Kate Christie (25 page)

As a lesbian, I’m used to being accused of hating men. I usually prefer to think of myself as a lover of women, not a hater of men. But as I held Jess in my arms, the sobs ripping through her, I felt the ember of rage that had ignited inside me at her admission growing stronger, feeding on the images that curled through my mind: Jess with a man’s thick-fingered hand over her mouth, a heavy male body pressing her into a mattress or against a wall or onto a floor, blood between her legs, under her fingernails, on her lips where she’d bitten herself as he forced himself into her. I didn’t hate men as a whole because of what had happened to her. My brother and dad were good men who would be outraged by the bastard who had assaulted Jess. But just then I hated a man I had never met more than I had ever hated anyone before.

I shut my eyes against the awful pictures, but it didn’t help.

Then I thought about Jess lugging around this horrible memory 12 Kate Christie

she thought she had to hide from everyone, this history she seemed to believe divided her from her peers, made her damaged goods, unlovable.

She wouldn’t be alone with this anymore, I decided as her sobs eased and her body relaxed against mine and her breathing took on the regular rhythm of sleep. I would be whoever she needed me to be. No matter how she felt in return, it was enough that I loved her. For some reason, this realization was freeing.

At that moment, I didn’t need anything from her except to be allowed to try to help however I could. I had never felt anything quite so selfless before, I thought, slightly in awe of the strength of my own sentiment.

I closed my eyes and kissed Jess’s hair as she slept in my arms.

I only wished she could be this at peace always.

A little while later she started awake, and we sat up and turned on the lights. Her tears had dried. In the lamplight, she blinked and smiled at me shyly.

“I’m glad you came over tonight,” she said.

“Me too.”

Despite what she’d told me, I felt a growing sense of peace.

She hadn’t sent me away and I didn’t have to hide anything anymore. Seemed like a win-win to me.

I stood up and stretched my hands above my head, my muscles tightening and then releasing. “Hey, are you hungry?”

She stood up next to me. “I could be. You want to make some dinner?”

“Definitely. You still have to tell me about Arizona.”

“And you have to tell me about L.A.”

Which reminded me… “Can I use your phone? I told Holly I’d call her.”

“Sure. Is pasta okay?” she added, heading into the kitchen.

“Awesome.”

While Jess poked through the cupboards, I dialed Holly’s room.

“Hola,” I said when she answered. “I was just over here at Beautiful Game 13

Jess’s and remembered I was supposed to call you.”
Hint, hint.
In the background I heard a door slam. “Am I interrupting?”

“You could say that.”

We were both speaking in code for our respective audiences.

“What, a fight?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Glad I called then.”

She laughed shortly. “Me too. What’s up with you? You’re still there, so obviously she didn’t kick you out. Or else—maybe you didn’t tell her?”

“No, I did. We’re making dinner right now.”

“That means you’ve been there a couple of hours, you confessed, and you’re only now eating dinner. Hmm,” Holly said. “Does this mean what I think?”

In other words, had we slept together? That was the way her mind worked. Mine too, usually.

“Not quite,” I said, looking over at Jess, who was setting a pot of water on the stove. “I have to help with dinner, since I’m the one who dropped in. Can’t leave all the work to Jess.”

The subject of our conversation looked over her shoulder and smiled. “Sure you can.” She pulled a jar of tomato sauce from the fridge. “Tell Holly I said hi.”

“I heard that. Give her a big kiss for me, Cam.”

“She says hi, too,” I told Jess.

She held up a bottle of red wine questioningly. I nodded.

“Wuss,” Holly said.

“Anyway,” I said into the phone, “want to meet for lunch tomorrow so you can tell me what’s going on with you and Becca?”

“Sure,” she said, “and vice versa. In the meantime, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” she added. Jackass.

I hung up and walked over to the stove, resisting the urge to wrap my arms around Jess’s waist from behind. After all, it wasn’t like she’d said she loved me back. Then again, she hadn’t said she didn’t, either.

“What can I do?” I asked, peering into the water.

“It’s pasta,” she said, pouring tomato sauce into another pot.

“Not much to do.”

14 Kate Christie

“Tell me about Arizona, then. How was the trip?”

