The barista behind the counter smiled at me, a warm, plenty-of-eye-contact kind of smile. I couldn’t tell if he was being friendly or flirty, but it didn’t matter. Either way, my stomach cooled and my eyes started to burn. I smiled back and hoped it didn’t look like a spasm.
Coffee in hand, I found a spot in an armchair by myself. I settled in to watch the rain drizzle down the window. When I’d decided on Seattle for college, I thought the rain wouldn’t bother me, or if I noticed it, it would just suit my mood.
Right. And wrong.
The rain suited my mood all right. Dark. Dreary. Gloomy.
Seattle may not have been the best choice.
I sipped my coffee, heat on my tongue on this chilly, rainy fall night. Around me, Crawl Cafe started to fill up with people. I hunkered down in my chair with my warm glass, trying not to feel lonely. I’d been in Seattle almost a month now, and had yet to make any friends.
This certainly was not Seattle’s fault. Lots of people had tried to befriend me in the last month, including the guy behind the counter at this coffee shop. Maybe after a while I would let them. Right now I still felt too raw to let anyone in, even just for a smile or a cup of coffee.
So here I was, at Crawl Cafe’s monthly poetry night, having decided that moping around in my dorm room was unhealthy and it was time to stop. Because moping around in public was so much better. I hoped the poets were good – I needed some distracting, and being distracted by terrible poetry was not what I was after.
The cute guy from behind the counter got up to announce the people who would read tonight, thanked us all for coming out, told us that we would judge the winner by applause, hoots, whistles, and cat-calls, and the grand prize was one hundred dollars in cash. With that, he stepped off the low stage and let the first contestant start.
Much to my delight, the poets were very good. The poems were witty, funny, poignant, sharp. These people took that hundred bucks very seriously. I was distracted for a good couple of hours, and trying to vote at the end was tough.
One man, though, struck a real chord with me.
He took the stage and began to speak in a deep, liquid chocolate voice that melted over me. His words were sober, his gestures small but eloquently timed. He talked about love lost, a generic enough topic, but he was brutally honest in a way that brought the words deep home. He talked about trust betrayed, but how much trust could there have been in the first place for the betrayal to happen? He talked about longing for the lost love to return, to heal the ache, but would it heal even then, knowing what they’d done to you once? How long would it take for that to be forgivable? Could you really live beside them, never forgiving them abandoning you? Never really believing they won’t do it again, ever? But even knowing that, if they called you right now, you would still hang on the phone, straining to catch every word, holding your breath to hear that one phrase: Maybe we should try again.
You. Pathetic. Fool.
He didn’t win, but he got good applause, and left me absolutely breathless with the painful, beautiful truth.
I loved that he could make me see it as beautiful truth even while it still hurt, even while telling me it was reasonable and also stupid to hurt.
When the voting was over and the winner had been announced, he still sat at a table, saying good night to a couple of people who’d joined him. I didn’t need to bolster my courage; I’m pretty outspoken. Instead I bolstered my wounds of betrayal and took a deep breath as I approached his table.
His smile when he noticed me was warm and welcoming. He was young, maybe still in college, long, curly blond hair and bright blue eyes. He was handsome in a very traditional sense, almost like a Ken doll. But more than handsome, he looked like a nice guy. Someone who would tell good jokes and take calls from desperate friends at three in the morning.
“Hi.” It suddenly occurred to me that based on a poem, I had decided to pour my heart out to this complete stranger. I cleared my throat. “My name’s Jennifer. Jen. Um. I just wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed your poem.”
His smile widened in real pleasure. “Well, thanks. I’m Kent.” He offered his hand to shake. I took it. He felt a little cold, like the fall weather was affecting him too.
“Well,” I started to say, but he stopped me.
“Are you on your way somewhere? Could I get you another coffee?”
I hesitated. This was exactly what I’d hoped for, but now that he’d asked, I felt awkward and self-conscious. Not to mention intrusive.
“I wouldn’t intrude,” he said, echoing my own word, “but I’m kind of on my own tonight.” He gestured toward the door of the shop where his friends had exited a minute before. “I’m a night owl. My friends have to work in the morning.”
I bit my lip. “Um, I don’t –”
He stopped me again. “If you have time. I’ll understand if you’re busy.”
I had to smile. “I’m not busy. I could go for another coffee.”
The smile I got in return warmed my insides until the rain outside didn’t matter any more.
“Great.” He waved me to join him at the counter, still beaming that warm smile. “So do you do poetry?”
I had to shake my head. “I draw. I’m working on learning paints better, but I don’t do anything with words. Not artistically, anyway.”
