”
“Yeah, sure.” I dove a hand into my pocket to reassure myself of my phone’s presence.
“Okay,” I said, took a deep breath, and clapped my hands together. “I’m off.”
I trekked up the stairs to get my stuff.
Is the rate and quality enough to sustain life?
Up in the apartment, “Tori baby, I’m so glad you’re back,” were the first words Kerry said when I walked in.
“I’m so sorry, stud,” she said, following me as I walked through the apartment. “That was a total fluke, a complete and total mistake. I swear that’ll never happen again.”
I said absolutely nothing as I continued down the hallway, past the bathroom where—
“I just…you know how it is, bad experience, you make a mistake, but we’ll be all right, we can work this out…I love you.” Her hands eased around my waist.
“No…you don’t,” I said as I whirled around and caught her hands before she could embrace me. “You don’t love me.” Her gaze locked with mine. “If you did, you would have told me you were interested in someone else, you would have talked to me about something other than my being in class too much.”
My heart hammered against my ribs, and my breath kept getting stuck in my throat. I relaxed my grip on her wrists as I watched her eyes fill.
“If you loved me,” I tried again, shocked at the raggedness of my voice, “you wouldn’t have done that in what was supposed to be our home.” I let her hands go, and as I walked for the last time into what had been our bedroom, it hit me.
Home. She had fucked that girl in our home. I felt like…like I’d been robbed, like someone had taken something priceless from me, something that could never be replaced, a piece of me I didn’t even know existed until it was gone, and now I missed it, I missed it horribly. That feeling grew and sent icy fingers down my thighs, throbbed in my stomach, and I almost threw up as I packed my clothes and equipment, then gathered my books.
I ignored Kerry when she walked into the room, the only sound the light thump of one of my books hitting the bed where I tossed my things. I refused to even look at her until she stepped up behind me, put her arms around my waist, and unzipped my jeans. Sex, as great as it was, wasn’t going to fix this, not this time.
“God damn it, Kerry!” I spat, and pulled away from her, afraid to touch her. I was so angry I was afraid I’d hurt her, and I was so raw I was afraid I’d give in.
“Tori…please…it was a mistake, a stupid, stupid mistake…” I could hear her voice catch, and underneath it a memory played in my mind—my mother begging my father to stay—and the sound, the thought, the feel of Kerry’s hand as it tentatively touched my back made me hurt, my muscles achingly rigid now with the effort to not turn around and catch her up in my arms, to let the press of her need against me, around me, in me, make me forget, make me forgive the unforgivable.
“I can’t,” I said shortly as I mechanically rolled some underwear, a few pairs of pants, and some shirts into my gym bag. I slung it over my shoulder, made sure my equipment was on top of my book crate, then hefted it. I had everything I really needed, and I carried my things to the door.
“We can talk when you come back for the rest of your things.” Kerry’s voice floated up behind me as I balanced the crate against the wall and grabbed the latch.
This time, I turned to see her, really see her, as she stood there. Her hair, pulled back into a simple ponytail, shone in the light that streamed in from the kitchen window, and her eyes were swollen—she was crying, had been crying. I ached, but as much as the desire to just throw my stuff on the floor and comfort her tore at me, I resisted—she was crying because of the results of her own actions, not mine.
My mother had forgiven my father once, and in the end? He’d despised her for it. That wouldn’t be me, would
never
be me.
But it was terrible to watch Kerry cry.
“I’m not…” I swallowed and tried again. “I’m not coming back. Keep it all.”
I forced myself out the door.
*
“So…I hear congratulations are in order?” I asked when I saw Nina later the same day. She started for about half a second, then, to my amusement, arched a questioning eyebrow at her spouse.
Samantha shrugged innocently, then grabbed the full crate with my books and stuff from my arms. “We’re going this way,” she said cheerfully as she walked to the stairs.
I hugged Nina, then smiled at Samantha’s back as I followed her up; I knew a dodge when I saw one. She led me to the room.
“This one’s yours,” she told me, then checked her watch. “Okay, we’ve got to run. Settle in, and we’ll see you in a bit.”
“Thanks, I—” But she was already a breeze blowing downstairs.
As I faced my bag and my books, I heard the door shut and wondered if they’d get pictures of whatever was going on with the baby. I unpacked, arranged my clothes in the closet, and put my tech equipment on the dresser. Done in minutes, I wandered about the house because I could, because I’d never really explored it.
