I never thought I wanted to be a parent. I know I could never be pregnant, wouldn’t want to be anyway, and it seemed unlikely I’d ever have enough money to adopt, given the whole “recession” thing.
I didn’t want to be called “Mom,” either.
But I was always good with kids. I started babysitting my little sisters when I was 12. It was a system that worked for everyone—Papa leaves for work first, then Mom, then I walk the little ones to Rock Harbor Elementary on my way to the middle school. I was never later than the second tardy bell.
On weekends when Mom picked up extra shifts, I watched them swim in the neighborhood pool while Papa napped on the couch. I was an attentive lifeguard. One of the real lifeguards at the pool—Shelby or Sandy or something else kind of water-themed—gave me a red whistle for Christmas one year, and I loved using it when one of my sisters ran on the wet concrete or went a little too rough with the horseplay.
My teachers said I was a born leader, and my parents, to their credit, were proud enough of me to ignore my other obvious failures. Like the nickname, for one thing. Or the hair. I cut it off with kitchen scissors after a little boy pulled my ponytail in fifth grade, and I never looked back. It got a little bit shorter every year, until I ended up with it where it is now, a straight-up buzz cut. It might not be cute in their eyes, but it’s a hell of a lot cooler in the summer.
Anyway—kids. I thought maybe I could be a teacher. I have my degree, a BA in history, and it’s not like I was about to spend seven more years studying to become a historian (that was the original plan). I tried it for a year, and it beat me down so bad I thought, actually, maybe I never want to see another kid again.
I became a bartender instead. I got the tattoos I’d been told I couldn’t have by Dallas ISD, pierced my septum, and I worked 8 pm–4 am until I gained enough experience that they finally hired me at one of the few queer bars in town.
And then, I woke up one morning and realized I was bored. I was so fucking bored. One of the other bartenders mentioned how he just signed his kid up for soccer for the first time, and I thought, that’s it! That’s what I’ll do. I can be a soccer coach. I was a good babysitter, I played soccer in high school, I can coach some kids to kick a ball around. I emailed the organizer; they had enough interest from parents to give me a chance if it meant they could open another team for sign-ups. They gave me a whistle and a nametag that read: Coach Andy.
Most of the kids were good. The ones that weren’t were at least entertaining, even if they didn’t mean to be. After the first season, I got glowing feedback from most of the parents, and many of them signed their kids up with a request for me specifically. I felt like a leader again. My third season, there were four new players I hadn’t met yet. One of them, Natalie, was brought to practice on the first day by a woman in light purple scrubs. Natalie’s mom, I found out. Her name was Susannah.
I don’t know how else to say it: I fell in love at first sight.
The first time I saw Susannah, truthfully, I thought she looked like one of my exes. She had the same big curly hair as this girl I had a crush on, and then a massive falling out with, in college, and for a split second, I was worried it was actually her and she had changed her name and moved back to Texas. She hadn’t. Susannah was nothing like her. She introduced herself to me enthusiastically and told me how excited Natalie was to be trying soccer.
“We tried dance first, but it didn’t stick,” she said. I smiled at Natalie.
“Dance didn’t stick for me either,” I said.
Natalie wasn’t a natural-born soccer star, but she was far from the worst on the team. She picked everything up faster than some of the older kids. One week, I was modeling some trick shots, purely showing off, and Natalie was entranced.
I asked her if she wanted me to show her some tricks. She said yes, obviously. When Susannah came to pick her up, I asked her if they had time to stay late. She agreed.
Forty-five minutes or so later, we got kicked out so the next age group of soccer players could take over. Natalie asked if they were still getting pizza, then whispered something in Susannah’s ear.
“You should come with us,” Susannah said to me. I opened my mouth to say no, out of habit, out of the standard “No, I can’t babysit. No, I don’t date parents. No, I’m not interested in going to church with you.” She had this look in her eye that I’ll never forget. It wasn’t attraction, not yet, but she looked like she was solving a riddle no one else had heard. She looked mischievous, and all-knowing, and if I didn’t know better, it’d be easy to say she was seeing everything about to happen and saying: “You love me, don’t you? Let’s get on with this, then.”
I cut myself off–why the hell not? I thought. “Sure,” I said. “Let’s go.”