“A drawer.” He nodded. “That’s fantastic. What do you draw?”
“Kind of whatever I feel like, but I do a lot of fantastical realism.”
“Wonderful. We need more drawers in the world, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”
We ordered our coffees, and he insisted on paying, which would have been a little weird if he hadn’t been so sweet about it. Once we had our drinks, we settled back at the table his friends had vacated.
“So what are you doing in Seattle?” he asked.
“Going to school,” I said. And then, because this was the whole reason I’d approached him, and because I didn’t want him to get the wrong idea, “and getting over a broken heart.”
His face wilted in pained sympathy. “Oh, girl. Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to rip off any scabs.”
“It’s okay.” I wiped at my eyes. It had been a few months, I hadn’t thought I’d cry. His expression just reminded me so perfectly of how much it had hurt.
“Let me guess, high school sweetheart didn’t know what he had, left you for another girl, someone more conventional, am I right?”
I laughed a damp laugh, slightly bitter. “Close. She couldn’t take being called a dyke and left me for a boy.”
I wasn’t sure what to expect in response to that. But Delana’s reaction to other people finding out about or suspecting our relationship made me want to be out. As much as I dared, anyway. I didn’t want to surprise anyone again.
When Kent reached across the table to offer his hand, it almost made me cry harder.
“My first boyfriend tried to convince me it was okay for him to sleep with girls on the side. I put up with it for a while, you know, honeymoon period and all, but there comes a time when you don’t take their bullshit any more.” He squeezed my hand while I tried to quickly swallow him being gay. He had not struck me that way at all. “So. Did your ice princess have a name?”
“Sorry. I’m not trying to dump all over you. It’s just still sore, and your poem was so exactly what I’ve been feeling, I wanted to thank you. That’s all.”
He squeezed my hand again. “You’re not dumping on me. You thanked me, and you look like you could use a friend, so I invited you to sit and talk with me.”
I gave him a grateful look through the tears. I’d lost a few friends over the Delana thing. Some I didn’t feel I could say anything to, some had figured it out and distanced themselves, a few – like my sister – took the whole thing in stride, but even they weren’t sure how to comfort me. I’d been very lonely the last few months.
“Delana,” I said, answering his question. I wiped my eyes with the heel of my hand. “She was my best friend. Or she was, anyway, until I told her I thought I was in love with her. And then – she said she was in love with me, too.” The tears came harder as I said it out loud. Thinking about the moment she’d taken my hand. When I leaned forward to kiss her, watching her brown eyes watch me, feeling her lips against mine for that first time. Remembering, and knowing it would never happen again. That the magical electricity that had filled me with our first kiss had been false.
“That was about six months ago. Oh, my god, listen to me. I’m bawling my eyes out because my girlfriend of four months dumped me.”
“How long had you been friends?”
I blinked. “Hm?”
“Before you were lovers. How long had you been best friends?”
I saw his point before I even had the answer in mind.
“Years,” I said. “Since middle school.”
He made a sympathetic face. “Makes sense to me that you’d cry.”
I gave him a watery smile. “Thanks.”
“Hey, I’ve been there. I know talking about it can hurt, but it can help heal too. I’m a good listener, if that’s what you need right now.”
So I swallowed once, and I told him. I told him about our very first tentative kiss. How we didn’t talk about it after that, how I wasn’t sure if she would kiss me again. But she did.
My relationship with Dee had been an absolute whirlwind. We desperately whispered impassioned “I love you”s to each other second by second. We couldn’t bear to be separated for more than a few minutes at a time. I did not go into detail with Kent, but the sex had been amazing. We couldn’t keep our hands off each other.
We didn’t discuss what we were doing. We did not discuss whether or how we would tell anyone. We did our best to act like friends any time anyone else was around. I hated that, but when we were alone, talking about it felt awkward and unnecessary. We just made love, and talked about college and other kids and our parents and the future. We didn’t talk about us or what we were doing, but we talked about a future. Together.
We didn’t talk about it, and in hindsight, that was the mistake.
People noticed. Some said nothing. But we were in high school. Even kids who weren’t sleeping together got accused of it. Same-sex best friends got called “fag” and “lezbo.”
For Dee, the name-calling hit a little too close to home.
“Ignore them, they’re assholes,” I told her.
But still we didn’t talk about it.
And one day, Dee wasn’t around my locker when I got done with my last class. I was worried at first. I waited around for her, looked in the library, checked the cafeteria. When I couldn’t find her, I started to get more worried – and a little angry. We always met after school and spent the evenings together. Our parents didn’t know we were having sex, so one of us often spent the night at the other’s house. Why would she leave without me and not say anything?
