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Tonight is the night you fall for your best friend.
You are leaving the house, finally leaving. She’s swinging by to pick you up and get you out of this madhouse because if you have to hear one more of your aunt’s stories about Sir Henry and the Lyceum in Rochester you will literally rip your ears from your head. Her car is new and nice, it shines like it’s been slathered with nail polish. The top even folds down. She arrives at your door and you hardly say two words of goodbye before you’re in the car with the wind making your hair just completely unmanageable, although somehow hers stays perfect, perfect as always. Tied back into a lovely pony tail, and yours all in your face. The price of cutting it short. That and the constant accusations of lesbianism. You laugh at them often, but you can’t tell if it’s the lighthearted laugh of an innocent or the bitter half-rasping laugh of the man on the gallows.
On your way to the movie theater she asks you what in God’s name your parents were thinking when they named you. Really, she giggles, who names a child Martha anymore? What is this, 1938? You’d give her a playful shove but you’d rather your night not be spoiled by a car accident, so you just snort and reply, sorry we can’t all be as bland and boring as you Ms. Karen Wright. At least Dobie’s an interesting name. Her smile is small and her lips pursed together as she laughs. Her lipstick is lovely, yes, it’s got to be her lipstick that’s caught your eye. What other reason would you have for staring so long at her lips? You bite your own and look away.
Who knows what the film you’re going to see is about. Who knows what’s in it. You’re not quite the movie type. They’ve got no fourth dimension, your aunt insists, so they’re hardly in your house at all. Sure Netflix has helped, but Karen makes it her mission to educate you on the cinematic arts and if it means getting to see a movie with her every weekend, well, who are you to complain? And tonight, oh god, tonight you’re running a whole thirteen minutes late for the film. Someone just couldn’t get off the phone with that cute hospital intern she’d met over coffee. But, Joe Cardin be damned, you’re rushing into the theater and, just to make sure you don’t miss a second more than you absolutely need to, she grabs your hand and pulls you along.
And she doesn’t let go.
At least, not until you’ve settled in your seats and she’s completely sure that you’ve made the best time you possibly could have. The commercials haven’t even ended yet, of course, and the movie isn’t even close to beginning, but you could care less because Karen Wright was holding your hand. And you are a lesbian and you were looking at her lips because you wanted to kiss them. And you’re blushing. Your whole body is hot. You think you might be sick.
You excuse yourself to the bathroom, in your hastiness almost missing her pleas to hurry back quick before the movie starts. You stare at yourself in the mirror, hopping from one foot to the other. You are scared, you are scared out of your wits and you want to cry but you can’t bring yourself to do anything but grin because, Jesus Christ, Karen Wright was holding your hand. You splash your face with water and remind yourself to stay cool. To get in control. She is not a lesbian. And she wants to kiss boys like Joe Cardin. And she cannot, cannot, cannot know.
You can hardly tell your aunt, when you return home that night, what the movie was about. You can’t name one person in it, and, truth be told, you can hardly form a coherent sentence. Your head is spinning. Her hands were so, so damn close to yours the whole damn time, you kept them dangling between seats just so that they might brush again. You are a wreck, but tonight you couldn’t give a single fuck because, even if everything is falling apart, Karen Wright was holding your hand.