It was the beginning of the end.
The pizza: bland. The conversation: dazzling. I found out they were trying to find the best Hawaiian pizza in DFW. This was the fourth try, and judging from the looks on their faces when they took their first bites, the worst. I didn’t mind. Natalie showed me her art, dozens of scribbled pencil and crayon drawings collected in a yellow sketchpad. We played I Spy with the wall art until Natalie couldn’t figure out my hint (the answer was the red stitching of a signed baseball hanging from the ceiling) and announced to the table, very solemnly, “I’m going to work now.” She opened her sketchpad and became entranced in an already half-finished sketch of a crowned frog on a throne. It suddenly felt like it was just me and Susannah at the table. It suddenly felt like a date.
“Are you from the area?” she asked me.
“Yeah, you?”
“Now, I am. I’m from Bryan originally.”
“Oh yeah,” she nods. “I had a couple friends who went to A&M.”
“Cool,” I said. Don’t make this awkward, don’t make this awkward, don’t make this awkward, I kept telling myself.
“What kind of stuff do you do?” she asked. “Other than soccer, of course.”
“I’m a bartender,” I said. I didn’t mention where. “And I like to read. Sometimes I write, too.” I wasn’t sure why I told her that last part. I didn’t usually mention the writing.
We talked about our favorite books from high school–mine, One Hundred Years of Solitude–hers, Pride and Prejudice.
She leaned over the table conspiratorially. “Do you ever read romance?” she asked. I couldn’t tell from her tone what the right answer would be.
“Sometimes,” I said.
“I love romance books,” she nodded. “But I never tell anyone that.”
“I do too. ‘Sometimes’ might be a bit of an understatement.”
She laughed. “I wouldn’t have expected that from you,” she said.
“Why?” I asked. She blushed.
“I just wouldn’t.”
“Because romance books are usually for straight women, and I look so gay?”
She laughed again. “Yeah, okay, maybe.” She looked over at Natalie, and I could practically see the gears turning in her head, calculating if she was listening, deciding if they were going to have to have a conversation later about the meaning of “gay” and women who look like men. Or maybe they’d never have that conversation at all, and Natalie would just have to figure it out herself.
“Are you?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Okay. Cool.”
She cleared her throat like she was going to say something else, then didn’t. Her eyes scanned the room, going from Natalie’s drawing to the kitschy old photos on the wall to the last slice of pizza on the table.
“Were you raised religious?” she asked, looking at me again.
I told her I was raised Catholic, mostly, but it’s not like we went every Sunday. Just the major holidays and whenever my mom was feeling particularly guilty about something. She told me she was raised Southern Baptist. Her best friend’s father was the pastor of their church.
“Did you go to one of those mega churches?” I asked.
She laughed. No, theirs was tiny, she told me. “When I was a kid, we didn’t have a building, so we rented a space in an old movie theater for a while, then a hotel conference room. Some time when I was a teenager, they started using the tithings to rent an old house in Grapevine.”
“That must’ve been–” I started to say, while Natalie signed her finished drawing.
“And…done!” Natalie announced, cutting me off. She dramatically closed her notepad, set down her pencil on the table, and laid her head down on top of it.
“I’m tired,” she mumbled into her arms. Susannah and I made eye contact and laughed across the table. The moment, whatever kind of moment it was, had passed.
When I went to work that night, I tried not to think about her. I served a blonde woman wearing a delicate gold cross on a thin chain, and I tried not to think about her. During the week, I went to my weekly queer soccer league game, where I was tackled by an opposing player exactly her height, and I tried not to think about her. I spent the entire week trying to pretend to myself like I wasn’t thinking about seeing her drive up to the soccer field in her beat-up blue Volkswagen on Saturday, only one hand on the wheel.
It happened the same way the next week. And the next. We all stayed after practice so I could teach Natalie some tricks, with Susannah on the side watching us, then we went for lunch—sandwiches, the next time, then a brunch spot where Natalie could get chocolate chip pancakes. (Our first pizza together had been so bad that it apparently turned them off from the Hawaiian slice project indefinitely.)
