The hug was familiar, but it felt wrong… This was her cue to kiss me on the lips and tell me that we’d be together-together forever and always, wasn’t it? This was meant to be the first step in our tandem march to ‘happily ever after.’ Paradoxically, however, when she told me she was happy for me, it made me sad. This was meant to be an us-moment. In my head, this whole narrative had been unfolding like a love story… Not some pseudo-coming-of-age tale centered on my personal self-discoveries about my sexuality. But it seemed like there was a glaring discrepancy issue between our individual perspectives, our respective points of view.
I served my whole heart to her on the shiniest silver platter, but she handed it right back to me.
One side of my mind warred with the other. In the end, I decided to clarify what I really meant. To state, in no unclear terms, that I was in love with her. But she began talking about me ‘exploring’ this new aspect of my life. For some reason, she was speaking a mile a minute, talking a blue streak. She was also not making any eye contact, so it took a while for me to figure out what she was saying… When it clicked that she was recommending that I have sex with other women, I felt absolutely gutted. She made jokes about how honored she was to be my ‘sapphic sexual awakening,’ but I wasn’t laughing. Her revelation that the first woman who’d lit a fire in her belly was a tricorn hat-wearing Elizabeth Swann from ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ didn’t even earn a smile from me.
This felt wrong-this felt so, so goddamned wrong.
“You’ll be okay with me sleeping with other people?” I asked, hurt and blindsided. An awful realization hit me like a Mack truck. The bolt from the blue shocked then crushed me. I put two and two together… If she was okay with me fucking someone else, then that meant I had to be okay with her doing that, too. And I wasn’t. Not at all. Fuck no.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” She asked in return. “I believe that life gets better whenever we learn more about ourselves, so I fully support you discovering more about this part of you.” She gave me another hug then kissed my cheek. “Again, I’m really proud of you, Cass. I love you!”
For the first time ever, I didn’t feel like saying I loved her back.
. . .
Given how happy I’d been, the change brought on by Gray misconstruing my confession was downright jarring. It was like a cheerful meadow scene abruptly changing to a haunted graveyard. There was no transition at all… It was just a gauche, sloppy, inelegant jump-cut. The former shot hadn’t gradually crossfaded / dissolved to the next, it was simply startlingly replaced. Like if there was ever a figurative bridging shot then that footage had been corrupted en route to the metaphorical editing suite.
Nevertheless, despite how sad I was, my roommate and I didn’t stop hanging out, talking or having sex. For all intents and purposes, it was ‘business as usual’ in Apartment 202. As if the force majeure catastrophe wreaking havoc on my brain and heart wasn’t a true cause for concern. Over the course of our strange, special friendship, I’d made many, many wishes that nothing between us would ever change… I’d wished for it whenever I read eleven-eleven on the clock, whenever I threw coins into fountains, whenever I ‘pretended airplanes were shooting stars.’ It wasn’t a wish I’d made every day, but it was one I made constantly, devoutly.
The long and short of it was, I’d repeatedly begged the universe for Gray and I to be friends forever. Which was why I was experiencing such a severe case of cognitive dissonance. For so long, I’d drilled into my brain the importance of maintaining mine and my roommate’s extraordinary friendship. Yet, here I was now, slowly but surely destroying that very friendship I’d valued so highly each time I slept with her.
Every time we had sex-every time I made her come, every time she made me hers… I resigned myself to my fate more and more. Unlike my mythological Ancient Greek namesake, I wasn’t gifted with the ability to predict the future. But I didn’t need to be a god-chosen oracle to know that my heart was bound to be broken, doomed to be destroyed. It was a foregone conclusion. A foreseeable yet inevitable tragedy because being ‘friends forever’ with Gray was no longer what I was wishing for. Friendship wasn’t enough. It just couldn’t be.
Not as long as I was head over heels, madly in love with her.
. . .
Antithetical to the beliefs of that anti-tattoo grump from my childhood, Gray’s body was now my temple, my place of worship. Whenever I was naked and alone with her? That was when I not only gave thanks for my life’s blessings but also prayed for a miracle. The latter could come in one of the two variants: option one, she miraculously fell in love with me; or option two, I miraculously fell out of love with her. I would’ve accepted either but not both… Because the sting of unrequited love wasn’t something I’d ever be willing to put her through.
In general, I didn’t believe in the ‘eye for an eye’ mentality, so I wasn’t aiming to inflict the pain I felt on Gray. Of course not… I loved her. Which meant intentionally hurting her was just a circuitous route to hurting myself.
