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She never asks, so Beth never tells.
The girl is going places; Beth knows. There’s a dogged quality about Jess that’s annoying as hell but she makes up for it with sporadic fumbles—those small moments of awkward energy make Beth awfully sincere. And she is. She is a good girl.
That’s what Beth has been telling herself so she wouldn’t yap at Jess and tell her to leave her apartment.
Perched in her seat and larger than life, Jess scribbles vehemently on her statement. The messy bun on her head wobbles when she writes, gripping the pen almost angrily.
Beth on the other hand, finishes another glass of cheap wine. Cheap, but useful.
“Are you just gonna mope around or what?”
Jess flings her bullet pen across her document and stretches, shirt riding up a bit as she challenges Beth for an answer.
Beth pours herself another one, smirking despite herself. It’s a small, tired smile from Jess’s view, but Beth has always seemed weather-beaten.
She spent ten years in prison for heaven’s sake; with that Beth looks like a supermodel.
Jess puts her fingernail close to her lips and puts it down when Beth arches a brow.
“C’mon! Spill!” Says Jess, letting her hair down and it bounces into a messy heap on her shoulders.
“Why’d you never ask?”
“Uh…” Frowning, Jess rubs her eyes, “I thought you just feel that Peter…that’s his name right? That you two weren’t good together so you just stopped—”
“No.”
Beth sets her wine down noisily.
“Why I went to jail.”
“Oh.”
Under Beth’s razer-like focus, Jess starts to chew her bottom lip.
Beth seldom looks at her like this. Their friendship revolves around silence and rashness, Jess popping in on Friday or Saturday nights and does her work in neat piles, claiming that it helps her “focus” when Beth knows her apartment is a haven for the younger woman when she doesn’t want to hang with her colleagues or go home. The first time it happened, Beth went tongue-tied for an excuse and Jess barges in, hogging Beth’s favorite chair and drinking Beth’s lousy liquor until she threw up, weeping and slurring stuff about her dreams and poor people’s dreams and how she’s letting everyone down. Beth had to hold both Jess’s hair and acidic remarks back when Jess retched into the toilet, sniveling.
Somehow that’s it. Jess latches on before Beth can push her away.
She even gave Jess a copy of the keys to her apartment, three months after losing Alec, and that was half a year ago.
“It just…didn’t occur to me. I mean I did think about it.”
Jess scratches her head and sees how Beth’s gaze shifts back to her. Beth is prone to sink into deep thoughts that make her look mean and austere. After all this time she’s spent with the older woman, Jess could say she’s figured Beth out. About Beth’s alcoholic preferences, at the least.
“I just don’t think…” Jess shrugs, “…when I represented you—god it feels like such a long time ago!”
Beth purses her lips at Jess’s burst of enthusiasm. Jess grimaces.
“Sorry, um, so I did learn about the charges but I didn’t think I need to know more than that. And…”
Jess’s hand jerks and Beth knows she’s stopping herself from biting her nails.
“I wanna say that you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but that just sounds condescending.”
“Uh-huh.” Beth props up her chin, amused.
Jess squirms, wishing for a glass of Beth’s wine. But Jess knows better.
Maybe Beth knows she gets wasted here on purpose so Beth can be closer. Touch her, even. Sure, Jess has initiated physical contacts but always subtle. Airy on the fabric, never on the skin. She’s still having nightmares about that don’t ever touch me again.
“I just think that, you know, maybe I know you enough. And this—”
Gesturing the space between them, Jess looks hopeful.
“—is nice, right?”
“Tolerable.”
Jess rolls her eyes but she cherishes the times of Beth being coy or grumpy or anything that makes her human and makes Jess warm inside.
“Maybe you know me and I don’t know you. I don’t know.” Jess concedes. Beth grins but to Jess, it feels like defeat.
Jess quickly covers it with a goofy smile, “Does it matter?”
Beth gives another long sip of the wine. Jess looks away.
“I’m selling the apartment.”
Jess looks back, blinking several times.
“And I want you to have it.”
Beth offers a price that Jess doesn’t quite hear.