The third week was the first time I consciously thought, Oh. Oh no. This might be a problem. Susannah wore a blue sundress with spaghetti straps. When I complimented her on it, she blushed. I was not new to making women flustered—that was kind of my favorite way to pass the time on slow nights at work—but this time was different. I wanted to keep making her blush, over and over again, forever. I complimented her more after that, on random things, trying to catch her off guard. I never said anything sexual, or overt, and I told myself I would never, never cross that line. But I thought about it.
I knew it was an objectively weird thing for me to be doing. I’m not pretending that it wasn’t. I had just met this woman, we had no connections and nothing obviously in common, and I always felt a little nervous that one of the other coaches or league organizers would see me eating lunch with her and her daughter and start asking questions I didn’t want to answer. But every week, she asked, and I said yes, and I told her I liked the new highlights in her hair or the home-sewn patches on her jeans or the charms on her bracelet.
Thursday before the fifth week, she texted me: one of the other nurses was having a health emergency, Susannah would have to go in Friday morning, but school was closed for Good Friday, and Natalie’s regular babysitter and her backup babysitter were both unavailable.
“Do you know anyone through soccer that the other parents use?” She texted.
I don’t know what I was thinking. I responded: “hey! I don’t have the contact info for any of the other parents’ babysitters. I can try to find out if you want, but also, I’d be happy to babysit!! I don’t work until 7 tomorrow.” I kicked myself for texting like a teenager. Two exclamation points? Lowercase hey? What were you thinking, Andy?
“that would be amazing! Are you sure? That’s going to be a long day if you work at 7.” She responded.
“Yeah, it’s no problem,” I said.
And it wasn’t. I was breaking my number one cardinal rule of coaching, and it wasn’t a problem.
I got to her house at 7 am. Her pickup shift was 8-4, I still remember it, with a forty-minute commute.
Being in her home was…awkward. We stood in the doorway for a second too long before she invited me in, and I took my shoes off clumsily in the entryway, almost falling over before catching myself against the wall. She watched me. She was already in her scrubs, ready to go, and Natalie was eating breakfast on the couch. Their home was a slim duplex with what I can only describe as a clean-girl Christian aesthetic hanging on by a thread. There was a decorative cross sitting propped up against a wall like it was meant to be hung up, and she’d just never gotten around to it. The planters in the backyard I saw through the kitchen window were overgrown with herbs, most of them in the process of being pushed out by an aggressively bushy mint plant. Natalie’s art was everywhere, and photos—photos of the two of them at the zoo, the two of them at the botanical garden. Muddy shoes were piled below a framed picture of Natalie feeding a giraffe. Susannah showed me where to find Natalie’s favorite snacks and the art supplies she’s not allowed to use without supervision.
And then Natalie and I were alone, and I realized I was nervous. I was so, so nervous. I needed to make a good impression. I needed Natalie to like me, so that Susannah wouldn’t realize that maybe she didn’t like me at all.
When I asked Natalie what she wanted to do with her day off, she just said “art.” I thought, okay, yeah, I can do “art.” I spread out a tarp on the table, and we painted. I attempted a giraffe; she painted a frog (I was starting to sense a theme with her).
For lunch, she asked for a grilled cheese, which I made to perfection (not to brag or anything). We played Mario Kart; we watched Disney Channel; we tossed a frisbee in the backyard.
Halfway done with painting her nails a neon green, she asked, “Andy?”
Yeah?” I said.
“Why does your hair look like that?”
I thought about it for a second before I answered. “I just like it short.” I finally said. “It feels better on my head.” She nodded like she didn’t really understand, but knew she was meant to be polite.
“Why do you like having your nails painted?” I asked her.
“I think it’s pretty,” she said. “Okay, so what’s pretty about it?” I prompted.
“I like the colors. I like looking at my hand and seeing a fun color instead of what it looked like before.” I nodded.
“Right, so that’s basically why I like my hair short. I think it’s pretty, and I like what it looks like when I look at myself in the mirror. It makes me happy, like how your nails make you happy.”
“I think it’s pretty, too,” she said.
I laughed. “Thanks, Nat,” I said.
“What about your nose?” She asked.
“Oh, you mean the piercing?” I reached up and spun my closed-loop septum piercing around once.
“Ew,” she said.
“It is kind of the same, yeah. I like the way it looks.”
“Can I have one?” she asked.
