Chapter 2
It was four days since she became homeless, four days since everything came crashing down around her. She knows that Mr. and Mrs. Brown have been talking to her relatives. She knows that Mrs. Brown talked to her mother, Jillian heard her mention it to Mr. Brown. Before she could really learn anything of that conversation, though, she just bolted upstairs to Sasha’s room. If her mom was sorry or wanted her to come back home, she would have been here already, right? But she wasn’t.
Instead, Jillian is sat on the Browns’ back porch, book in her hand, doing her best to concentrate on the words on the page. She had wanted to give them all a little bit space. She was feeling like she was always hanging around them, and while she loves Sasha, she did not want to coddle the other girl, or suffocate her.
“What are you reading there?”
She looks up to see Mr. Brown standing in the door. She just raises the book to reveal the title: Lectures on Nuclear Models and Nuclear Matter.
“Some light reading, huh?” Mr. Brown chuckles and sits down next to her.
She shrugs her shoulders. “It’s comforting.” She isn’t even sure what it was, and she wasn’t sure why, but this had been her favorite book for a few years now. “It’s my favorite.”
“Sasha’s favorite is Fingersmith by Sarah Waters. That should have been a clue for us. Or I guess it would have been, had I looked up what it’s all about.” He shakes his head and leans back against the chair. “So, are you alright, Jillian?”
She shrugs her shoulders, again. “I’ll have to get back to you on that.”
He nods his head. “Yeah, understandable.” He sighs and waits a few moments before he starts talking again. “We have been trying to reach your relatives the last couple of days.”
The way he starts his speech, she can’t help but to feel like nothing good is coming next. He’s too careful. “Oh. Right.” She wants to ask how it went but is almost too afraid to ask.
“Bad news is, no one on your mother’s side of the family can take you in right now.”
The way he said it, that right now, Jillian knows what it means. It means that they don’t want a dyke in their house any more than her mother did. She had expected it, but still, hearing it out loud like that… It fucking hurt. “Right. So, I guess I should look into getting emancipated then. I’ve been doing some research on the Internet about it and –“
“Wait, no, no. Sorry, I should have started with saying that I have both bad news and good news.” He sighs and runs his hand over his face. “Sorry, Jillian. I didn’t mean to…” He makes some sort of a hand gesture between them, which Jillian isn’t sure what it’s supposed to mean. “We managed to contact your dad. He’s away in Europe right now because of work. But he will be back in the States in a week, and then he can come here, you two can talk and he said that if everything works out, and if you want to, he’d love for you to come live with him.”
For a moment there, Jillian just blinks, not sure how to react to the news. “Oh.”
“Is that alright with you?”
Good news – she probably isn’t as destitute as she thought she was. Bad news – “Yeah… I just…. I haven’t seen him for almost nine years now.”
Mr. Brown nods. “We’ll just see how it all goes, when he gets here, yeah? No pressure. I’m kind of liking having someone in the house who reads…,” he picks up Jillian’s book to read the title, “… Lectures on Nuclear Models and Nuclear Matter for fun.”
Jillian smiles. “Thanks. For everything.”
He stands up and squeezes her shoulder before heading to the door. “Don’t mention it. I mean, you are practically family, with you having sex with my daughter on a semi-regular basis and all.”
———
“We should have a date.”
“Mhmhh. Sure.”
“Holtzy,” Sasha covers one page of the book Jillian is reading with her hand.
“I’m actually reading the other page,” but she looks up nevertheless.
“We should go on a date. I mean, we don’t really need to sneak around anymore, so we can jus go on a normal date, out in the open.” Sasha is all smiles and excitement, and she can’t wait to do normal couples’ things with Jillian.
Jillian contemplates the idea for a moment. “Are you sure?”
Sasha frowns. “What do you mean, are you sure?”
“I mean…” Jillian sighs, thinking of the place way how to put her thoughts into words, and the words in a proper line. “Our parents know, sure. And some of them freaked out more than the others.” This is good. She can joke about it. Kind of. “But are you ready for absolutely everyone to find out? Because if we go on a date, I will kiss you.” She squeezes Sasha’s hand.
“I guess you’re right,” Sasha sighs. “I hate living in a small town full of bigots.” She had figured that she could take Jillian out as a way to make her feel better, make her forget about everything that had happened, even if just for a few moments here and there.
“Oh, but,” Jillian says, now it’s her turn to look excited. “I have an idea. Because I would actually love to take you out on a date.” She gives Sasha a quick kiss. “Soooo, Saturday evening. Wear something comfortable.”
Sasha looks all sorts of bewildered, but she knows her girlfriend enough not to question it.
———
The brunette waits for Jillian in the living room, as the other girl had instructed a few hours before. The last few days, she has mostly seen her girlfriend either in the backyard or in the garage, always tinkering with something, and always shoo-ing Sasha away. But at the very least she seemed to be excited about something, and that was the important thing.
