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The flat is quiet if dense with frustration.
Carla maintains dominion over her kitchen, while Lisa is subjected to the couch alone. The space between them groans as it grows wider, filling up with tide. Carla hears it roaring in her ears, anger like a wave that threatens to push her under, and a part of her wants to let it happen. A part of her wants to sink beneath her rational self and bare her teeth.
“You said you were okay with waiting.”
From the couch, Lisa twitches around to look at her.
“I was. I am!”
“Well, clearly not. Were you just agreeing with me for the sake of it, in the hotel? To avoid another argument?”
“No! Obviously not.” Lisa gestures at the space between them, at this new argument filling in the gap, but loses steam before she can follow up on the thought. “I meant what I said. I don’t want to rush you, or this.”
“Then what’s the problem, Lisa? Because we’ve had this conversation before. I thought we’d put this to rest.”
“Yeah, we had,” Lisa scoffs, and then almost loses her voice. “From the privacy of a hotel room.”
She is not quiet enough, and something in Carla ignites when she hears her.
“What was that?”
“No, nothing… I didn’t mean”—
“So, we’re meant to have our most personal, intimate conversations in the middle of the pub for everyone to overhear and hold me accountable for, or else I mustn’t really mean it?”
“That’s not what I”—
“Then tell me, Lisa,” Carla interrupts her, and there is something frenzied in her voice, some cliff-edge desperation that overrides the anger. “Right now, just… tell me what you’re feeling. All of it. Even the parts you think I won’t want to hear—no, especially those. I need to know where you are.”
“I’m right here,” Lisa sighs.
“Lisa.”
“Alright, fine. I’m feeling put on the spot.”
Carla wets her lips. “Keep going.”
“Frustrated.”
“Why?”
“Because I’ve just watched you spend the last half hour with a man who couldn’t keep his hands off you.”
“A gay man.”
“Well, I know that now!”
Carla bites her lip to keep from saying more. She shrugs her arms out, giving Lisa the room, the space to speak.
“What else?” she asks.
“I’m feeling—embarrassed.” Lisa sighs and then stands up from the couch. She paces nearer the kitchen, lingering on its fringes, testing Carla’s boundaries not for weak spots, but for where her own might slot into place. Carla watches her, wary, but does not deny her approach. “I feel mortified.”
“Why?”
“Because—because I don’t do this! I don’t act like this. I never have.”
Carla sighs, and even now, there is sympathy so quick to hand that it almost dizzies her. She wonders if it would be worse, if she couldn’t understand Lisa, if she could not see the gaping wounds in her as plain as day—as similar as her own, if still red raw around the edges. She wonders if it would be better, if that screaming organ inside her own chest was not so insistent on her licking them clean.
“Of course, you’re not used to it,” she says. “You were married for how long?”
“And what kind of excuse is that?” Lisa rubs a hand into her face, pinches the bridge of her nose. Recovers. She meets Carla’s gaze head on, like she won’t let herself shy away from it. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me, in there, I don’t—I’m not that person. I’ll apologise to your client again, if you think that might”—
“I think,” Carla hastily cuts in, “that it’s best if you just don’t.”
“Right.”
Sighing, Carla folds her arms against her chest and leans back against the fridge.
She looks at Lisa and recognises the expression on her face.
“What else are you feeling?”
Lisa takes another step forward, into the kitchen now, into Carla’s space. She leans her hip against the kitchen counter as she nears it, rests a hand there, too. Like she’s holding herself back—like she’s holding herself up.
“Afraid.”
Carla frowns.
“That you’re never going to be ready for this to go public. That you’re going to ask me to hide it from everybody but the people who already know. That we’ll be sneaking around for as long as this lasts, and I’ll have to listen to people encouraging you to make a move on every attractive man who comes into your orbit, because they still think you’re single. That I’ll have to sit and watch men try their luck with you, buy you drinks or ask for your number, and listen to you give every excuse under the sun that doesn’t acknowledge me or our relationship.”
Carla works her jaw, but bites her tongue. She needs Lisa to get this out now, so that it does not fester.
(Her own can wait. Her own can rear its ugly head when she’s better prepared to deal with it.)
“I don’t want that, Carla. And I will wait, God, I will wait, but what happens if I wait so long that it gives you a chance to change your mind?”
“Change my mind? About what?”
“About us. About me. What if we wait so long, that you figure it’s not even worth coming out for? It’s not even worth being in a relationship, if it means facing all those people talking about you behind your back? The gossip and the rumours and the inevitable homophobia. It’s easier to just sack it off now and never have to deal with any of it, and just go back to dating men because that’s so much easier than putting up with this.”
Carla feels her words like a slap in the face, like several.
It is one thing to recognise Lisa’s insecurity, but another to be targeted by it—to feel its stinging red handprint left behind in her cheek. It takes more patience than she thinks she’s capable of, not to rise to it. Not to call it out. Not to lash out the way that she would, when she was younger, not to leave her own marks in Lisa’s flesh.
“I really wish,” Carla whispers, instead, “that you didn’t think so little of me.”
Lisa winces, but says nothing back.
“Is that what you want?” Carla asks. “To end it now, so we can avoid all that mess? It might go wrong eventually, so why even bother, right?”
“No,” Lisa tells her, fiercely. “No, of course I don’t want that.”