“Not right now, but maybe someday. Once you’re a grown-up, you can do whatever you want with your body, including getting a piercing,” I said. I hoped that was an appropriate thing to tell the child of a mildly religious woman with ambiguous political leanings (it hadn’t come up yet—actually, no, that’s not exactly true—I had specifically steered the conversation away from that topic whenever it veered in that direction).
She pouted at my answer, but she didn’t argue.
When Susannah came home, Natalie and I were both excited, like, actually excited, to show her everything we’d done that day. She was a gracious audience after a full day of working. I went to work with a smile on my face that didn’t wipe off all night.
Our Saturday routine–practice, solo practice, lunch–ended with a surprise. Natalie was playing a game on one of those non-Internet tablets for kids. Susannah mentioned a friend she wanted to find an artsy birthday gift for.
“I’m going to a local queer makers’ market Wednesday night,” I told her. “Do you want to come with?”
I thought I saw her smile freeze for a second at the word queer, brief enough that I could have imagined it, and I was certain she was about to turn me down.
“Natalie has an art club with one of the neighborhood moms on Wednesdays. If things line up right for me to pick her up on time, then I’d love to.”
It was a date.
Susannah had already dropped Natalie off when she picked me up. I wasn’t used to being driven around. I was always the driver, always dating passenger princesses who said they would navigate and then forgot until three lights after a missed turn.
The market was hot for April, although not a surprise for North Texas, and it was packed with attendees. The organizers had set up some speakers and were playing Lady Gaga just a little bit too loud. We almost had to yell to hear each other.
We found the free drinks first, of course–some kind of marketing deal with a start-up tequila soda brand. Susannah wanted to stop at every single booth and talk to the vendors. She had something kind to say to everyone: “I love your style” or “these are so cute!” She bought a homemade candle in an oversized antique-looking teacup for her friend.
At the booth of one seller with crocheted tops, she held one out in front of her, looked it up and down, stared at the seller with an analyzing look on her face, still holding the piece out in front of her. The vendor stared back nervously, clearly not used to being so intensely perceived by a market-goer.
“I don’t think you’re charging enough for this,” Susannah finally said.
In line for our second tequila soda, I ran into one of my exes, Kate. Well, not an ex, exactly. We hooked up three times, after three brief dates that ended at her apartment every time. Kate saw me first and grabbed my arm. “Hey, Andy,” she said. “And who’s this?” she nodded at Susannah.
“This is my friend Susannah,” I said.
Kate smirked. “Sure,” she said with a laugh. “I know how you love your friends.”
My second ex was seated behind the Pride booth table, handing out rainbow fans and asking everyone who walked by if they’d be interested in volunteering. This one, unfortunately, was actually an ex. A real ex. We were together for almost two years, and about to move in together, when I broke things off.
I saw her first, just a split second before she saw me. Not enough time to hide.
“Hey, Andrea,” she said, sounding bored. I flinched. She was the only one who ever called me by my full name.
“Hey,” I said. “How have you been?”
She cocked her head and squinted at me, then handed me a fan. “We’re taking volunteers for the Pride parade. Meetings start next week if you’re interested.”
“Sure, I can try to make that work,” I said. She turned away and whispered something to the other volunteer.
I took the cue and nudged Susannah away from the table.
“Andrea, huh?” Susannah asked as we walked away. She wasn’t looking at me.
“Please, no,” I said. I tried to laugh, but it just came out as an awkward grimace. “She was the only one who ever called me that, and I hated it. It was part of the reason we broke up.”
“You dated?”
“Yeah, for two years.”
“Two years, okay, wow.”
She turned from me to look at the jewelry at a nearby table.
“Were either of those the one you told me about before? The one with the chihuahua?” she asked.
I laughed. I couldn’t believe she remembered that stupid story I told her the second or third time we all went out for lunch.
“No, that was someone else,” I admitted.
She laughed. “So I guess you’ve dated quite a bit then.”
I couldn’t tell if she was judging me. “A little bit,” I said. “Have you not?” She shook her head, but didn’t say anything else.
Our third round of free drinks left us too tipsy to drive back, with two hours before Natalie needed to be picked up. We wandered down the street to a food truck park and split an order of nachos to sober up.
“Tell me about the people we ran into at the market,” Susannah said.