“…you also need to move your ass out of that home of yours, don’t you?”
“Where are you going?”
“I told you, somewhere smaller and more affordable so I don’t need to work like a dog. Few blocks from here.”
Beth wants to reach across the table, grabs ahold of Jess’s hands just to get that kicked-puppy look off Jess.
Instead, she says, “Please consider it. I’m not putting it on Craigslist for all the weirdos out there.”
Jess laughs a little shakily.
***
A few weeks later Jess says yes and Beth purring into the phone saying you already have the keys anyway makes Jess’s bad thoughts disappear. For a while.
***
Beth knocks some more and when Jess doesn’t come hollering for the door, she considers leaving. It’s Saturday but her shift ends earlier than usual and she needs a drink so badly her hands tremble.
She could go to a bar, but it’s too far away and she doesn’t have the patience for it.
For the sake of booze Beth takes out her keys.
Even with the lights down there are, unmistakably, people of two on the bed.
“Shit!” Jess curses, stealing Beth’s line, “Wait! Beth!”
Closing the door, as Beth tries to get that image out of her head, someone grips her wrist and she has to stop moving or she might squash that someone’s—Jess’s apparently—hand.
“Are you decent?”
“Uh…”
“Jess.”
“No. But please! My friend is just leaving.”
“Is he?”
“It’s a she, actually.”
A voice that’s softer than expected echoes within the room, and Jess lets Beth go like she’s been burned.
The stranger says something low that makes Jess giggle in a higher octave, and says something back. Meanwhile, Beth scuffs by the doorframe, wondering if it’ll get any more awkward.
It does.
Beth finches when the door swings open. A woman who looks very much like the lady who’s in the Alien movies strolls out.
Jess stands behind, biting her nails.
The revelation is so comical that Beth wants to laugh. Jesus Christ. This woman looks like a smarter, richer version of herself—glasses, curlier hair, stoic lines, scholarly eyes, softer curves, laid-back stance.
“Ah, you must be Beth.” Having done the same evaluation on Beth and getting the same epiphany, the stranger tilts her head as a greeting, suave. Beth is glad she doesn’t seem like someone who does handshake.
“I’ll see you next time, dear.”
“Bye, Doc.” Chimes Jess but “Doc” is already pacing away without a care in the world.
Beth stares into the void while Jess stares at her.
Beth turns around. In the stunned silence, Jess drops her hand from her mouth.
“A drink?”
***
“She’s uh, just some distant relative, but we’re not related. Don’t get grossed out.”
Jess says flatly as if it would explain everything. Beth unloads her things on the chair and follows Jess into the kitchenette. A protest erupts from Jess when Beth steals the vodka from her hand, drinking directly from the bottle.
She watches Beth intently.
“Anything stronger?” Asks Beth, throaty. She pours the drink into Jess’s waiting mug, eyeing Jess’s liquor cabin.
“Help yourself.”
Another beat.
“You ok? Did something happen at work?”
Beth settles for whiskey. At least this time she didn’t suck another dick for no job.
“I’m going to lose my job.”
She forgets how quickly vodka can loosen someone’s tongue. But she’s going to have to tell Jess sooner or later.
“I gave a guy oral once, for a job. He ended up giving it to someone else. Today, the jerk somehow showed up and said something to my boss. That’s why she let me go early tonight.”
“Maybe…” Loyally, Jess trails behind her, naked feet padding against the floor, “…maybe she was just giving you time to chill. Maybe because she just doesn’t want to make a scene.”
“That’s just fucking naïve.”
Beth stares at the ceiling after she crashes and slumps against the chair. Feeling really bad for Beth, Jess imagines her having to blow someone just to get a job. That’s just fucked up and bleak. With that knowledge, Beth looks even more tired in her crumbly work shirt.
Speaking of clothes, Jess is suddenly aware of her own state of undress. Beneath the shorts and an old gothic tee, she’s not wearing anything.
“I don’t know.” Beth mutters, “I don’t know. Don’t get my hopes up you asshole.”