“Close your eyes,” Jillian appears out of nowhere, or so it seems, a mischievous smile on her face.
Sasha does as she is told, and closes her eyes. A moment later she feels Jillian’s hands on her hips, guiding her.
“You can open your eyes now.” She’s practically bouncing on the spot, her hands still on Sasha’s hips. “I wanted to do something nice for you. I hope you like it.”
The whole back yard is filled with tiny lights that looked a lot like Christmas lights, and Sasha could have sworn that the lights were… not blinking, but they were changing somehow, to the beat of the soft music playing in the background. In the middle of the lights is a big blanket, with some food on it. “It’s beautiful. Is this what you have been working on?”
“Yep,” Jillian nods and smiles. “I wanted to give you a date nice date night since we never went on an actual date.” She leans her chin onto Sasha’s shoulder from behind and kisses her cheek. “As a thank you for being you. For everything.”
“You didn’t…” Sasha smiles and kisses Jillian’s nose. “Thank you. It’s lovely.”
“Don’t touch the lights, though. They are a little… um… unstable.” She grins sheepishly and starts to guide Sasha to the blanket.
“Holtzy?”
“Hm?”
“Did you cook?” The worry in her face is apparent.
Jillian chuckles at Sasha’s expression. “No. But I am offended that you would be so worried about it.”
“Darling,” Sasha says as she sits down, “you can build something mind blowing out of absolutely nothing, but you can’t cook. I would never even trust you to make a grilled sandwich.”
Jillian wants to argue for a moment there, but in the end figures that Sasha is right. “Well, then good for you that I decided to order some pizza. Prosciutto, basil and mozzarella for you, my lady,” she opens the box and slides it over to Sasha.
Sasha kisses her. “You know me so well.”
“You fucking know it,” she winks and opens her own pizza box – chicken, pineapple and red onions. “And,” she opens a basket that’s lying on the side, “I also managed to score us some wine.” She takes out a bottle of white wine and two wine glasses. There’s an all too proud grin on her face, as she presents them to Sasha.
“I hope you are not trying to get me drunk so you can take advantage of me.”
“I don’t think I need to get you drunk to take advantage of you.” There’s an all too smug of a grin on Jillian’s face, as she bites into her pizza.
“Just for that, you are not getting any tonight, my dear.” Sasha wiggles her eyebrows as if to challenge Jillian.
The blond snorts. “Like you’ll be able to resist my wily charms.”
Sasha rolls her eyes. “I guess we’ll see,” she grins, and just eats her pizza.
They eat, they drink, they talk, they kiss, and at one point Jillian even tries to charm Sasha by telling her everything she knows of the stars and planets, and they end up lying on the blanket, side by side.
“Is any of that even true?” Sasha asks with a small giggle.
“Of course,” Jillian smiles and pauses for a moment. “Maybe. I think some of it is.”
“I love you,” Sasha turns a little, so she can kiss the other girl.
“I love you, too,” she murmurs against Sasha’s lips after they pull apart from the kiss. “So,” she starts after a moment, looking up in the sky. “I might be moving in with my dad… No, fuck, that does not sound right at all. How the fuck am I even supposed to call him?”
Sasha takes Jillian’s hand into hers and intervenes their fingers. “What’s his first name?”
“Donald.”
“You can just call him Donald, then.”
“Good idea,” Jillian mutters and takes a deep breath. “What about us, though?”
“What do you mean?” Sasha brings the blond’s fingers to her lips and kisses them gently.
“I mean… I have no idea where he lives. What if I have to move to Los Angeles, or New York or who knows where, and I will be thousands of miles away from you?” She looks at Sasha, in a way trying to take in all of her in this moment. The way the lights make it seem like she has a glow around her, the way moonlight almost seems to reflect from her eyes, or maybe it’s the other way around… She is her everything, and Jillian isn’t sure if she is ready to lose another piece of herself.
Sasha continues to kiss her fingers for a moment, before answering Jillian’s question. “Then we’ll deal, then we’ll think about it. We can try to do the whole long distance relationship, see if it works. There are people it works for, after all. Or we can break up, and just go back to being friends. But most importantly, I think we have a whole week before he gets here, and we won’t have to make any decisions before then. You won’t need to make any decisions before then.” She kisses the palm of Jillian’s hand. “How does that sound?”
Jillian smiles, feeling in a way as if a huge weight has been lifted off her shoulders. “Perfect.” There are other things on her mind, of course there are, because her mind is always running about a million miles a second, but it’s okay. She can talk about them later. For now, there is her, there is Sasha and their date which is only about half way done. “So,” she gets up from the blanket, lifting Sasha up with her, “my lady, what do you say to a dance?”
“You know my answer to you is always yes.”