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“Who was the tennis great who had a tennis scholarship from UCLA? Four letters.” Yolanda asked from Trinity’s bed, where she was doing the day’s New York Times crossword on her phone. It was part of her nightly routine- she did the Wordle, then Connections, then Spelling Bee, then the crossword, and while looking up an answer on her phone wasn’t allowed, “phoning a friend” was perfectly acceptable, and usually that friend was Trinity. Although, to be fair, she rarely needed Trinity’s input.
Trinity rubbed lotion onto her face. “You do realize that I had a gymnastics scholarship to UCLA and NOT tennis, right?”
Yolanda rolled her eyes. “Yes, I’m well aware of that fact. But seeing as tennis is the sport I probably know the least about other than hockey, I figured that you would have a better idea than me. Maybe saw it on the Hall of Fame wall beside your own or something like that.”
“My name is NOT on the Hall of Fame wall and even if it was, it wouldn’t be next to a tennis player’s.” Trinity put the cap back on her lotion, wracking her brain of any memory about a great tennis player who had played at UCLA. “I don’t know- Arthur Ashe maybe? It was forever ago, but I think they may have mentioned it on the tour.”
Yolanda smiled as she typed. “Yep- it’s Ashe. Thanks.”
Trinity climbed into bed next to Yolanda, placing a kiss to her cheek as she snuggled into her side. It still didn’t seem real- Yolanda Garcia, in her bed, doing a crossword puzzle, smelling of the Old Spice bodywash that Trinity and Dennis shared and wearing a pair of Trinity’s pajama bottoms and an old UCLA gymnastics t-shirt that Trinity had retired to bedtime-only use due to holes in the armpit from wearing it too much. If you had told her on her first day at the Pitt that this would be her reality, and not even a very occasional reality, but something that happened at least once a week, she would have laughed in your face.
It had just been sex, at first. It started the night they had gone out for drinks, when Trinity was supposed to be paying Yolanda back for dropping the scalpel on her foot. Yolanda ended up paying for the drinks, and then they walked over to Trinity’s apartment, shared a bottle of wine, made out on the couch, and then moved to the bedroom, where they had sex, talked, kissed, and had more sex until nearly 1 am. They were both exhausted and fell asleep without washing their faces or brushing their teeth. Trinity had woken to the front door slamming, signaling Dennis’s arrival home from night shift. Yolanda was still asleep, naked, next to her. She quickly pulled on a t-shirt and sleep shorts and made her way into the kitchen, where Dennis was pouring himself a bowl of cereal.
Trinity had been very clear with him about her sexuality the day he moved in. She remembered that he was from a religious family, had majored in theology during undergrad, and while she didn’t know how attached he still was to organized religion, it was clear that his faith had great meaning to him.
“I’m gay. I’m not ashamed of it, and I won’t be shamed for it. Is that going to be a problem for you? If it is, you need to tell me now. And you had better tell the truth.”
Dennis had simply given her his famous wide-eyed, sad puppy look. “It’s not an issue. I mean, not to me.” He paused, and then said, “I have a cousin who’s a lesbian. She lives in Omaha,” and Trinity couldn’t help but laugh at the way he said it, as if Omaha was one of the great queer cities in the US alongside New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Dennis was such a good egg.
She came up beside him, making him jump and let out a yelp.
“SHHHHH” she said, placing a hand over his mouth. “I am begging you- do not be weird about this. But Garcia is currently asleep in my bed. I don’t want you to freak out if you see her.”
Dennis removed Trinity’s hand. “Garcia. As in… Dr. Garcia?”
“The one and only.”
“Why is Garcia asleep in your bed?”
“Why do you think Huckleberry?”
Dennis simply blinked before frowning slightly. “That’s not good.”
“Please don’t tell me you’re going to try to pray the gay away or some shit. You told me it wasn’t an issue for you.”
“No, no, of course not! That’s not the problem. It’s just… I owe Perlah $20. She has a bet going that you two were going to get together.”
“You don’t owe Perlah anything, because you aren’t going to tell anybody about this. Got it?”
“I mean, I don’t have $20 to give her. I was going to ask you for it anyway.”
