When she wakes in the brand new light of the morning, Claire pushes her face into the pillow and shudders as she recalls the scene on the porch the night before. She squeezes her eyes closed and hopes Mia doesn’t know the real reason she was upset, that she’ll just assume Claire was insulted at being called trashy.
Which of course she is.
But right now that’s the least of her problems. Of course, she’d love to be mad at Mia. She’d love to be furious. But she can’t. And besides, Claire knows she didn’t mean it quite like that. Mia would never say something so purposefully hurtful. Claire might. But not Mia. But to hear her, however unconsciously, dismiss her like that? That hurt. And the last thing she needs to add to that pain is the humiliation of Mia knowing. So she decides to combat this the only way she knows how—total avoidance.
As a point of pride, of dignity, she decides she’s going to be completely and utterly normal. Claire’s going to take on the responsibility of letting things fall back into place as easily as they can. And if it’s still weird between them after that, let it be Mia’s fault.
Yep, that’s what she’ll do. Claire will give nothing away, nothing at all. And she hopes that Mia doesn’t think too hard about what passed between them last night, lest she realises Claire’s feelings have stupidly strayed to places they have no business going. And if she’s really, really lucky, Mia won’t work it out, and Claire will get to step back from this brink unscathed, unnoticed. And then she’ll figure out how to get over this stupid crush so they can be friends again.
She’s determined this will be a day when she’s going to do her damn best not to have any of these stupid, pointless feelings. She will not let them get in the way of finding her way back to normal.
Whatever that is.
* * *
“What are you going to do?” Claire asks Robbie as she puts the phone back on the hall table and steps out onto the porch into the morning sunshine.
Robbie grins. “We are going to fulfil Nina’s dreams and take her to a country show. She’s never been to one, and Pete saw a sign for that one yesterday when he was walking back from the store. You coming?”
“Much as I’d love to,” she tells him sarcastically as they sit on the steps together in the sun. “Dad called and I have to stick around here. Some guy might be coming to check the water heater this morning, and on the chance of that might, I said I’d stay around to let him in.”
“Poor you. What a missed opportunity to watch me comparison shop for organic pumpkins or something.” Robbie rolls his eyes and sips his coffee. “Like the middle-aged man I’m bound to become.”
Claire smiles, rubs her grainy eyes, and thinks how good it’s going be to have some time alone.
He bumps her shoulder with his. “You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m just tired.” She avoids his gaze and watches Pete stride up the lake path, towel around his neck. They say nothing as he grins and scurries up the steps past them. Then Robbie suddenly picks up her hand from her knee and kind of plays with it, passing it back and forth between his own. “You know, I can’t figure you out sometimes, Claire.” Then he smiles at her. “Or maybe I can.”
She frowns, takes her hand back, and folds her arms over her knees. “What are you talking about?”
“Oh well, we’ll see.” He nods his head gently.
She frowns. She has absolutely no idea what this particular cryptic Robbie crap means, so she decides to ignore it. She slaps her hand gently on his knee and then uses it to push herself off the step. “Have a great time confronting your middle-aged self. I am going to lie around and read.”
Back in her room, she changes into what has been her daily uniform of swimmers, shorts, and a T-shirt and listens to the sounds of everyone calling to one another as they prepare to leave. Finally, the car doors slam, the tires crunch on gravel, and they’re gone. Silence reigns.
Relieved, she grabs her book and heads out onto the porch. Having this morning to herself is a reprieve, of sorts. She won’t have to act for anyone, free to spend a little longer feeling shitty and sad and kind of helpless about all this.
She’s about to flop onto the hammock when she hears the door open behind her. She jumps and then turns. It’s Mia, a towel over her shoulder and a book in her hand. She looks tired, and her unusually pale skin makes her freckles stand out. She holds up her book. “Snap,” she says with a wry, cautious smile.
Claire drops her gaze to her feet. “I thought everyone had gone.”
“I stayed. You want to go down to the water?”
Claire bites her lip, turns her book in her hand, and contemplates the invitation. She reminds herself of her promise to return to normal today. “Okay,” she says finally. “Give me a second.”
She goes back to her room, takes a deep breath, and grabs a towel and her flip-flops. They walk slowly down the steps and tread the path in silence as the sun beams down on their backs. When they get to the end of the short path, Mia moves toward the spot where they have been swimming the last few days.
“Let’s go this way.” Claire points to where a track, worn down through the years by feet in the grass, cuts away from the path. Mia nods, and Claire leads them to a sheltered spot where a tract of wide, flat rocks sprawl down to the water’s edge, surrounded by a fringe of trees. Claire clambers from rock to rock with Mia close behind. She stops at a spot where some of the rocks are shaded, while others bake slowly in the sunlight. Stepping over to a shaded rock, she stands next to one exposed to the full sun.
