The Writer

Rachel spent the next morning watching Quinn play volleyball with a small group of girls from the city. She sat alone with Dominic with her back pressed against the cool grass of the morning, closing her eyes and listening to the grunting of the game in the background. She could tell Quinn’s voice from the others even from far away and in another boy’s lap.

“You look as if you’re about to fall asleep.” He chuckled at her, holding out his hand to play with her hair. Part of her imagined it was Quinn even then, and that her gentle fingers ran through her locks and grazed her scalp.

“I’m fine.” She sighed.

“Would you be fine if I went to play?”

The girl sat up and pushed her sunglasses onto her head. Dominic sat there in the sun, shirtless, and with hair flopped about his face. He looked attractive then and Rachel began to feel strange for having thoughts about Quinn.

“I think I’ll be okay.”

The brunette reached for a bottle of water, only to have it ripped from her hands by a tall blonde who breathed heavily over the couple.

“Sorry, Rach.” She breathed, guzzling down the water and chucking the bottle back at the ground. “Hope that’s cool. You’re not coming to play?’

“No, thank you.” She uttered. “I don’t play.”

“No? Why not?”

“I just don’t.”

“Come here.” Quinn leant down and pressed both hands into the girls back, massaging her shoulders in gentle circular motions. Rachel could have died on the spot. Her whole body felt like it was ablaze right there in the summer sun. She felt like she was the only person in the world, and the only girl who Quinn’s hands had ever touched.

“No wonder you’re not playing, you’re so tense.” She spoke. “You need to relax, Rach. Dominic, come here.”

The boy’s clumsy hands were guided onto his girlfriend’s shoulders, prodding at the tender spots with the carelessness of a child.

“Feel how tense that is?”

The boy nodded and carried on as the blonde leapt back off into the distance. What started as a beautiful affair of the skin was making Rachel sicker by the second, and she could only endure a minute of the thing before standing up to leave.

“I’m going to take a nap.” She lied and left to her room to sulk over how lovesick she had become.

That was the last day she heard of Quinn for a week. There existed some sort of unspoken disparity between them. She would disappear for days at a time and return smelling of ugly cologne. Rachel suspected she had been spending all her time at the Leonardo’s apartment in the very centre of the city. He was a football player and was on track to leave the country within the next two years to earn millions. Rachel had never disliked him before, but now the thought of him made her want to die. If she was there, they would have already fallen into some sort arrangement that was more romantic than her current affair with Rachel. It made her ill. For nights on end, she sat on the grass at the corner of her estate and waited for Quinn to ride around the corner. It never came. She would head to bed and wake the next morning to the distant image of her cycling out of the gates and down the road to the city where they had been to the bank. Rachel treasured that interaction now, even though it was small and didn’t mean anything other than a mutual love of deep American poetry. Each night, Quinn was in her dreams. She could not shake her. When she became visible again, and stayed for dinner every other night, they didn’t speak. They existed in parallel to each other, always coming close but never really crossing the threshold. It was torture to Rachel. There were moments of conversation, but always with another party after which silence renewed. There was crying each night and scribbling of horrible Italian poems, but no relief from the irony that was her life. Quinn hates her, and there was nothing she could do to embellish that.

When Quinn came to talking again, Rachel was elated. It was the morning of the second Friday the blonde was in town and she greeted the girl for breakfast.

“Are you done reading your book?”
“What book?”

“The poetry. Remember?”

“Oh.” Rachel lifted her sunglasses to see the girl. “No, I’m translating it into Italian. I enjoy it more that way.”

“That’s a good way of getting to grips with things, I suppose.”

‘Where have you been?’ Rachel thought.

“How’s your novel coming along?”

Quinn sighed, pouring herself a glass of juice. “Terrible.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. My fathers aren’t helping?”

“They can’t help me.” She spoke. “I think I’m in love.”

“That’s unfortunate.” The brunette stood from her seat, letting the very book Quinn quizzed her about fall from her pocket into the grass. She stared at the
bearded man on the cover, he looked ever so slightly like Dominic and kindhearted.

“Are you busy today?”

“No.” Rachel spoke. “I’m going to be lazy like every other day.”

“Come into town with me. Just the two of us. I need cigarettes.”

“Can’t one of your friends take you?”

“You don’t think we’re friends?” Quinn chuckled, wiping juice from her lip. The girl in front of wandered mercilessly about the garden, looking for any way to escape the awkwardness between herself and the blonde.

“I didn’t…..I mean….” She sighed. “I’ll go to town with you. Let me get my things.”

Quinn waited in the garden and watched through the open windows as Rachel packed a backpack. She was bringing a pen, her books, some papers and a small bottle of perfume that had been left on a high shelf in her room and that Quinn had often stared at in the night. It was written in Italian but had never been translated and when Rachel came down, she smelt of roses and all things good. Knowing the girl was a high that never seemed to dwindle. They cycled down to the very same table they had sat on the other day and reflected on a time they knew each other better and weren’t separated by the strange and upsetting ideal of only having been worlds apart. Quinn fit perfectly into Italy. She looked like she owned the country, sat there smoking just ahead of the town’s fountain. She looked so picturesque it was hard to believe she existed just in front of Rachel.

“So, what’s your book about anyway?”

“The one I’m writing or the one I’m reading?”

“The one you’re writing.” She smiled. “I don’t have much care for what book you happen to be reading.”