“Seriously, Dennis.”
“Don’t worry about it. I won’t say a word.”
And he didn’t. Not that first time, when he and Yolanda passed in the hall on the way to the bathroom and he simply said “Hi, Dr. Garcia” and she snapped “Don’t call me that here.” Not the third time, when Yolanda watched The Sixth Sense with them as part of Trinity’s mandatory “weekly roomie movie night” and forgot about the popcorn and set off the smoke alarm. Not the eighth, when Dennis forgot to lock the door to the bathroom and Yolanda walked in on him brushing his hair after a shower, shirtless and wearing only a towel (“Who knew Huckleberry had some muscle on him?”). Not the twelfth, when Yolanda screamed at him when she found out he’d accidentally used the toothbrush she’d been keeping in the bathroom for the nights she slept over.
Trinity nuzzled into Yolanda’s shoulder, placing a kiss to it. Yolanda reached over to tuck a strand of hair behind Trinity’s ear, then ghosted her fingers softly against Trinity’s cheek. It was soft, and warm, and made Trinity’s stomach squeeze in the best possible way.
“You’re off on Thursday night, right?” She asked.
“Mmmhmm,” Yolanda answered, inputting another answer into the crossword. “Why? Do you want me to come over?”
“I mean, yes, always. But my brother and his wife are going to be in town.” Trinity’s brother Jason was maybe her favorite person on the planet. She had a complicated relationship with her parents, particularly her mother, but it had always been easy with Jason. He was three years older than her and had always been her hero. He lived in San Francisco, working in tech and making an obscene amount of money. She liked his wife very much, although she hadn’t spent nearly as much time with her as she would like.
“Oh?”
“Yeah. They’re here for most of the week, they get in tomorrow, but I wanted to see what night you were off. I thought we could all get dinner.”
“Oh,” Yolanda said, her eyebrows furrowed.
“What do you mean, ‘oh?’”
“I didn’t think we were there.”
“Where?”
“The ‘meeting the family’ stage.”
Trinity felt her stomach squeeze again, but this time in a much, much less positive way. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, that seems pretty serious.”
“It’s not that serious, it’s just my brother.”
“It IS that serious,” Yolanda said, setting down her phone. “I thought we agreed that this”- she gestured between the two of them- “was just casual.”
“We did the first time we slept together, four months ago.” Neither of them had been looking for anything serious, and had agreed to just “keep it casual.” But then Yolanda kept coming over, and not just for sex. She came over to watch Real Housewives, and when Dennis made his mother’s “famous chili,” and to give Trinity a foot rub and heat up canned soup for her when she called in sick with a bad cold. She kept a couple of spare pairs of scrubs in Trinity’s dresser, and a toothbrush and face wash in their bathroom.
“And nothing has changed. We’re casual.”
Trinity pulled away from Yolanda. “Are you fucking kidding me right now? Casual? You think we’re just casual.”
“Yes.”
“Was it just casual when you rented a U-Haul and went to New Castle with me on your day off to pick up the couch I bought on Facebook Marketplace? Was it just casual when you came over and comforted me when I lost the two-year-old whose dad accidentally ran him over in the driveway, and I’d worked SO HARD to save him and had to tell those parents that he didn’t make it? Was it just casual when you told me you weren’t sleeping with anyone else, and I told you I wasn’t sleeping with anyone else? Was it just casual when I told you how much my mom pushed me my entire life to be the perfect gymnast, and the perfect student, and the perfect daughter, and how even though I got a full ride to college and became a fucking doctor I’m STILL never good enough for her? Was it just casual when I told you that my gymnastics coach molested me and my best friend for YEARS, and she killed herself because of it? Was it just casual when I showed you the scars on my thigh, and you kissed them and told me how beautiful I am? Because none of that is casual to me, Yolanda. It hasn’t been casual to me for a long fucking time.”
Yolanda’s jaw clenched, but she didn’t answer.
“Maybe I’ve just misinterpreted our whole relationship. Maybe it was just about sex for you. I’ve bared my soul for you, but you’ve only given me surface-level snippets of yourself.”
“I’ve given you more than surface-level snippets.”