She lays out her towel, throws down her book, and puts her phone where she’ll hear it in case this water-heater guy rings. Easing herself slowly down on the edge of the rock, her toes curl as they greet the cold water below. She sees Mia smile as she realises why Claire has picked this spot where they can both have their needed sun and shade. She lays down her towel on the sunny spot and mirrors Claire. She lets her feet dangle into the water on her own little island next to her. Claire shrugs inwardly. She didn’t mean for it all to be so damn symbolic. She just didn’t want to get sunburnt.
They sit there in silence for a while and stare out over the lake. Some kids are throwing themselves off the swimming platform. Their shouts and laughter slide easily across the water to them. They are the first kids she’s seen since they arrived. Must be weekenders. In a few weeks, this place will be full of them roaming in packs, just like she and Cam did with all the other cottage kids when they were younger.
After a while, the kids disappear, leaving only the quieter sounds of water lapping at the edges of the rocks and the call of birds in the thick scrub next to her. She lies back on her towel, her arm across her forehead, and gazes at the canopies of the trees. It’s so beautiful here. She had forgotten how much she loves it. She takes a deep breath, slowly releases the scent of grass and leaves and fresh air from her lungs, and listens to Blue thirstily lap water from the lake’s edge.
“Hey,” Mia says just loud enough for Claire to hear her. “I’m really, really sorry about last night.”
Claire squints at her.
Mia hugs her legs to her and rests her cheek on her knees.
“Me too,” Claire mumbles.
“I really didn’t mean to hurt you or to imply anything about you at all. It all just came out really wrong.”
“It’s okay.” Claire shrugs as if it’s nothing. Of course, she’s not sure if it’s okay. She tells her that because she doesn’t want Mia to feel bad, but also because she doesn’t know if she’s ready to talk about that part of their conversation yet. Or ever. And she tells her that because she just wants them to be some sort of okay, for this all to hurt a little less.
“Do your parents know?” she asks after a minute, changing the subject. Kind of.
Mia shakes her head. “No. I’ve just been trying to figure things out for myself before I tell them, you know?”
Claire nods. “What do you think they’ll say?” She cannot even imagine how her own parents would react.
“I really don’t know.” Mia shakes her head and rubs her hands along her forearms.
“Who have you told?”
“No one, really. Robbie. Now you.”
Claire contemplates this fact. “How long have you known?”
“For a little while.” Mia lifts her head and looks out across the lake. “Well, maybe I have kind of subconsciously known for longer, but I guess I really figured it out recently.”
“But you only dated guys before?”
“Yeah.” Mia nods. “And that was kind of what made me feel so weird. I was dating guys, but I was never as into it as they were. Like, you know, with Pete?”
Claire nods.
“I don’t know. He’s awesome and lovely and fun, and I like hanging out with him. And he really liked me. But I just always kind of felt like I could take it or leave it. I think I thought I wasn’t meeting the right guys or something, or I was terrible at relationships because I’d lose interest quickly. Then last summer, I had this total infatuation with this girl at work. Even then, though, I told myself it was a one-off girl crush or something. I didn’t really put it together until later.”
“What happened?”
“With the girl? Nothing. I knew she was straight. She graduated and went overseas. It was just when I met Robbie, and he figured it out before me. He told me I had a crush on her. He also told me, if I did figure out I was gay, not to fall for straight girls.”
Claire frowns. Robbie and his annoyingly sage advice.
“But then, I dated this guy last year, and I was actually into him for a while, and it kind of threw me all over again.”
“Then what happened?” Claire blinks. “Sorry, am I asking too many questions?”
“No, it’s fine.” Mia gives her a tiny smile before she turns toward the water. “I want to talk about it with you.”
She’s quiet for a while, though. And Claire lets her sort her thoughts out.
Eventually, she speaks again.
“I guess what really messed with me is realising what I always thought I knew about myself was wrong, if you know what I mean? And also that now I have to tell everyone? I don’t know. It’s weird.”
“Telling them that you changed your mind. That you want a do over?”
Mia smiles and nods, wry. “Yeah, I guess.”
“And because it makes everything such a big deal?”
“Exactly.” She’s silent for a while; then she turns to Claire. “I mean, I know I’m smart. I don’t mean to brag, or anything, but—”
“Mia, it wouldn’t be bragging,” Claire interrupts. “It’s just kind of a fact.”
Mia smiles, but it dissolves quickly into a frown. “This is what I mean. I’m smart enough to graduate top of my high school, to get into my course, to get interviews for the top universities for postgraduate courses…” She sighs and shakes her head. “How could I be too dumb to realise this kind of fundamental thing about myself earlier?”
