Bouncing (17 page)

“I was a late bloomer. Small in high school. But I grew three inches when I got to college, and I worked hard on my game. I did okay.”

“I’ll say.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes before Brit spoke. “Thank you for the game, Alex. I needed it.”

“Bad day?”

“Awful.”

Alex turned toward her, pulling a long leg up on the bench. “What happened?”

Brit took a deep breath as she debated telling Alex. It wasn’t that she didn’t feel comfortable enough to talk to her—in fact, quite the opposite. She just didn’t know if she wanted to get into it again. She was feeling relaxed and didn’t need to remind herself of how awful her family dinner had been. Yet, she wanted to share this with Alex, just as she wanted to share everything with her.

The look of concern on Alex’s face convinced her. “They tried to fix me up with a guy. They invited him to dinner.”

“What?” Alex reached out a comforting hand to Brit’s knee—the closest body part—and looked at her with an expression of disbelief.

“Yep. My sister told me my parents want to marry me off so they can die in peace.”

“Hmm. That’s gotta be awkward. Why don’t you just tell them you’re not into guys?”

Brit sniggered and shook her head. “I have the most religious parents on the planet. My father’s a Eucharistic minister. My mother hasn’t missed mass in fifty years. I have aunts and uncles who are priests and nuns. They’re not going to handle this well.”

“So what do you do, then? Lie to them?”

She shook her head. “Not really. I just don’t talk about it.”

“So no dates for holidays? You and your girlfriend go your separate ways?” Alex sounded flabbergasted.

Sighing in frustration, Brit looked into Alex’s big blue eyes and frowned. “I’ve never cared about anyone enough to bring them home. So I’ve never had a reason to come out to my family.”

Alex squeezed Brit’s hand and held it. “I think you do now, my friend.”

Brit looked at her, her heart beating faster. For a moment she thought Alex was insinuating there might be a future between them—a reason to tell her parents.

“They won’t stop until they understand why they have to.” Alex’s expression was sympathetic, and Brit realized she wasn’t hinting at anything.

“Why can’t they just mind their own business?” She pulled her hand away and instantly felt cold where Alex had heated her.

“They don’t understand that there’s a problem. Only you do.”

“You sound so sure of everything, Alex.” Brit looked at her, needing some reassurance. Suddenly, her world and her life seemed to be a big, scary place. Her thoughts and emotions were in constant flux, and she just needed some sense of calm.

“Not about everything, but about this I am.” Alex looked sad, and Brit wondered why. Alex seemed so cocky and confident that Brit couldn’t imagine what would cause her insecurity. She couldn’t ask the question, though. A wall seemed to go up, and Alex leaned back, her body language telling Brit she wasn’t open to probing.

“So I take it you’re out to your family?” she asked, hoping this was a safe topic.

“Oh, yeah.”

Brit laughed. Her tone told her the outing had been eventful. “Do tell.”

“I was caught in a rather intimate position with my high-school girlfriend. My mother walked in on us.”

Brit brought both hands to her face. “Oh, no! What did you do?”

“Well, fortunately, my mother handled it well. She told her it was time to go home, and then she told me she didn’t allow my brother to have his girlfriend in his room and the same rules applied to me.”

“Wow! That’s all I can say.”

“Yeah, me, too.”

“How old were you?”

“Seventeen.”

“Does your dad know?”

“Yep. No secrets in my family. My brother figured it out even before my mother.”

Brit smiled. “It must be nice having that kind of unconditional love.”

Again, Alex squeezed her, this time on the upper arm, a ticklish spot above her elbow. Yet she didn’t feel like laughing.

“I know we haven’t known each other very long, Brit, but I feel like I know you well. And everything I know about you, I like. I wish I could tell you that your family will give you the same kind of understanding mine gives me. But I can’t. I’ve seen parents disown their kids. It’s unbelievable, but it happens. I hope it doesn’t happen to you, but if it does, you’ll be okay. Because you’re going to find some amazing woman who knocks your socks off, and then nothing else will matter.”

Brit smiled, though she wasn’t sure if she should. She supposed Alex’s words were meant to reassure her, but the fear of her family’s disapproval was all too real. She couldn’t imagine a love grand enough to compensate for the loss of all the people who mattered so much to her. Maybe she should just stay single forever. She’d become an old maid, babysit her nephews on Saturday nights instead of dating, and spend every Sunday with her parents. Then she’d never have to reveal this secret.