I told her everything I thought wouldn’t scare her off: the petty dramas, the dates where we goofed around and snuck onto rooftops, and once, accidentally, into someone’s backyard. I left out the fights we had after bad sex and the empty feeling I had in my chest every time I left Kate’s house after hooking up.
“Can I ask something personal?” She asked.
“Have you not been doing that already?” I teased her.
“Well, more personal.”
I nodded.
“When did you know?” she asked.
“That I was gay?”
“Yeah, or like, that you wanted to date women.”
“I don’t really know, to be honest. I knew I wasn’t the same as everyone else when I was in high school, but I didn’t think about it enough to think about who I wanted to date. I knew I wasn’t interested in guys, but I didn’t think about it more than that until college.”
She was staring at her nachos.
“My family was pretty religious,” I added.
“So you started dating women in college?” she asked, picking the seeds out of a pickled jalapeno slice.
“No,” I said. “I thought about it. But I really didn’t know how my family was going to respond, and I was scared of getting cut off or not being allowed to see my sisters. I didn’t end up going on a first date until after I graduated.”
She cocked her head and squinted at me. “That’s not really that long ago.”
I shrugged. “Like six years.”
“Have you only ever dated men?” I asked her.
“Oh, yeah, well—I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” I laughed. She was blushing again.
“I mean, no, I’ve only dated men.”
“Have you ever thought about dating women?” We were both leaning over the table, foreheads less than a foot apart.
“I don’t know. Probably not. I’ve never thought about it.”
She cleared her throat. “Do you want ice cream?”
I let her change the subject. I didn’t bring it up again, not while we were licking our ice cream cones at the cheap Ikea tables in front of the Van Leeuwan, or while we were driving back to get Natalie from the neighbors. I would have never brought it up again, I don’t think, if I’d been left to my own devices. I might have wondered about her from time to time, and hoped she’d figure it out one day. I would have never said it out loud.
A few days after the market, she texted me: “Hey, do want to go see this on Saturday? Natalie’s going home with one of her friends after soccer.” She sent a link to an indie movie at one of the arthouse theaters downtown.
I didn’t need to click on the link before I responded: “yes!”
The movie was intense–and heavily romantic. I felt more uncomfortable sitting next to her during a sex scene than I’d ever been with a friend. She kept looking at me during the movie. I don’t know if she thought I didn’t notice. It frightened me to not know what it meant, so I didn’t look back.
In hindsight, I think that night was the first time I consciously wanted it to be romantic between us. Sitting in the car talking after the movie, as we were sharing our thoughts and arguing over which actor suited their character best, I watched her fingers tap on the dash and I thought, Oh, I’m in trouble now.
Natalie was sick the next week, and Susannah texted me 30 minutes before practice to let me know.
“Aww poor thing,” I texted back.
I stopped at the store on the way home from practice and bought everything to make two batches of the green chili chicken pozole recipe I’d adopted from a college roommate. I wouldn’t have dared make it for any other kid, but I’d eaten enough lunches with Natalie by now to know her taste. She liked spicy food more than your average 7-year-old.
I wasn’t scheduled to work that night, thank God, and I made it to Susannah’s by 6. I didn’t tell her I was coming over. She looked at me like she was about to cry when she opened the door. She took the bag from my hand, then hugged me. Then she just…kept hugging. She didn’t let go until I released my grip around her and awkwardly patted her back.
We ate on trays in her living room, then watched a movie until Natalie finally fell asleep on the couch. I helped her clean, helped her tuck Natalie into bed, and refused the Tupperwares of soup she tried to send back home with me.
“Freeze them,” I told her.
She hugged me again when I left, and we stood out on her porch like that, just hugging, for what felt like eternity.
By the next Saturday, Natalie was well enough to attend practice, but not, Susannah warned me, well enough to handle solo trick practice or lunch today. Susannah barely spoke to me before practice started, and I swear she was avoiding looking at me. It felt like something had changed.
Natalie ran over to me at the end and asked what kind of tricks we were working on today.
“Sorry kiddo, your mom said you can’t today. You don’t want to push it after being sick like that.”
“But I’m fine!” Natalie argued.
Susannah was watching us from the risers where the parents sat during practice.
“I’m just telling you what your mom told me. It sounds like it would be good for you to rest.”