All Claire can do is nod, sympathetic to the experience of sudden, surprise recognition of the obvious. Because isn’t that what just happened to her?
“And, you know, having everyone know while you’re going through something isn’t going to be that fun. I’m twenty-one.” Mia shakes her head. “Who has this crisis at twenty-one?” She dips her head, resting her chin on her knees.
“Probably plenty of people.” Because if it’s possible for Claire to come this far in her life before knowing it’s possible she could like a girl, surely it’s possible for it to never have occurred to Mia that she likes girls.
“Maybe.” Mia raises her shoulders to her ears for a moment, her eyes still fixed on the lake.
“So don’t tell anyone yet,” Claire suggests. She wonders why Mia feels as though she has to let the rest of the world know her feelings anyway. Claire would just as likely keep something like that private unless she wanted to tell someone. Whose business is it anyway?
“But that feels kind of dishonest.”
Claire shakes her head. Typical Mia, worrying about how other people will feel about her own major life upheaval. “It’s not dishonest, Mia.” She sits up and wraps her towel around her shoulders. “It’s not dishonest to take some time, you know.”
Mia shrugs, clearly not willing to give herself that concession. She pulls off her sunglasses. “I don’t know.” She sighs. “Wow, I’m saying that a lot. I don’t know. I’m getting in.” She quickly pulls off her T-shirt, throws it onto her towel, and slides into the water feet first.
Claire shuffles to the edge of the rock and dangles her feet in the water again. She watches Mia swim in a slow crawl out past the shadows of the trees to where the sun hits the water. She lies back and floats.
Blue emerges out of the scrub and trots over. He sits next to Claire and sniffs the breeze coming off the lake, his eyes fixed on Mia.
Claire puts an arm around his neck and scratches the fur on his chest. “She’s okay. She’s just hanging out.”
He turns and licks her cheek.
“Gross.” She wipes her cheek against her shoulder. “Do you not remember that little chat we had a while back about personal boundaries, hound?” He turns and licks her face again. She shakes her head and laughs. “That’s what you get for conversing with a dog.” She stares out to where Mia still floats with her hands moving slowly at her sides.
Claire frowns. Poor Mia. She thinks of the months she’s known her, how chilled and lovely she is, how good she’s been to Claire, how completely present she was for her when Cam was in the hospital even though they’ve only been friends for such a short time. And all this time she has been trying to figure this major life stuff out on her own. She’s not sure if she’s ever met someone as generous as Mia. She deserves to get as much as she gives.
And as she watches Mia slowly breaststroke back toward the shore, Claire tells herself that no matter how she feels or how much Mia’s words last night unintentionally hurt her, Mia needs her friendship right now. She deserves her turn to be listened to, to be heard, and Claire wants to give her that.
“Coming in?” Mia calls out as she treads water close to the edge.
Claire shakes her head. “It’s not warm enough yet.”
“Get out of the shade then.” She laughs and turns a quick back flip in the water and then glides up to the surface again. She shakes her hair. The spray splashes Claire.
“Watch it.” Claire swipes the cold drops from her arms. “You’re worse than Blue.”
“Sorry.” Mia slowly paddles over and folds her arms on the edge of the rock next to Claire’s knees and stares into the space in front of her.
She looks a little sad, a little serious, and Claire wonders if she should have asked her quite so many questions. Questions Mia’s clearly struggling to find answers to. Before she can stop herself, she reaches out and picks up a strand of hair that hangs over Mia’s eye and pushes it back.
Startled, Mia looks up at her.
“It’s going to be okay, you know?” Claire takes her hand away, pulls her knees up to her chest, and smiles shyly at her. “It will.”
Mia grins. “You hate it when people say that.”
“Yeah, but it must be true. Sometimes.”
They’re still sitting there, enjoying this tender, careful peace they’ve found with each other again, when the others arrive. They noisily join them on the rocks, full of their morning’s trip to the show.
Nina tells them about their day, about the jellies and honeys and relishes they bought and about some crazy beekeeper they met. Claire covers herself in sunscreen and then moves over into the sun to get warm. When she’s hot enough, she slides off the rocks and enjoys the rush of cool water over her skin.
The others soon follow, and Robbie and Pete swim out into the sun and carry out an encore performance of their ridiculous synchronised swimming routine.
And in the midst of the cheers and laughter and applause, Claire looks over at Mia. And Mia’s already looking at her. They share a private smile, and a sharp sense of relief washes over her. Whatever has happened, they are back in some form. She feels as though she can breathe again.
Everything will be okay, Claire tells herself as she swims slowly out into deeper water. She will be okay. Mia will be okay. And, whatever happens, she and Mia will be okay again too.