“No, you haven’t. You’ve given me the same basic type of shit you would give to someone on a first date. You’ve told me that you like running, that you worked at Jimmy John’s in high school, and that you hate how humid Miami gets. You haven’t told me anything about your family. I don’t know if you have siblings, or if you’re an only child, or what your parents do for work, or if you still have a relationship with your biological family at all. I haven’t even been to your place. In four months, you’ve never invited me over. Not once.”
Trinity felt her eyes prickling with tears. Damn it. She hated crying.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t know anything about me.”
“Yeah? And why is that? It’s because you haven’t told me anything about yourself. Every time that I try to get close, you shut me out.”
“What do you want me to tell you?” Yolanda said sharply. “That I’m an only child but always wished that I had siblings because it would have been less lonely? That I spent most of my childhood with my grandparents because my mom was a nurse who worked nightshift at a nursing home? That my dad died in a car accident when I was 5 and I barely remember him, and that the whole reason I wanted to become a trauma surgeon was so that I could try to save people, so that other kids wouldn’t have to go through the same loss that I did? That the job at Jimmy John’s was to help my mom out because I felt bad about her having the only income? That I studied my ass off and worked twice as hard as everyone else to get into Yale because I knew it was my only way out of Miami?
That I’ve never invited you over because my townhouse was picked out by my ex, and has less personality than one of those staged apartments that real estate companies show you, so I hate it? And that being here, with you and Whitaker, feels better than that cold casket of a townhouse ever could? Oh yeah, and that my ex wasn’t just an ex-girlfriend but an ex-fiancée, who was with me all through med school and the beginning of my residency and let me get her a ring and buy the exact townhouse she wanted with the down payment I’d gotten from the money from my dad’s life insurance policy that my mom had set aside for me, only for her to decide that she actually didn’t want to leave Philly? And that she was most definitely sleeping with someone else and that she’s now married to the woman she almost certainly cheated on me with and has a kid with her?
I’m sorry that I’m afraid of letting people in because I never know when they’re going to leave me. Everyone has left me, except my mom. My dad died. My grandparents died. My fiancée broke it off with me. Everyone leaves eventually, and the less I give of myself, the less it will hurt when it happens.”
Trinity was quiet, taking in all that Yolanda had told her. She simply grabbed Yolanda’s hand, running her fingers across her knuckles. “I’m not going to leave you.”
“Yes, you will. Eventually you will. You’ll get a better job, or you’ll decide to go somewhere warmer, or you’ll find someone who’s able to give you what you need better than I can.”
“But I’m here with you now. I WANT to be with you now. I want to learn everything there is to know about you- the good things, and the hard things. I care about you, Yo. A lot. And I think that even though you’re saying it’s just casual, and that there are no strings attached, that you really care about me too. The sex is great, but it’s not the sex that I want, it’s YOU. Just you.”
Trinity saw a tear slip down Yolanda’s cheek. She reached out to brush it away.
“Look, I’m not asking you to marry me, or to buy me a townhouse that you’re going to end up hating, or anything else. I’m just asking you to be here, with me. And to let me be here with you.” She didn’t say it, but what she really meant was, “I’m just asking you to let me love you.”
“You can let me in. I want you to let me in. Can you do that?”
“I can try.”
“That’s all I ask. I just want you to try.”
Yolanda leaned against Trinity’s shoulder. “I could do dinner on Thursday. With your brother.”
“He’s a nice guy, really. He’ll like you, and I think you’ll like him. He’ll probably share some mortifying childhood stories about me.”
Yolanda chuckled.
“And maybe the next weekend that we’re both off, we could go look for some things to make your townhouse feel more like a townHOME.” Yolanda rolled her eyes at the pun. “Believe it or not, I really would like to spend time there, too. And that may or may not have something to do with the fact that we don’t have to worry about being too quiet so that Dennis doesn’t hear us.”
Yolanda smiled. “I’d like that.”
Trinity turned off the bedside lamp. “’Night, Yo.”
“Night, Trin.”
Trinity’s phone buzzed with a text. She picked it up- it was Dennis. “For the record, I can still hear you, even with music playing and my headphones on” was all it said.