“Then what do you want?”
Lisa pushes away from the counter, takes another step closer. Almost face to face, now, almost within touching distance.
(She is neck-deep in the tide that swells between them. She is ready to go under.)
“I want to be with you, and I want to be seen with you. I want you to feel comfortable being out with me, with walking down the street holding my hand, or going on a date in public with me, or referring to me to other people as your partner.” She takes another step closer. “I want to be that person who sits opposite you in a restaurant and can’t keep their hands off you because they want you so bad, and I don’t want it to be misconstrued by anybody watching as anything less than it is.”
Carla swallows, bites at the inside of her cheek until her teeth leave behind an impression.
Ignores, but does not deny, the spark of heat that Lisa’s words ignite in her.
“You do have a possessive side, don’t you?”
Lisa blinks, halts her slow approach.
“I’ll work on it.”
“And the jealousy?”
“I’ll work on it.” She takes another step forward, and they are close enough to touch, now, if either one were to reach out. “I don’t want to be that person, I don’t want to feel this insecure. I know it’s… not fair of me to ask you to come out before you’re ready, just to make me feel better. Tell me to back off, and I will.”
“Don’t.”
Carla reaches out, then. Grabs her by the waistband of her trousers and tugs, pulls Lisa with her when she presses herself back against the fridge, blocks herself in with Lisa soft and warm against her front. She gives herself nowhere to escape—this is her escape. Lisa’s hands come up to her shoulders, while Carla holds her by the hips, pulls her in closer, eliminates all space between them.
Close, like this, there is nowhere for either of them to hide, no less within themselves.
“I meant what I said the other day,” Carla tells her. “I’ll tell everyone tomorrow.”
“I don’t want to make you do that,” Lisa says, but she is struggling and Carla can see it.
“No, but I think you need me to do this more than I need to take my time with it.”
Lisa releases a breath like all the weight has been lifted from her shoulders, like all the anger has been leeched from her veins—most of it, directed inwards. Without it, she feels cold and small until Carla secures her arms around her back. There is gratitude in her expression, but something else, too—something that brings a fresh sting of moisture to her eyes, something that makes them shine and pick up the light.
“I’m sorry,” Lisa whispers, fighting to keep her voice.
“I know.”
“I’m so sorry. I don’t actually think that, what I said before, about you changing your mind.”
Carla says nothing, not to argue and not to agree with her.
“Or maybe I do, but I don’t want to. I know it’s not fair to feel like this, when you’ve been so—perfect.”
“Perfect?” Carla snorts.
“To put up with me. To not give up on me. Maybe your client was right, when he said I should save my money for a psychiatrist.”
Carla hums, acknowledgement, but she recognises that this is not a topic for today—not with the glib way that Lisa brings it up, not when they’re both already smarting. She rubs her hands into the small of Lisa’s back and lets herself enjoy, for this brief moment of quiet, the way that Lisa’s belly moves against hers with every breath she takes—the pressing intake, the retreating exhalation.
Lisa is the first to break the quiet.
“Do you forgive me?”
Finally, a smile small and tender in the corner of Carla’s mouth.
“Oh, sweetheart, you’d know about it if I didn’t.”
Humour threatens Lisa’s expression, but the gratitude is stronger—the sheer relief in her eyes wins out.
“But I need to know you trust me,” Carla tells her, sobering. “This isn’t easy, Lisa, and I’m not talking about my sexuality. There are parts of myself that I never even knew existed, and it’s a lot. It’s a big change. I already feel like I’m in over my head, and I’ll get there, I will, but I need you to just—help me.”
As soon as the words leave her lips, Carla feels shock like an electrical impulse stiffen her spine.
She has the sudden urge to hide her face, but she has not given herself the room, and Lisa notices.
“I will,” she tells her, and it’s the most certain she’s sounded all day. “I’m here. I will. And I do trust you, I'm sorry I've been so rubbish at showing that.”
When she leans in to kiss her, Carla meets her halfway.
Lisa’s hands move from Carla’s shoulders to her face, pressing her back against the fridge door, where she cannot move unless she applies enough pressure to break free—and Lisa lets her, gives her that option, keeps herself close but not overbearing, keeps Carla secure but not caged. She gives her no room at all and all the power she needs to break free. Instead, Carla’s hands grasp tighter at her shirt, sink into the satin soft of it, pull and pull and threaten to tear it if Lisa does not come closer, still.
There is something desperate about it, there is something nail-sinking and needy, tenderness on the precipice of agony, that when their lips part, Carla gasps for air and closes her eyes and sinks back against the fridge to catch herself and her breath again.
“In all of that,” Lisa tells her, maintaining her closeness, her thumbs brushing at the curves of Carla’s cheekbones, “you never got to say what you wanted out of all of this.”
Carla’s eyes flutter as they open.
She considers Lisa, her face unguarded. She has seen her like this only once before, and it takes Carla right back to that hospital bed, to the way her heart had lifted when Lisa walked through the door.
She could tell her anything, Carla realises. She could say anything at all, even those big words she’s kept tucked inside her ribcage, the ones she feels swell and crowd and press up against her chest every time she catches Lisa’s smile, unguarded. Hears her laugh, unrestrained. Instead—
“I want you to kiss me like that again,” Carla whispers, and hears tidal waves in her ears when Lisa indulges.