“Mooooom!” Natalie yelled. Susannah rose and walked over to join us.
“I want pizza,” Natalie said.
“Not today, babe,” Susannah said, not looking at me.
She grabbed Natalie’s hand and looked at me for the first time over her shoulder as they walked away.
“Bye, Andy, thanks for practice!” She shouted.
I could hear Natalie complaining all the way to the car.
That night, as I was getting ready for work, I texted her to ask if everything’s okay, and if there’s anything else I can do to help out with Natalie. She took a full day to respond, the longest it had ever taken her. I was checking my phone at the bar all night. When she did text back, it wasn’t to answer my question but to ask if I wanted to get dinner at her favorite Indian place during Natalie’s Wednesday art class.
Obviously, I said yes.
I drove this time. We dropped Natalie off at her class and listened to her favorite local alt-rock station on the radio. She was dressed up, it seemed. She blushed when I complimented her outfit. I can still picture those ridiculous fluttering sleeves on her blouse. I loved the way it looked on her.
Dinner felt different than it had before. Susannah seemed nervous, or maybe I was nervous. I hope we were both nervous. She was avoiding eye contact with me across the table, but when I spoke, she leaned over and focused on my face so intently I couldn’t tell if she was actually listening or if she was zoning out.
With time to kill before picking Natalie back up, we sat in the car outside the restaurant chatting. She was telling me about some diner out in Denton that had just been featured on a Food Network show.
“We should go sometime,” I said. Susannah didn’t say anything. She just stared at me.
“Or we don’t have to?” I said. She was still staring.
“Am I your type?” she asked. Her voice was quiet.
“What?”
“When we saw your exes at the market, I thought one of them—Kate, I think was her name—I thought she kind of looked like me, so I was wondering if I’m your type.” She spoke fast, almost rambling.
“I don’t think I have a type,” I said. I didn’t know where she was headed with this. I felt like she was either about to kiss me or kick me out of her car. “I don’t usually like people right away. I notice when people are pretty, obviously, but I’m more into vibe than appearance.”
“That’s not what I’m asking.” She bit her lip. “If I were gay, would you ask me out?”
“What?”
“Would you go on a date with me? If I were gay?” Her voice was insistent now.
I started to laugh.
“What’s going on here? Are you asking me out?” I asked.
Susannah was blushing now, staring ahead through the front window
I reached across the center console and touched her upper arm where the fluttering sleeve of her top barely covered it. “Are you asking me out?” I asked again, softly.
She looked down at my hand on her arm. “Would you say yes?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I would.”
She smiled.
“Then yes. I am asking you on a date.”
I paid for the babysitter; she picked the place. The bar she chose was an expensive cocktail lounge in downtown Dallas that I would have usually never stepped foot in myself, but I was looking forward to going there with Susannah. I would have gone anywhere with her.
Being with Susannah, in the context of a date, was the same as being with Susannah platonically. And yet, completely different. We walked around downtown after drinks—I didn’t try to hold her hand. I didn’t try to touch her at all. She looked at me like a deer caught in the headlights, and I was afraid that if I moved too fast, I would scare her off. I walked her to her car, parked next to my own. I moved to hug her, and I felt like I could feel the nervousness seeping out of her chest. I let go but kept my hands on her arms. She laughed awkwardly, staring at my mouth.
“So,” she started to say. Her voice caught in her throat. She was blushing. “Do you usually kiss girls on the first date?”
Our faces were inches from each other.
“Sometimes,” I said. “But I’m not going to kiss you right now.”
She stepped back from me. I held on to her hands. “It’s not that I don’t want to,” I explained.
“Did I do something wrong?” she asked.
“No, of course not! You just seem really nervous.” She looked at the ground. She looked like she was about to cry.
“Which is fine!” I added quickly.
“Nervous is totally fine. It’s normal,” I said. “I just don’t want you to feel scared when I’m kissing you. I don’t want to scare you off.
Susannah nodded. I still couldn’t tell if she was going to cry. She hugged me again and hung on this time, burying her head in my neck. “You’re not going to scare me off,” she said. She smirked “You want to walk around and sober up so you’ll believe me?” she asked. I wish I didn’t; I wish I didn’t believe her.