When I got home and called her house, her mom told me she was on a date.
“I thought you’d know all about it, Jen, with you two being so close. Jason, I think she said his name was? It did come up awfully quickly. I’m not even sure of his name.”
She laughed a little. She didn’t hear my stomach turning cold through the phone. I said something vague and got off the line.
I waited for Delana to call me. I waited. And waited. Finally, well after midnight, I went to bed and didn’t sleep. I didn’t cry. I told myself, again and again, it’s not what it seems. There’s an explanation for this. I couldn’t think of one, but there had to be. I thought of her kissing me goodbye in my car before school, seeing it as a promise. Holding the memory through the night.
The morning found me worn out and shaking, my stomach upset. I dragged myself out of bed, skipped breakfast and headed straight for school.
Delana was not by my locker. She was not by her own locker. I stayed by her locker, since she had to get her books before her first class.
When she walked up almost an hour later, my stomach dropped again. She was with a guy. I’d seen him around school, he was some football jock, I did think his name was Jason. He had an arm around her. As they neared, she leaned over and kissed him. On the mouth.
It was like a punch in the face. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak, couldn’t move. My limbs went cold, along with my middle. For one long, horrible second, I stood still, staring. Then without deciding to, I ran for Delana, making a kind of whimpering noise in the back of my throat.
“Oh, hi Jen.” She took a step back from me. She pulled the guy a little closer. “This is Jason. My boyfriend.”
But I saw the panic on her face. She did not want me here. Did not want to deal with me. And I realized, suddenly, that when she had kissed me goodbye yesterday, it really had been goodbye.
“Oh, am I your boyfriend now?” the guy asked, ignoring me.
She wrinkled her nose at him. The way she had done a hundred times at me. “If you want to be.”
“Oh yeah?” He turned to take her in both arms.
I left.
I ran.
Delana tried to chat with me a few times, hinting that things were better this way, maybe I should get a boyfriend too. She still wouldn’t come out and say anything about us. About her dumping me. Eventually, she stopped trying to talk to me at all. It might have been something to do with me telling her I loved her, I didn’t want a boyfriend, I wanted her. I knew my declarations of love wouldn’t work. For all that she was the outdoorsy girl and I was the wardrobe hog, she was never as brave as me. I knew she was too scared, no matter what I said.
“So I finished up my senior year and got out of state as fast as I could,” I finished. “And that’s the whole sorry story.”
Kent held my hand through the whole thing, squeezing my fingers when I started to tear up. At first I felt awkward telling him the whole story while he held my hand, but as I talked, I slowly felt grateful for the gentle grip he kept on me. Anchoring me in the here and now.
“That sounds awful,” he said.
“It wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t for the rain,” I muttered, trying to lighten things a little.
He laughed. He had a beautiful laugh, wide open and joyful. It made me smile in spite of myself.
“And you chose Seattle why?” he asked.
“Seemed like a good idea at the time.”
He laughed again, that same happy sound.
“No, really. Why did you pick Seattle?”
I thought about it. “I liked the people. I looked at two or three colleges, and the people here were so genuine, so friendly. I thought, this is a place I can just be myself.” I touched my nose-ring by way of explanation.
“I know what you mean. I came from kind of a rough childhood, and that first boyfriend I mentioned was more of the same – it’s hard to know better when you grow up that way. It took me a long time to figure out who I am, and I love living in a place that supports me and reminds me who I am every day.”
“You make it sound so beautiful.”
“Don’t you think so?”
“I did, but I was here in summer. Before it started raining.”
“I think the rain is part of what makes it beautiful. There are a lot of spiritual traditions that talk about the cleansing properties of water – I think that might be part of what’s so lovely about this place. It cleanses everyone here so frequently they can’t help but be joyful and friendly.”
I frowned. “What about the suicide rate?”
He held up one finger. “Ah, I think that has to do with a person’s ability to handle being so intensely cleansed. Some people lose their negativity and emerge peaceful, open souls. Some people don’t know how to cope without that negativity and have to get out however they can.”
I nodded. That made an amount of sense. Even if a person wasn’t entirely negative, losing that part of themselves could be too much, especially if it happened quickly.
“Do you actually believe that?” I asked.
“Wholeheartedly. Come on. I’ll show you.”
With another of those winning smiles, he took the hand he was holding and stood, leading me across the shop to the door. Before we stepped out, he paused and looked at me.
“Think about how rotten you feel. Think about losing your love. Think about being lonely.”