*

Brit’s apartment seemed lonely compared to the park, and she couldn’t help feeling anxious. Needing a distraction, and some comfort, too, she turned on the oven and pulled a large mixing bowl from her cabinet. Using a large knife she sliced a block of butter and threw it into her microwave to soften. Crack, crack, crack. The eggshells split neatly and she separated their contents, saving the whites. With a whisk, she blended the butter and yolks with sugar and vanilla until the mixture was smooth, then began to fold in flour. She felt the tension leaving her body as the dough flowed through her fingers, growing heavier with each scoop of flour she added.

What a day! She didn’t know what stressed her more—the pain her family caused her or the ease with which Alex seemed to handle it. Alex being so perfect was not good. She was a colleague, and a friend. Nothing more. Why had she called Alex in the first place? With so many friends to choose from, one of them was likely to have answered the cell phone if she called to complain about her mother’s antics. Meg, her former roommate, was always eager to talk and would have provided a sympathetic ear. There were half a dozen others, too.

Instead, her first instinct had been to call Alex Dalton, and spending time with Alex had been exactly what she needed. As always, dribbling a basketball had taken her mind off her troubles. Even the conversation after their game, which was unsettling, had been something Brit needed to hear. Someone else telling her that the discussion with her parents was overdue made it more difficult for her to deny it, and like it or not, she needed to do it.

What had her upset now, pounding her fists into a ball of cookie dough, was her simple desire to call Alex. The instinct to call Alex. And the fact that calling Alex, the woman who had flings instead of meaningful relationships, had turned out to be the absolute correct call.

She sectioned the dough, taking a half-cup-sized scoop and putting it directly into the ice chest in the freezer. After washing her hands, she put her headset in her ear and dialed Meg’s number. She needed to hear Meg’s voice and ground herself. She needed to spill the mass of confusion and let Meg help her sort it out. Meg had been her best friend all through college, the first one she’d gotten drunk with, and the first one she’d come out to. She was a source of good advice and a soft shoulder. Meg would help her. She always did.

Meg answered after a few rings, her voice a breathless sigh. “I had to run in from the garage to catch the phone, but since I knew it was you I figured it was worth the heart attack. What’s up, stranger?”

Since meeting Alex and dealing with all the feelings that had blossomed, Brit had been more reserved than usual, not reaching out to her friends. With all the anxiety she was carrying, she did indeed feel like a stranger to her best friend.

“Not too much, getting in the groove of working every day. It’s sort of exhausting.”

“At least you’ll never have a tax season.”

“Ah, but soon I’ll have a basketball season.”

“Then you’ll know exhaustion.”

“So how are the wedding plans going?” Brit poured some walnuts into her blender. “Hold that thought, I have to chop for a second.”
Rrrrrrrrrrggghhhh
.

After thirty seconds, the noise stopped.

“What are you baking?” Meg asked.

“Gramma Cookies.” She scooped the finely chopped walnuts from the bottom of the blender.

“Oh, no. What’s wrong?”

“I called to talk about your wedding, not my troubles.”

“If you’re baking Gramma Cookies—your ultimate comfort food—you must be stressing. So give it up, Dodge, or I’ll hop in the car and come eat all your treats.”

Brit sighed. “My parents invited the Thorntons to dinner today. They tried to fix me up with Tommy.” Her voice was soft, full of sadness and despair. Sitting at the table now, Brit further divided the dough into sections and began wrapping them for freezing.

“Oh, yuck! Is he still a jerk?”

“Yes, but close to being Dr. Jerk, which is very important to my mother.”

“So what did you do?”

Brit finished the dough while she told the story, then retrieved the frozen section and began rolling small balls from that allotment.

“Do you think this is my fault? I mean, is she pushing you to get married because I am?”

Brit had enough dough to create seven little balls, which would become an equal number of mouth-watering cookies. Into the bowl of egg whites they all went, and then she rolled them into the crushed walnuts. “Oh, I don’t know. When we were in Bethany, the subject of your wedding only came up about a thousand times. So I wouldn’t say she’s obsessed with it or anything.”