Two hours later, in a dark park, she kissed me, and I let her. We went back to her car and made out in the backseat.
“I’ve never made out in a car before,” I told her. She laughed.
“I can’t believe there’s finally something I’ve done that you haven’t,” she said.
The third date turned into a fourth date, which turned into running errands on a Thursday morning, kissing in her car, picking Natalie up from school before shifts at the bar, hanging out at their house, playing Mario Kart in the living room, kissing Susannah in her bedroom after she tucked Natalie in.
We never had sex. I feel like that’s important to say, that whoever reads this (if anyone ever reads this) knows I wasn’t in it for the sex. Even if you don’t believe it. I just loved her.
The hardware store was the beginning of the end. The Home Depot, of all places. I had offered to help Susannah install new shelves in her laundry room. I was holding her hand as we walked up and down the aisles with our cart full of goods, making a detour down the paint swatch aisle to laugh at the ridiculous paint color names.
“Susannah?” someone said. A tall, lanky man with rough facial hair and eyes the same green as Susannah’s had walked up close behind us.
Susannah flinched and let go of my hand.
“John,” she said.
“Are you ignoring me or something?” he said. He looked me up and down while he spoke, but didn’t acknowledge me outright.
“What are you talking about?” Susannah asked.
“You haven’t responded to any of my texts,” he said.
She shook her head. John went back to looking me up and down, taking in, I could tell, the short hair, the oversized menswear shirt, the carabiner, the black workboots.
“Who’s this?” he said, looking back to Susannah but gesturing at me with his chin.
“This is Andrea, Natalie’s soccer coach. Andrea. She’s helping me out with some house stuff.”
I froze at the use of my full name. They were both staring at me, not speaking.
“Hmm,” John let out. “I would have thought you’d ask your family for help before running around with strangers.”
“I really don’t mind,” I said. “I just installed shelves in my own house, so it’s fresh on the brain.”
John sneered at me.
“Hmmm,” he said again.
“We should probably get going. It’s getting late.” Susannah sped away towards the self-checkout, leaving me in the dust.
We didn’t speak until we were in the car.
“I didn’t know you had a brother,” I said.
“Yeah,” she said.
Silence.
“Why didn’t you ever mention him?” I asked.
“I don’t want to talk about this right now.”
“I just think that’s really weird. We talked about our families a lot. I thought you would have told me about your siblings.”
Her hands were shaking on the wheel.
“And why’d you introduce me as Andrea?” I added.
She didn’t respond. I decided not to push it. We drove home in silence, neither of us apparently willing to reach up and at least turn on the radio.
“Do you still want to do the shelves?” I asked her.
She shook her head.
“Thanks for helping me at the store,” she said with a weak smile. “But I’m tired. Maybe you can come over another day.”
I texted her a few days later: “Let me know when you want me to come over to hang up the shelves! I want to talk about what happened at Home Depot eventually but it doesn’t have to be soon. I’m not going to make you talk about it before you’re ready.”
I have to admit, I was patting myself on the back for how well I thought I was handling the whole thing. Internally, I was not handling it well, not at all, but externally, I kept telling myself I was being so patient. I was being so forgiving. The younger version of myself would have never tolerated dating someone who was still in the closet, or who ignored my texts, or who introduced me as “Soccer Coach Andrea.”
Susannah and Natalie did not come to practice that next Saturday. I texted her again, then I called her. On Sunday, I called her again. Then a third time. I had to know by this point it was over, but I still loved her, and I was afraid for her. Or maybe of her. The simplest explanation might just be that I lost my mind a little bit.
I should have let her go, but I just couldn’t. I waited a few days, then called again, then again. I couldn’t bear to let her ghost me. I wanted a chance to hear her voice again. I wanted to beg her not to let me go.
After a few weeks, I received an email from the soccer league administrator letting me know that Natalie was dropping out of soccer and would no longer be on my team. The league was opening her spot to one of the dozens of kids from the waitlist.
I tried calling Susannah again when I read that email, then texted one final time. It was a long, desperate, pathetic, overly poetic text that I hope no one else ever has the misfortune to read.
She responded this time.
“I don’t think we should be friends anymore,” her message read.
“Is that what we are?” I responded.
I never heard from her again.
Emily Vance Brown 