I leaned against the counter and listened to her talk about the week in the desert—double sessions on the courts, days off when they hiked to the top of mesas, nights hanging out around a campfire. They had outlined their team plans and goals. This was the year they were going to win nationals, they’d decided.

That rung a bell. I remembered a soccer meeting early on in the fall before Jamie and I were at each other’s throats. With a couple of wins behind us and the whole unknown season yet ahead, we’d talked about our goals for the season. A national championship was the ultimate objective for plenty of teams, realistic or not. Tennis, though, would have a significantly better shot at it than we’d had.

“What did you and Holly do all week?” Jess asked as we sat down at the table a little while later, plates heaped with steaming pasta and red sauce.

“We were a lot lazier than you. Mostly we laid out.”

“I can tell. Nice freckles,” she teased.

“Hey now, not all of us can have perfect tans.”

“I don’t know. Yours looks pretty good to me.”

“Thanks. You look pretty good yourself.”

She glanced away. “What else did you guys do? You couldn’t have spent the entire week by the pool.”

We sat in the kitchen talking over our meal as if nothing had happened, trading stories of our separate spring breaks. This was the way it was supposed to be, I thought as I took a sip of wine to wash down the pasta. Jess seemed lighter than usual, almost as if telling me about the rape had somehow lessened the power the memory held over her. I knew it couldn’t be as easy as that, but I hoped that telling me would signal the beginning of something good for her.

After we’d cleaned up the kitchen, we returned to the living room and switched on the TV. Curled up together on the couch, shoulders and thighs touching, wineglasses on the coffee table, we watched the
Movie of the Week,
a made-for-television film about a couple’s struggle to rescue their daughter from a religious cult.

I wasn’t really focused on the movie, though. I was just happy to be in Jess’s apartment with her beside me and everything out in Beautiful Game 15

the open. Happy to look at her and smile and have her smile back even though the girl in the movie was being drugged by the cult leader at that exact moment. Happy that Jess had decided not to walk into the ocean three years before.

She fell asleep again, her head on my shoulder, before the movie ended. I stayed awake with my arm around her shoulders, hand stroking her hair, cheek resting against her forehead. So this was what it was like to really love someone, I thought, new feelings rising and falling inside me. There was tenderness, vulnerability, protectiveness. If anyone ever tried to hurt her again, I would kill them. It wasn’t even a very fierce thought this time, more a matter-of-fact promise I was making to myself. I wouldn’t let anyone hurt her again.

My eyes wandered from the television to the painting on the wall, the one I’d guessed on my first visit was supposed to depict a storm. And all at once, I understood—it was hers. Jess had painted the night she’d been raped, the night she drove to the ocean and sat on the damp sand thinking about ending her life. She displayed the image now in her living room, I supposed, to remind herself that she’d chosen to live. That she’d decided to be strong.

I wondered how long she could continue to be strong. I wondered what I would have done in her shoes. I wondered if the storm was still somewhere inside her just beneath her collarbone, maybe, waiting to deluge her again. Not if I had any say. But realistically, I knew I probably didn’t.

When the movie ended, I hit the power button on the remote.

“Come on, Jessie,” I said softly, squeezing her shoulder.

“Time to make the doughnuts.”

Her eyelids fluttered, and she looked up at me, blinking in the semi-dark room. Outside the window the sky was black, stars pricking the canopy of night. “Oh. Hi.” She yawned.

“Hi,” I said. “Time to get you to bed.”

She sat up. “Are you staying?”

“Sure. This couch and I are buds.” I patted the cushion.

“No, I mean, with me.” She gestured toward her bedroom.

Gulping, I glanced toward the bedroom. “Are you sure?”

16 Kate Christie

She nodded.

“Okay then.” Didn’t have to ask me twice. Actually, she already had, probably because even in my most optimistic moments, I hadn’t pictured ending the night in her bed.

We got ready in shifts. I changed into the boxers she loaned me while she used the bathroom. Then, while I was brushing my teeth and taking my contacts out, she changed clothes and pulled the covers down.

I left the nightlight on in the bathroom and crossed to the bedroom, aware of the creak of the wood floor beneath my feet.