“You’re very funny.” Quinn entertained the girl. “It’s about a handsome American prince who wants to marry a poor girl. Only she’s in love with the local inventor and he’s in love with his assistant.”

“That’s all?”

“What do you mean ‘that’s all’, Rach?” The blonde leaned forward, blowing cigarette smoke in the younger girl’s face. “It’s about unrequited love; the most painful feeling in the world. I mean, have you ever loved someone who just didn’t love you back?”

Rachel went silent and stared across the table at Quinn who looked equally as dumbfounded as she looked serious. She waited for a real answer from the brunette.
“I think you know the answer to that.” She came, meekly.

Quinn sat back and looked onwards, sighing in what she likely already knew to be true. She did know, just as she had always known, and how she would know even when she left to return to America. She stood, walking to the fountain to be anywhere but there.

“It can make you sick, loving someone who doesn’t love you, you know?”

“You think I’m sick?” Rachel leapt to follow her with urgency.

“I suppose I do, but I think I’d prefer it if everyone was as sick as you are.”

They stood in silence as Quinn finished the very last drag of her cigarette and shoved the remaining packet in her pocket for later, tossing the butt into the fountain and watching the end sizzle in the heat of day.

“Did you tell me what I think you were telling me, Rach?” She did not look down at the girl.

“I think so.”

“Why did you tell me?”

Rachel’s heart was thumping in her chest. It was surprising the whole town did not think some colossal natural disaster was afoot.
“I told you because I wanted you to know.”

Quinn met Rachel’s gaze.

“Because you wanted me to know?”

“There isn’t anyone I could have said it to but you.”

Quinn sighed in what appeared to be feigned disappointment, rearing her head to the small streets of Italy and ignoring the passion that burned within her for the girl who had just confessed her love outside a convenience store.

“Come on.” She ushered. “Show me some of your country. I have time to waste.”

After her confession, Rachel felt both relieved of sin and renewed in a new kind of treason that was equally as everlasting as the last. She was biking behind Quinn wanting to cry and knowing there was nothing she could do to take those words back. The girls cycled to a small clearing just beyond the very outskirts of town where there were no homes, and the only discernible feature was a small lake that stretched no further than four tress beyond the beaten path. They stopped at the edge and dropped their bikes.
“This is my spot. I come here to read.”

“It’s pretty. You fancy a swim?” Quinn removed her shirt and stood in only her shorts and tank.

Quinn stayed in the water as Rachel stepped around to sit on the sunny grass and annotate the book she’d been working against, dying of guilt.

“I wish I hadn’t spoken.” She said.

“I’m pretending you didn’t.” Quinn scaped the waters and came and sat by her counterpart on the grass.

“You’re not going to start avoiding me again, are you?”

Quinn stared at the vulnerable girls and thought of all the ways she could say yes without breaking her heart.

“Well.” She spoke. “I don’t think we should talk about our…well….situation. We can’t, really.”

Silence again. Horrible and ugly silence where both girls had so much to say it was unreal to begin to process it over the spoken word.

“I think it’s better than nothing.” Quinn spoke eventually. “I mean, I didn’t even think you liked me a couple of days ago.”

“Like you?” The brunette scoffed. “Quinn, I worship you.”

She leaned over to Rachel and looked her in the eyes, realising then how beautiful she was and how everlasting it was. She was beyond pretty, it seemed to be ethereal and Quinn pondered how she could even be of this earth.

“I like you too.”

With a moment of impulse, she reached over and kissed the girl, pressing their lips to together in a last desperate attempt at some kind of peace between them. The world around them seemed to melt into a pool of nothingness as they grappled at each other for and fondled as though they had never experienced the touch of another. For Rachel, this was true and for Quinn, she had never touched a woman she had been so infatuated with. It was both tender and scary, and Rachel knew she would never recover from this moment for as long as she should live.

“Do you feel better now?” Quinn asked as they separated. She ran her finger over Rachel’s wet lips, feeling how plump and swollen they had become and smiling in pride.

“Worse.”

“I think we should go.”

“No.” Rachel leapt up in a final moments kiss. “Please stay.”

Quinn stood up and walked across the grass back to where the lake was. Her body had dried quickly and she was looking at Rachel, on her back, legs spread and dress letting the top of her thighs peak up. The brunette brought herself up on her arms and let a strand of hair fall absently in her face. She looked exhausted from all the pining.
“I can’t. I don’t want you to do this with you, I mean, I can’t do this with you. We’ve been good so far and I think we should let it stay that way.”

“Did I hurt you?” Rachel asked. “I know that knowing someone wants you and there is nothing you can do for them is the most hopeless of all emotions.”

“Is there anything you don’t know? The blonde chuckled.

“if only you knew how little I know about things that matter.”

Quinn smiled and took her time walking around the water to where the bikes lay flat and hot in the sun. Rachel could only watch. She wasn’t ready to leave and leave the spot where she has first kissed the only person she would think about every time she had sex for the rest of her life. Her indentation was still in the grass beside her.

“I don’t know the way home. Are you coming?”

Rachel said nothing and lay in looking up at the sun through the trees and wanting nothing more than to die so that her body would decompose into the ground and she may never have to leave. Before she knew it, Quinn was gone and she was alone, nothing but the thoughts of the girl stirring around in her mind until she was asleep and lulling away her day, like some kind of summer dream. It would be so sad so soon, but for now, it was summer, she was in love, and there was nothing better in the world.