“You’ve worked in that parlor for so long,” Jess is smiling, but her tone is pretty serious, “and your coworkers, they know you!”
Beth scowls, downs her drink like taking a shot, and leans back with her hands cushioning her head.
She gazes at Jess lazily. The girl is doing a quick ponytail, oblivious that she gives Beth the perfect angle to spot a hickey on her neck.
“That’s a nice one you got there.”
“Huh?”
Beth chuckles.
“How did you two meet?”
Jess groans inward. At least she can offer Beth an—hopefully—entertaining distraction with her sex life.
“Well Doc and I,” Jess gets up and wanders into the bathroom, thinking if she got something on her face, “We met when she came for a mandatory lunch-date ‘cause my mom wanted her to tell everybody about her divorce…”
And that pause must be Jess finding out about the marks. The vodka and whiskey slams into Beth’s system just in time. Beth instantly feels better.
“…she just got divorced then.” Jess’s voice shifts towards the kitchen, “I didn’t like my mom forcing someone to share things like that, and I was pretty mad that she had to whine about me moving out. It was total chaos.”
“Sounds like an ugly fight.”
“It was, made my mom super embarrassed.”
Jess giggles, expertly adjusting the frozen vegetables on her neck.
“Doc helped with the moving.” Jess’s smile dims a little, “She’s good to me, I think.”
“But?” Beth isn’t drunk yet, nor is she drunk enough for where this conversation will go. They haven’t addressed the elephant in the room.
Jess gives Beth a long look with an anxious smile flickering on her face.
“We don’t…” Sighs Jess, “We’re only friendly fuck-buddies.”
Beth laughs, “That sums up quick.”
Jess wants to laugh along but why the fuck does she feel like crying? Beth is sitting so close but always so far away, like she’s always been.
The alcohol is going to make the hickey worse; Jess takes another gulp of the vodka anyway.
Beth sits up and drums her nails against the bottle.
“I should say I’m glad you found someone,” Beth offers blandly, “But I’m not. And you don’t look happy.”
Jess’s head jerks up. She scans Beth’s face. Beth stares back.
She desperately wants to ask what Beth means by being “not glad”, but she’s afraid of the answer.
Beth being uncharacteristically open means there’s no way out of this.
“You’re right.” Jess flips the veg-packet into a cooler side, “I know I’m just wasting time with someone I don’t really connect with, that’s why I feel horrible.”
“Please tell me at least the sex is great.”
Jess snorts, acting appalled but secretly appreciates Beth for the diversion.
“If you do it with a woman and still can’t come, then there’s something wrong with you.” Jess deadpans, not sure why she’s getting dirty so fast. Beth smirks with her eyebrows raised.
“Can’t argue with that, can we?”
Beth feels delighted at Jess’s shocked face.
“I thought you’re straight!”
“And I thought you are straight.”
***
She kisses Jess when Jess insists to follow her down and call her a cab. Beth kisses her not because she confirms that Jess is interested in women, or Jess being vulnerable makes her an easy target. Beth kisses her to shut her up, promise that she’ll go back to fight for her parlor job, and let her know you’re stupid to find a replacement of me when you can just ask for it.
And Beth knows it’s a good kiss when Jess kisses back after a squeal, running her hand in Beth’s short sleek hair and loop her hands around Beth’s neck, pulling her down into the kiss. She is so tiny and alive, vodka-flavored; Beth feels more inebriated, partly because you shouldn’t mix booze and drink it in one breath, straight to the heart, making Beth’s brain short-circuit.
“I’m not going to stay the night.” Beth croaks, “That’s too messed up even for me.”
Jess can’t speak, mouth ajar and lips kissed-puffy. She looks at the taller woman like she sees a ghost or the most wonderful thing in the world.
“For all this time…” The younger woman stutters and shakes her head, only to become aware of Beth holding her hands.
“Yeah.” Beth sighs, letting Jess go, smiling as she walks away.
“OK.” Jess stands rooted, “Ok.”
Beth disappears, smooth and slinky. Tasting whiskey in her mouth Jess is probably just going to stand here all night until she can stop grinning.