My mouth canted sideways. “I’ve been trying not to think about that.”
“That’s your whole problem.” He pointed at me.
I raised my eyebrows.
“Just try it. Come on.”
I sighed. Closed my eyes. And called up the image of Delana kissing Jason. The sick feeling that picture stirred in my stomach. The moment I realized she wasn’t coming back to me. Kent’s hand on mine tugged me forward. I heard the door click open and opened my eyes. Gentle fingers brushed them shut again.
“Hold that image,” Kent’s voice murmured. “I won’t let you trip.”
His voice was positively divine, even more noticeably so with my eyes shut. I wanted to ask if he sang, but focused on my unpleasant memories instead.
He tugged me through the door and into the rain. The first cold drops tapped my face and made me flinch. Another squeeze on my hand. More rain drops tapped onto my face, my hands, my hair. I tried to relax and let it happen. Soon I had chilly trickles running down my face.
“Do you feel that?”
I frowned a little. “I feel cold.”
A warm chuckle, like liquid chocolate through my ears. “Just relax and pay attention.”
I did.
To my surprise, as the cold rain dripped on me, I did feel my sadness starting to seep away. I felt goosebumps raise on my skin, I felt water tickling down my cheeks, I felt the warmth of my sweater between me and the cold, I felt the firm grip of Kent’s hand over mine.
Not wanting to break the quiet between us, I nodded. When I got no answer, I opened my eyes. Kent stood beside me, his face so exquisitely expressive at that moment. I saw concern, compassion, curiosity, pleasure, and confidence. I met his eyes, letting the moment hang between us.
I thought he might kiss me.
I thought I might let him.
Instead, that beautiful smile came out, warming me inside where the rain didn’t touch. He gave me a spontaneous hug, and I suddenly felt like an idiot for the kiss thing a second ago. He’d told me about his boyfriend, I’d talked about my girlfriend. Why the image of him kissing me had popped into my head, I didn’t know. I hugged him back.
“How did you know that would work?”
He laughed. “I didn’t. It’s something I’ve wanted to try but haven’t had the opportunity. Did it work?”
I stared at him with my mouth open. “Yeah. It kinda did.”
“Let’s get in out of the rain. A little goes a long way.” He nudged my elbow and led me inside.
“You really didn’t know if that would work?” I trailed him back to the table where our hot coffees waited. I ran my hand through my hair to slick out some of the water and wiped my hand on my jeans.
“I thought it would. It’s a combination of mild suggestive hypnotism and attention-based meditation. Did it wear off because I told you how it works?”
I shook my head while I cupped my hands around my hot cup. “No. It’s weird that I know it’s just a trick, but I still feel a little better. Where did you learn that?”
He waved a hand in the air. “Oh, here and there. I studied with some Tibetan monks for a little while, and worked with a hypnotist while I was in a circus.”
I stared at him.
He raised his eyebrows. “What?”
“You say that like it’s just stuff that everyone does. You lived in Tibet? You were in a circus?”
He shrugged with one shoulder and toyed with his coffee cup. “I have a small inheritance. I’ve been able to travel a little and I don’t have to work a whole lot. It’s not that unusual. What would you do if you had a little bit of money come to you every year?”
I had to smile. “I don’t know if I’d go study with monks in Tibet, but traveling would be fun, and who doesn’t want to be in the circus? What did you do?”
He shook his head. “I wasn’t one of the acts. I did maintenance, odd jobs. Fed the elephants, patched the tents, ran errands, stuff like that.”
“That almost sounds like more fun. How long did you do that?”
Was it my imagination, or did his eyes cloud over for a moment? It was gone fast. Then he kept talking, and I forgot it. “Not long. One summer. It was hard work. But I did pick the hypnotist’s brain before I left. I’ve played with it off and on since. I can’t do the stuff he did, but I wanted to try that thing. With the rain.”
I smiled. “Well, it helped. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” He said it sincerely, which made me blush a little.
Before I could ask about the monks or the circus, he started talking again.
“So tell me the classes you’re taking to start out your college career.”
“I’d rather hear about the circus,” I said.
“Oh, it was such a short thing, the best part was quitting. I don’t think I’ve ever shoveled so much shit in all my life. Do you know how much elephants poop?”
I laughed.
“Seriously, that’s what most of my job was. I didn’t even quit, we just rolled into a city I liked and I left. That was it. It sounded fun, I tried it, it wasn’t fun, I left. Whole story. So. College classes?”
I laughed again, sipped my wonderfully warming coffee, and told him.
By the time the barista came around to tell us they were closing, Kent and I were still talking.