Their bedroom took up the front of the house, and next to it was a smaller room. That one was empty, and from the shade of apple green it was painted, I assumed it would become the nursery.
As I looked into the sunlit space, I wondered what method Nina and Samantha had used to conceive their child; as a pre-med bio major, I knew they had lots of options, and as a lesbian, I knew what most of them were as well as what the new research was. Maybe I’d ask Nina sometime, I mused as I walked down the hallway.
My room, a soothing shade of periwinkle blue, was next, followed by the bathroom, and at the other end of the hallway was a room almost as big as the master bedroom—filled with bookshelves, an overflowing drawing table, two large computers with a scanner between them, and drawings all over the place. I counted fourteen guitars and another five bass guitars in three different racks strategically placed around the room.
I brushed the smooth and polished wood, the car-bright and candy colors of the instruments as I walked around. I probably had pictures in one of my albums of either one of them playing each one, I thought as I recognized three of the guitars from their last performance.
I finally walked over to the back windows that overlooked the yard, and when I peeked out, I could see an old but well-cared-for garden house in the back. A little slate path wandered from its front door to what I suspected was the kitchen downstairs.
Done looking out the window, I returned to the drawings that hung everywhere and inspected them and the shelves. The drawings were strong, sharp, filled with action figures and cityscapes; I wondered if they were concepts for their next album cover.
Then I wandered over to browse through the bookshelves. The books ran the gamut from encyclopedia sets to an enormous graphic novel collection, with a few autographed ones carefully framed and standing on the shelves. There were also books about Asian martial arts tucked in with what seemed to be old books about demons. That topic really caught my attention, so I picked one of those up, cracked it open, and settled into one of the comfy chairs in the corner to read all about something called “hounds.”
The reading was fascinating: it described two kinds, ethereal and non, some of them human. Human hounds, while having no will of their own (they gave it up when they chose to become hounds in the first place), were set after prey, tracking them by the signature of their aura—I had to look that up in another part of the book—a trail they left, like footprints, through the energy field that surrounded the world.
It was all strangely heady. The hounds’ prey were to be converted to thralls, living vessels of energy that fed—
“Hi, Tori,” Nina’s voice rang into the room.
Startled, I almost dropped the book, but managed instead to close it and put it on the nearest shelf. I stood.
“Hey, Nina, I, uh, I owe you an apolo—” I tried to say, but Nina cut me off immediately.
“You owe me nothing, Tori—just be the best EMT you can be, okay?” She smiled and hugged me, a real hug, to let me know we were okay. I shouldn’t have been surprised, because that was Nina; she forgave me, and as far as she was concerned, it was over. That particular trait wasn’t something I’d mastered yet, but maybe, someday, I would. I didn’t think I was that generous-hearted, though.
“Do you like your room?” she asked as we walked down the hall together. She put an arm around my waist as we stood in the doorway and stared inside.
“It’s great,” I answered, and squeezed her to me lightly—I hadn’t forgotten what Samantha had told me, and I wanted to be very careful.
“I’m glad. This is your home, Tori, for as long as you want.”
Stunned, I faced her. “Nina, I’ll pay you back, that’s just…I mean, you can’t—the baby—”
Her eyes glowed with what I knew now was not only her own good nature, but also the joy of the not-so-secret she carried as she held me tightly.
“You’re family, Tor,” she said, “and that’s forever.”
I was slow to return the embrace, because as much as I knew that somewhere in my head she was right, something in the way she said it told me it might actually be true.
“Thanks,” I said finally, “thanks a lot.”
*
Sometimes I studied in the library/studio—and when Samantha read in a corner or played out her chops while Nina was working at her desk, either deaf to the world with a set of headphones and arranging tracks, or sketching out yet another cover concept, I remembered when I was a kid: Nina used to paint, and she’d even sit me on her lap so I could “paint” with her.
I asked her once why she stopped, because in my child’s mind’s eye she’d been so talented, but she smiled and shook her head.
“Goya, El Greco, and
Guernica
,” was her only answer.
When I shook my head because I didn’t know what she meant, she told me to take a break from blood for a moment and lent me an art text.
I got it—but I still thought she had talent, and I said so.