Instead, I said that there were things we could do other than talk, and in a rare moment of bravery I leaned forward and pressed my lips to hers, tasting the strawberry that was left from the lip gloss she had applied moments earlier. I could tell by the way the breath squeezed out of her mouth that I had taken her by surprise, but after the flicker of a second she reciprocated and the two of us were lost in a whirl of heady delight. After we broke apart we looked at each in awe. The kiss was so powerful that my entire body was trembling and all I wanted to do was kiss her forever.
And just like that we were in a relationship. I loved her and her free-spirited ways. Everything was so easy with her and there was no doubt that we were together. Some of my other relationships had been rocky but with Lacey it was natural, and I was glad for that. We had a relationship that made everyone jealous. All of our friends commented on it.
'You two are so great together, I wish I could find what you have.' They said, and it made me glow every time they mentioned it. But then things began to sour. Lacey started a new job and she was working all hours and when she was at home she barely had anytime to hang out. I would make plans and she would say that she couldn't because she was working, and I would say okay but deep inside my heart was breaking. I couldn't say anything because she had worked so hard to get to where she was that I didn't want to be a burden on her, but then when we went to parties and people said that same compliment I gave a polite smile and looked at the love of my life, because I knew that things weren't as perfect between us as they once were.
Chapter 3
I tried to talk to her about it but I hated rocking the boat because I was always afraid that I was in the wrong. That was a mistake I had made with a number of my exes, I let things bother me and fester inside me until it became too late and the issues were too much and they made us explode. But Lacey wasn't like that usually; I could talk to her and be one with her. But it felt like she changed, that the job changed her. She was tired and stressed and the things we used to together I ended up doing alone. I could tell we were drifting apart and I wanted to save us but it felt like I was the only one that was trying.
And then came the e-mails.
It happened so innocuously. I was going to show her an interesting blog post I had read about the role of lesbians in popular culture and her laptop was closer than mine so I lifted the screen and she froze.
“They don't mean anything,” she said. I furrowed my brow in confusion and I stared at her. The color drained from her face and she looked guilty. My insides spilled and I could feel something crawling over my skin, a fear of something that I didn't want to be true. One of the tabs was open on her e-mail. My throat ran dry and I almost didn't look at it, almost buried my head in the sand, and the stupid thing was that I probably wouldn't even have noticed had she not said anything. But she had. And I couldn't ignore that.
I slowly moved the cursor to the e-mail tab and my eyes searched the screen. There were a number of messages from a woman named Rebecca, with pictures attached, laying on a bed with her hands draped over her body, tempting, teasing pictures, the kind that Lacey had always laughed at. But there were sitting on her laptop, the suggestive text of the e-mails was pushing and intimate, and when I read the replies my throat tightened again and I wanted to turn back time to just a few moments before so that I could live in the bliss of ignorance.
The words were made up of little black letters on the screen yet they were burdened with such weight. I couldn't believe that Lacey was the author of these steamy, innuendo-laden messages. There was such freedom in the words—such passion—a far cry from the closed-off woman that I had known for the previous few months. I looked at her and pushed the laptop away, not wanting to read anymore. I had so many questions that I didn't know where to being. In the end I started with the obvious.
“Who is she?” I asked.
“Just someone I met at a conference. We had a few drinks and we got to talking. It was boring and we both needed the entertainment. Nothing happened though.”
“You call this nothing?” I said, gesturing to the screen. My eyes looked to the laptop again and I saw that woman with her long raven hair and her perfect almond-shaped eyes, and those slender curves that were just waiting to be explored.
“I mean...I didn't sleep with her,” Lacey said, a look of apology on her face. She moved into the room and tried to take my hand but I didn't want to be near her, didn't want to have her touch me with those same fingers that had typed those words to Rebecca. Rebecca. I hated that name.
“You wrote about it though. You thought about it. Am I not enough for you?”