Sidney and Claire had to have noticed that I hadn’t left yet. Then again, they were probably happy that Jess was hanging out with a lesbian. One of the family, so to speak.

She was already curled up under the forest green comforter, bedside lamp glowing. I hesitated, looking at her questioningly.

Her hair was down, flowing about her shoulders in a dark wave.

She smiled, shy again, and patted the bed.

“It’s okay, Cam,” she said, her voice calm. “I promise.”

Taking a deep breath, I closed the bedroom door partway behind me and crossed the room. I couldn’t quite believe this was happening. Then I was climbing into bed beside her and sliding down beneath the cool sheets and warm comforter. My feet brushed against her leg and she pulled away with a laugh.

“Your feet are freezing!”

I had heard that complaint before. I shrugged, grinning nervously at her. “You know what they say. Cold feet, warm heart.” I had used this same line before, too. I burrowed down in the bed until my head was on the pillow facing her. “So.”

“So.”

We were only a few inches apart now. This close, I could see tiny laugh lines fanning out from her eyes.

“You have beautiful eyes,” I said. Another line. I had to stop.“I was just thinking that about you. Yours change all the time. Right now they’re green.”

“Because of the comforter.”

She smelled clean, a combination of shampoo, soap and toothpaste. And something else that was just her.

Beautiful Game 17

We were both quiet. I was afraid to move, afraid I might trigger some awful memory. But she was looking steadily at me with the open, vulnerable look I’d only glimpsed a couple of times. I moved closer and lifted my hand to her cheek. Her skin was so soft.

“Jess,” I whispered.

She met me halfway. Our lips brushed, softly, lightly, just for a moment. I pulled away a little, but she was too close. I couldn’t focus on anything except her eyes, half-closed and shining. I closed my own eyes and kissed her again.

We kissed for what felt like hours, bodies pressed together beneath the sheets, legs intertwined. I kept my hands shoulder-level, afraid of scaring her. The last thing I wanted was to remind her of the last time presumably she’d been this close to another human being. Eventually she pulled away, kissed me once more sweetly, and shifted onto her back, staring at the ceiling. Her breathing wasn’t steady.

Neither was mine. I watched her, feeling my pulse pounding at my neck. She was so beautiful.

“You okay?” I asked.

She looked over at me and nodded. “Better than okay.” She lifted her hand to brush my hair off my forehead. “I’m really glad you’re here.”

“So am I.” I hugged her against me. This was what life was all about, I thought, closing my eyes and burying my face in her hair. Jess turned out the light a few minutes later. We fell asleep holding each other. In the middle of the night I woke up, disoriented. Then my eyes focused in the dim light from the doorway and I saw Jess, asleep on her side, face turned toward me. I lifted my arm to her waist. In her sleep she moved closer to me. I smiled and sank back into darkness.

So this was love.

Jess and I skipped our classes the next day and lay around her apartment eating bread and fruit and cheese, drinking Gatorade and watching old
Laverne and Shirley
reruns. Among other things. Half the day we spent in bed. Jess wasn’t as nervous as she had thought she would be, she said. Still, we took it slowly.

I didn’t want to hurt her, not ever, so I let her set the pace, pleasantly surprised when she pushed me down on my back that first morning and had her way with me.

Every time I opened my eyes to see her leaning over me, I felt the same thrill that it was her lips on my collarbone, her fingers trailing over my taut belly, her hand tracing circles on my inner thigh. For so long, I had viewed Jess as cool, remote, asexual even. In reality, her interest in my body was unabashedly prurient. She seemed fascinated by the texture of my skin, the Beautiful Game 1

sounds that escaped the back of my throat as she caressed me, the slickness between my legs after she had kissed her way across my stomach.

Took a little longer for her to let me return the favor, but eventually she did, biting her lip as I slid my hand under the tank top she’d slept in. Despite the desire flooding through me, I went slowly and let her call the shots, and didn’t take it personally when she stopped my hand at the waistband of her boxer shorts. I knew it would probably be a while before she could let go completely and trust me with her body. Good thing I had a healthy ego when it came to sex. Not to mention, ample experience “helping women reach their full orgasmic potential,”