“Sorry, Brit. Your mother’s just a…bit pushy, I guess. And I wish I could say that telling the truth would take the pressure off you, but I’m not sure it would.”

“It might even make things worse, you know? Excommunication from both church and family.”

“You’d still have me, babe.”

Brit used her forearm to push back her hair and smiled gratefully. “And I’m lucky. Don’t leave me, or I’ll be all alone.”

“What are you doing to change that? Any prospects for the title of Mrs. Right?”

The cookies were going into the oven, neatly spaced on her grandmother’s cookie sheet. “Yeah, there is. Maybe.” She spoke softly, hesitantly. She’d hardly acknowledged her attraction to Alex to herself, yet here she was telling Meg.

“Ohhh! Yeah!” Meg squealed with delight. “Tell me, tell me! Who is she?”

Leaning against the oven door, taking comfort in its warmth, Brit found her courage. “It’s Alex Dalton.”

After a moment of shocked silence, Meg responded. “Oh, wow. Is this something new or has it been going on since the summer?”

Brit laughed. “It was love at first sight, until her girlfriend tried to rip out my eyeballs on the boardwalk. So I backed off, but since I’ve spent time with her, I’ve come to realize I really like her.”

“What about the girlfriend? Are you into that kind of thing?”

“No, it’s over with her.” Brit told her about Alex’s arrangement with Anke and didn’t mention how much it bothered her. She still questioned why it did. What was wrong with what they’d done? They were two consenting adults. Maybe, Brit realized, she was a prude after all.

“It would just be me—if Alex could be monogamous, which is a big IF. I don’t know if she can, and I’m kind of scared to be the science experiment.”

“Well, you’ll have plenty of chances to explore this, Brit. Practices together. All those overnight games, sharing a hotel room. Endless possibilities.”

“Uh, Meg…this is high school. We can walk to the away games. They’re in the next town. There’re no hotels involved here.”

“Well, still. You’ll be together a lot, just like tax season. That’s how it happened for me and Steve, when I interned at his office. I’m so happy for you.”

“So, I take it you think I should throw caution to the wind and all that stuff?”

“You can’t remain a virgin forever, girlfriend. Even if she’s not the one…she could be the one for now.”

“Stop it!” Brit feigned irritation.

“You know I love you. When can I meet her?”

Brit sighed, exasperated. Meg was often as energetic and flighty as one of her nephews. “Meg, I didn’t actually say I was dating her. Or going to date her. Just that I like her.”

“Brittzy, listen to me. Life is short. I know you have this romanticized vision of love and happily-ever-after and a Catholic church wedding…but I don’t want to watch you grow old waiting for everything to be perfect. So she’s slept around, so what? Most of the world has, honey. It doesn’t make her bad. It probably makes her normal.”

Brit checked the oven. She needed a cookie to lighten the despair that came with understanding that she was, in fact, the abnormal one. The tops were just showing a hint of color. Another minute at 350° should do it.

“I’m just taking this slowly, Meg.”

“As long as you take it.”

Brit wanted to take it, she really did. But what if it didn’t work out? Alex was definitely attracted to her, she could tell, but could she handle it if Alex’s feelings suddenly changed? They’d have to see each other at school and work closely together at practice. It would be humiliating. More importantly, she would have given her heart to someone and have to take it back all broken to pieces. When it came back, would it even be fixable?

Brit pulled the tray from the oven and quickly transferred the cookies to a large plate. Without waiting for them to cool, she took a bite of buttery, sugary comfort and felt better instantly.

“It’s scary, Meg,” she said as she sat down, thinking there weren’t enough cookies in the world to help her find the courage to go on a date with Alex or to tell her family if she did.

*

Alex stared into the refrigerator as it glowed in the darkness of her kitchen. The shelves were nearly bare. A few condiments were lined up neatly on the top shelf, along with milk and yogurt and some fruit, and a half gallon of orange juice. There was nothing atypical about the sight, until Alex turned her gaze to the crisper at the bottom and pulled out the syringe filled with the poison that kept her body moving. It was a powerful biological agent, one that shut down her immune system to prevent the autoimmune disease destroying her body from doing any more damage.