“Don’t. Fucking. Patronize me,” she hisses, straining to keep her voice low. “It’s not like that, I don’t want it to be like that.'Let’s all be careful around Charlotte, she can’t handle the queer talk',” she says in a mocking voice, but a tear drips over her waterline. “No.”
“Then what do you want?” Riley asks, trying hard to stay calm with the ferret so close to her face. “I’m not allowed to bring up your sexuality, but I’m also not allowed to not bring it up. Help me out here Charlotte, because I’m lost.”
“Just—” Charlotte’s hands turn into fists, squeezing the life out of the blanket. “Just be… normal. Just act fucking normal. For the last time, it was just a goddamn kiss! There’s literally nothing going on and you keep turning it into this big problem!”
While Charlotte talks, Riley carefully puts Shaky down on the floor. He happily scurries towards a small round toy on the floor and starts pawing at it.
“Fucking normal?” Riley growls, her eyes spitting fire. When she continues, she can’t keep her voice down anymore. “You have a problem Charlotte, for fuck’s sake,you!I was hoping at some point during these last few months you’d engage your critical thinking skills, but you act like I’ve been tearing your closet door off the hinges to ask you to move in with me.”
“There is no fucking closet!” Charlotte shouts at the top of her lungs, not able to contain her tears anymore. They trickle down her face while she yells at Riley. “And even if there was, you have no fucking right—it has nothing to do with you! It’s my business, not yours!”
Riley seems to be putting a lot of effort into keeping her own breathing steady, but her eyes also glaze over.
“You’re almost right,” she says, her voice trembling. “Almost. Your sexuality is your business, yes. But when your sexuality started involving me, it turned into mine too.”
Charlotte scoffs and opens her mouth, but Riley is not done yet. “Do you want to know why, Charlotte? It's because I’m human too. Because I have feelings too. This is not about that fucking kiss. This is about you assuming things about me and then blaming me for it. And it hurts me.” Riley pauses briefly to see if her words land.
“Look, if you need me to be patient, I can wait. If you need me to vent, I will listen. If you need advice, I will talk to you for as long as you need. And if you need me to step away, to never bring it up again, I will even do that.But I will not allow you to talk me down like you did and project your own feelings onto me. That’s my boundary. That is where I draw the line.”
Charlotte blinks. She’s at loss for words and for maybe the first time in her life, her feelings are stronger than her thoughts. They swirl around in her body like a devastating whirlpool, forcing her to let go of every ounce of control she has. She’s angry, furious even, at the things Riley is insinuating, but she’s also deeply hurt by the woman in front of her breaking down like this. She is the one doing this; she’s hurting her.
Riley is showing her vulnerability, and in return Charlotte is spewing her bile. All because things are getting way too close for comfort. But it’s right there, right beneath the surface, the thing she’s trying to protect. The thing she has always held on to, the thing that’s been her solid foundation, the thing that’s slithering from her grip now. It’s getting loose, and the harder she tries to pull it back, the faster it escapes her grasp. She can’t hold on to it much longer.
“Why…” Riley gulps, and suppresses a sob. “Why is it… so hard for you? Why is this so sensitive?” Riley asks, her voice barely more than a whisper.
And Charlotte lets go. She surrenders and whispers: “Because I’m fucking terrified.”
6
“You do insane things to my mind, to my body, to my soul, things I’ve never felt before in my life. But I can’t… you drive me insane, Riley. The way I want to explore every piece of you, the way I’m drawn to you, the way you feel like my equal in every sense of the word, I… don’t know how to describe that. But I can’t be a lesbian, goddamnit.”
Charlotte looks into Riley’s eyes and witnesses her entire soul melt around her words. Her breath comes out as uneven gasps. “But why?”
“I’m thirty-five years old. If I’m a lesbian, it means I always have been. And the romantic life that I’ve lived so far will be meaningless. Everything I once was, it would have been a lie. It would mean I have lost so much time that I can never make up for.”
“That’s not true,” Riley says, getting up from the couch. She looks around for Shaky, finds him by the desk and picks him up. “You would have so much time stillleft. And a whole new world to explore. But who knows, you could also be bisexual, which would mean—”
“No, I’m not,” Charlotte grumbles, but there’s no hostility to it. “Whatever it is you awoke in me—there’s entire universes between that feeling, and anything I have ever felt for a man.”
The confession is heavy, but now that the dam’s burst, she might as well. Riley slowly walks over to her and her breath catches, but she relaxes when Shaky is lovingly placed in her lap. Charlotte clenches her teeth, but it doesn’t stop her from feeling an overwhelming amount of adoration—for the both of them.
She picks Shaky up and rubs his face against her own before draping him back around her neck. To her surprise, Riley doesn’t return to the sofa, but she crouches down and strokes one of his little feet with a finger.
“When I was in university, I was… really fucking straight,” Riley begins, chuckling at herself. “Except for this one crush I had on a girl who was a couple of years ahead of me. She was a very outspoken lesbian, definitely not shy about it, and everybody knew. I always admired the way she carried herself, but she also kinda scared me.
“One day, I was studying in a lecture hall. She was there too, a few rows away. Out of nowhere, the lights went out, the fire alarm went off, and then the fire doors closed in on us. I knew we were supposed to leave, but I’ve never felt comfortable in the dark and the alarm was so loud it launched me into a panic attack. I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, until all of a sudden, she was right in front of me, kneeling down.
“She put her hands on my legs and asked—no, ordered me to look at her. We looked at each other and she talked me through the entire thing. She put her hands on my cheeks at some point and fed me sweet nothings about how we were going to be fine as long as I kept my eyes on her.‘Keep looking at me, keep looking at me,’she repeated, until my panic attack subsided. At that exact moment I knew: no matter how badly I didn’t want to be a lesbian, I was undeniably in love with this girl.
“Right there and then, that feeling was so strong, a voice in the back of my head told me: if this is what it means to be a lesbian, if being a lesbian means that I get to be in love with her—then I don’t mind. It’s more than worth it. By the time the lights came back on, I was gay. And I’ve never felt more powerful.”
Charlotte’s lip trembles, brushing Shaky's tail along her nose. “Did you… did you end up dating her?”
“No.” Riley smiles. “We never even kissed. And yet it was enough for me, enough to feel so deeply honored by the ability to love a woman in that way. Which is to say: being gay for me, at that moment, had nothing to do with some kind of pressure from a community or my identity, or being attracted to the entire female population. It was just about liking someone; someone who happened to be female. But in the end, it’s just about love. That’s it.”
Riley drops the hand she was petting Shaky with onto Charlotte’s knee.
“I think I understand what you must’ve felt like,” Charlotte admits, her voice hoarse. “I’m still fucking terrified, though.”