Anyway, the altar between her thighs was where I silently pleaded for our fates to be altered. Practice really made perfect, by the way… Although I was by no means a ‘sapphic sex goddess’ yet, the two-plus months we’d spent fucking practically daily at least enabled me to hold my own whenever we were being intimate.
Case in point, right now. We were on our living room’s couch. Her back was on the cushions, while I was on top of her. “Fuck, that feels so good.” I felt her warm breath on my cheek. “Deeper a bit.”
Immediately, I met her request. I plunged my fingers further into her wet warmth. When she began to tighten around me, I covered the flower tattoo on her neck with kisses. When she was coming undone, I moved my mouth to the ink-less side of her throat and sucked on her ivory skin. When her climax ended, I pulled away and admired the light hickey I left behind. Akin to the long-gone stick-on tattoo that she’d once placed on me, it was also a temporary ‘mark of our friendship’ that time would soon erase.
. . .
For almost a week now, Gray had been out of town. She’d accompanied Blue Ranger and Gatsby on some unplanned road trip… So, we hadn’t spent any ‘quality time’ together in a while. This had been the longest we’d gone without having sex since we started doing it. And look, their last-minute trip wouldn’t have bothered me as much if it hadn’t come the day after my roommate told me her plans for the near future… Unlike me, she knew where she’d be going once she moved out of Apartment 202. Instead of looking for a new place to rent, she’d stay with her sister, so they could focus on planning the wedding scheduled for June next year.
Meanwhile, I was still hopelessly hoping for a deus ex machina, in any form or shape, that’d indefinitely postpone our inevitable tragic ending.
The phrase was: ‘out of sight, out of mind.’ And yet, in my case, Gray was gone and I felt like I was going out of my mind. Once I’d learned about her concrete moving out plans, a toxic specter in my head began ceaselessly taunting me… Duh, Cassidy, get a clue already! My roommate’s readiness to move forward with her life was more proof of how unrequited my romantic feelings were. My negative headspace was exacerbated by how terrible she was at texting anyone back. Whatever. Again, I was still in the ‘prime of my life’… I needed to stop sulking like some scorned, jilted lover.
For my mental health and sanity, I needed to believe that my life wouldn’t be hollow once Gray and I parted ways in less than five weeks.
Which was why two days ago, after I saw a close friend’s social media post about directing a few ads, I’d messaged her and offered to help out for free. As someone whose finances were in the red, I didn’t make a habit of providing my time and services without charge… But at the moment, I had no gainful employment opportunities available and I was desperate for a distraction from my depression.
An advertising firm had hired my friend to create three long-form ads for a well-known snack brand. Apparently, the company wanted to get all its ducks in a row, so to speak… Which was why although it was only April, they were already in the midst of producing a trio of ‘thematically uniform’ story-telling ads for Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas.
While on set earlier today, a manager from the advertising firm had caught me repeatedly staring at her for the second day in a row. Unlike yesterday, the 5’9″ brown-eyed, brown-haired woman had approached me and playfully called me out. Which had led to me apologizing for ‘being creepy’ and explaining that I was admiring the tattoos on her tanned skin. In particular, the unique equal sign on her left inner forearm. The piece was comprised of two identical horizontal rectangles that contained tiny detailed clouds.
Unsurprisingly, my interest had resulted in her asking me if I was a lesbian, too. Truthfully, I’d informed her that I only ‘recently discovered’ I was bi-sexual. Then after ascertaining I was single, she’d asked me out on a dinner date. And fast-forward a few hours, here I was on a Friday night, sharing a nice meal with an attractive brunette in her mid-thirties. So as to convince myself that Gray’s world wasn’t the only one that had any color.
Every time I caught myself thinking about my roommate, I pinched my thigh under the tablecloth. The woman in front of me was a bona fide catch. She dressed well. She currently had on a short-sleeved white button-up tucked into dark gray slacks as well as designer loafers that matched her belt. She looked good. She was rocking a trendy pixie cut with a textured top and a cropped left side, highlighting her sharp jawline and cheekbones. She was successful. She’d earned a diploma from a very prestigious university and was doing well career-wise.
On paper, she was the total package… And yet, I had to constantly refocus my attention on her since I couldn’t go ten minutes without checking if ‘a certain someone’ finally texted me back. I felt guilty about how distracted I was during dinner, I insisted on paying at the end of the meal. It took a while to convince my date, but she let me give my credit card once I agreed to a nightcap that she’d pay for. Unsure where to go, I suggested the speakeasy near Apartment 202 that Gray and I regularly patronized. It was a cool place with a good ambiance, great drinks and a hidden entrance that resembled a refrigerator door.