Why hadn’t I realized that? She may be straight and perhaps we could be nothing more than friends, even best friends. But if that were the case, it would be less than I hoped for yet so much more than I had right now. I was so lonely and I told myself that I could be happy if she was again my friend and nothing more.
I texted Patsy:
{Suze: Pats. No can do tomorrow’s run. She wants to see me.}
My phone rang within a minute.
“Talk to me.”
I took a breath. “I don’t know what’s going to happen. Kerry, the girl I spoke to you about—”
“I figured that’s who you mean.”
“Well, she came by my place today. She thought I was in San Francisco and just sat on my stoop. A few hours after she’d gone I mustered the courage to call her and probably told her more than I should have. I don’t care. I said I needed to see her. Pats, I really need to just see her.
“I’m taking the train up to Westchester in the morning. I’ll tell you how it goes.”
“Suzanne, I love you. She probably loves you even more. However it goes, make sure you understand that and that she understands how much you love her. Suzanne, you may end up as friends.”
“I want to be more than—”
“Suzanne, I know that. I’m just saying that this is one of those half-a-loaf things. If that’s all you can get from her, savor it.”
“Fuck.”
I hadn’t slept well. I had felt pressure in school and in running and hadn’t slept well before those events. But I always done well in those events. Still, they were nothing compared to this.
Kerry: Sleepless in Tuckahoe
I was wrong. I hadn’t slept well. At 6:30 I gave up and after going to the bathroom went down to the kitchen in shorts and T-shirt and mindlessly navigated my tablet.
I was scared but I needed to get my thoughts together. I hadn’t told my Mom that Suzanne was coming. My moods being so all over the place over the last months meant, though, that she had no clue about where I was from one moment to the next. She tried to speak to me a few times, asking why I wasn’t talking about or hanging with Suzanne any more. But she seemed satisfied when I told her that she was trying to get back into serious running while handling her law-school load and then that she was in San Francisco.
I think Mom knew better but she did not push it. I know she was chatting with Mary pretty regularly, and I had no idea what Mary knew, if anything. But my Mom was careful to say nothing and for all I knew she had advanced her initial flirting with Suzanne and that they were having regular liaisons while I was in class. Which, of course, made no sense since I was in all of Suzanne’s classes and knew that she was too focused on work to think of anything even semi-romantic. Plus my Mom had changed a lot since she had become friends with Mary and Betty and I feared I had screwed that up as well.
All of my thoughts and memories of Suzanne danced in my head when I received the texts.
{Suze: Train arrives at 8:22. I’m in the last car.}
{Suze: I need my caffeine. I didn’t sleep. xo.}
{Suze: I just hope that I don’t sleep through the Station. LOL.}
{Kerry: I’ll be there with the coffee.}
Suzanne: A Slip-Up
I did not mean to type the “xo” but it was gone. It probably did not matter, but I did not want to scare her off. So I sent a follow-up text, hoping she wouldn’t pick that up.
Kerry: The Train, The Train
I was awake enough to notice the “xo.” She’d never included that in a text. When she sent another text a second later, I knew that she was trying to cover it up, the old flood-the-zone trick. It calmed me down, the “xo.” She may not have meant for me to see it, but she would never text something that she did not mean.
I did not have much time. I had been sitting in the kitchen waiting for her text for forty-five minutes. I tried to play it cool when my Mom walked in to get coffee and because, as I said, I was all over the place with her she did not bother to ask. I did ask if I could use the car. After a moment’s pause, she said it was fine. She smiled when she did.
So I was able to get out of the house in less than a minute from the first of the texts. Just before eight. I was parked at the station by 8:05 and had two large coffees, one black (hers) and one with lots of milk (mine), in my hands, sitting on a bench on the platform by 8:15. Because the tracks curve south of the station, you don’t see a train’s lights until it is almost upon you. I stared past the yoga studio to where the tracks disappeared to the right.
Finally, the lights appeared. After sitting in the kitchen for a while I had changed into tight jeans and a red blouse and flats instead of my normal shorts, T-shirt, and trainers. And the emerald earrings. For her. It was a six-car train. I had to walk to reach the last one. Before I got there she exited. She headed toward me. She wore khaki shorts, a red polo shirt, and flats with her hair pulled into a ponytail. As she neared me, me holding a coffee in each hand, I said, “Suze I am so—” and she put her hand up.