The shoes were placed on the glass counter.
“So, you’re not with Larissa?”
“No, I’m not,” she said and took a deep breath.
“Why not?”
“I’m getting really tired of answering this question.”
“Other people are asking you the same thing?”
“I know we had reasons why we broke up, as in plural. We fought. You cheated. We weren’t right for each other. You didn’t want to come out. I was ready to be with someone whowasout. All of that.”
“Yes, all true.”
“But was Larissa another one you never told me about?”
“Honestly?”
“Why the hell not? You’re engaged,” Harlow said. “We haven’t seen each other in five years, and we were good as friends before we started dating.”
“I don’t think I realized it until after we broke up.”
“Realized what?”
“That she was one of the reasons,” Laurel said.
“Not until after?”
“Nope. But when I realized it, Ialsorealized that it had been there all along. The night I first… well, cheated on you, it was a night when Larissa had been over at the house. You two were on the couch laughing about something when I got home from work, and I got this really slimy feeling that maybe you’d just been in our bed or something.”
“What?”
“It was like this thought that you’d just run out of the room and down the stairs to the living room so you wouldn’t get caught. Even then, I didn’t realize it was because I actually thought that was possible. I figured it was more aboutmethan it was aboutyou. I wanted to sleep with someone else. We’d been flirting, and she wanted to. You had Larissa and didn’t seem to need me how I needed you. So, I lied about needing to go to an event for work, and I changed and left. I met her, we had a drink, and you know the rest. I felt horrible about it after that, but it didn’t stop me from doing it again and again. I wanted to explore, but I later determined that I also wanted to punish you for loving her when you were supposed to love me.”
Harlow looked down at a green eleven-pound bowling ball under the glass of the counter.
“And you’ve realized it, too, right?” Laurel checked. “I don’t know where you’re at now with it. Maybe you two gave it a try, and it didn’t work. But you figured it out, too, didn’t you?”
“I knew I loved her before you and I met. I figured it out right away when we were in college.”
“You knew, and you still moved in with me?”
“I did. I’ve dated a lot of women in my life. And I know it’s bad, but the ones I’ve said the three very important words to, like you, Laurel, I meant. I meant the words. I just also felt them forLarissa. And no, I’m not over her. We didn’t try. She doesn’t even know I have feelings for her because I’ve never told her.”
“Wow! Really? Harlow…”
“I know; I’m a coward. Everyone thinks so. I should be out at dinner with her right now, but I came here because Samantha invited me to go bowling, and being with Larissa is hard these days.”
“Only these days?”
“I’ve been staying with her. I just got out of a relationship where we lived together, so I needed a place to stay, and Larissa’s is my go-to. I’m moving out soon and into my own place, but I decided to no longer just date women while I still have feelings for her, so being with her is harder than it used to be when dating someone else in the hopes of getting over her is no longer an option.”
“Ah… I see. So, you’re going with avoidance instead of confronting her with your feelings? That seems like a good idea.”
“Hey, you avoided coming out to your family until you were in your thirties,” Harlow argued.
“I know. Look how that turned out. I’ve known since I was in college, and I waited for over a decade, when I could have known a lot earlier that my father was a bigot and gotten ahead of the whole thing where I wouldn’t be taking over the company. Instead, I chose to plan events at a big company because I thought it would be fun, planning parties for a living, and it was a job, not because I wanted to do it forever. I knew I had a future, so I phoned it in most of the time when I could’ve done something else and not gotten laid off. I could have avoided spraying smelly shoes for a living and fixing arcade games when the coin thingy gets stuck.”
