Beatrice Duke is stressed.
Her totally, super real boyfriend, Peter Donaldson, has been off somewhere with his totally not boyfriend Balthazar Jones, for what, to Beatrice, seems to be an inexplicably long time.
Bea taps her feet; and shifts her weight back and forth impatiently. She shouldn’t have even even worn a dress for this crap.
Finally, Peter returns to the snack table where Bea’s been standing. “Ready to go?” asks Peter, smiling, as he quickly slides the top button of his shirt into place.
“Ready to go!?”, repeats Beatrice, disgusted. “Peter you were gone for forty minutes! Do you know how many people asked me where you were? I texted you like a thousand times - and no answer!”
“I’m sor-” Peter tries to start, but Beatrice cuts him off.
“Sorry?!” Beatrice snaps “ I’m here guarding the mini muffins because Meg left early while you get to go off gallivanting with a small adorable musical genius.” Beatrice mocks in a snide voice.
“Keep it down, someone will hear you,” says a distressed Peter.
“I’m sick of this Peter, sick of lying.” Bea whispers as they walk out of the dying party and into the car.
————-
The next day, Meg and Beatrice lie on the floor of Meg’s bedroom, talking with the door closed and the windows covered, their Sunday tradition.
Meg rests her head on Bea’s stomach. “I wish we could go places.” says Meg, only sighing slightly.
“Why can't we?” questions Beatrice, as if they haven’t discussed it millions of times before.
“You know why.”
“Yeah, but it’s stupid.” whines Beatrice as she sits up.
“I know Bea.” Margret says dishearteningly, looking away at the ground. “But look at the bright side: Peter’s happy, Balthy is happy, and we have this whole place to ourselves every Sunday.” Meg scoots closer to Beatrice, her warm, familiar body inviting Bea to bury her face into Meg’s soft purple sweater.
“How romantic.” says Bea, locking her gaze on Meg’s face.
Bea leans in towards Meg. Her heart starts beating faster and faster. No matter how many times they do this, being this close to Meg takes her breath away.
Suddenly the sound of a creaking door cuts through the moment. Hero Duke bursts through the door, oblivious to what she just interrupted.
“Hey, Margret, your mom says-” Hero stops in her tracks and almost drops her coffee.
Meg and Bea practically leap to opposite ends of the room.
“Hero, what are you doing here?” Meg asks in the calmest, most controlled voice she can manage (which, admittedly, is not very calm at all).
“I’m just here to deliver that jacket I borrowed from you last week…also I made cookies.” she says, lifting up a bag. “Beatrice, I thought you were at Peter’s, what happened?”
Meg sees the look of sheer panic in Bea’s eyes and jumps in to help. “Her and Peter-” Bea looks even more scared when Meg starts the sentence.
“…Got in a fight.” Meg continues, a bit worried about her lie.
Bea goes along with it immediately: “Yeah, I came here to talk to Meg about it.”
It works like a charm.
“Oh my god Bea, what did he say? Are you okay? Do you want me to get John to yell at him about it?”
“No no, I’m fine, it was just a spat about who’s better at football, that’s all.”
Meg stares at her in dismay, “Was that the best she could come up with?” she thinks, her mind racing.
“Really? That’s all?” Hero looks confused.
“Yeah, it’s nothing really, we’re fine, completely fine.” stutters Bea.
“Alright.. Well, I’ll see you later, Meg. See you at dinner, Bea, I’m making egg rolls.” Hero sets down the cookies and jacket, and then the door creaks shut.
“I think we handled that well.” Bea says, unconvincingly.
“You think?” Meg asks, not at all confident in the scene that just took place.
“No,” sighs Bea as she slides back onto the floor next to Meg.
Together they sit slumped side by side on the carpet for another hour before Bea has to go home for dinner.
———
Eight o'clock: around two hours after Bea gets home. She works on an essay for history class and finishes off the last off the egg rolls from dinner, when her phone rings. She picks it up without looking - it’s probably just Meg.
“Hello this is B-”
“Better at football? Really!?”
It’s Peter.
“I panicked, okay? Hero walked in right before Meg was about to kiss me. So I lied and said she was comforting me about a fight I had with your stupid ass.”
“And the first thing you thought of was football?” Pete replies, unimpressed.
“Like I said, I panicked. How did you even find out about that?”
“John told me.”
“Of course he did.” Bea snarks, hoping her eye roll came across over the phone
“I don’t get your problem with him, he’s changed, and he never meant to hurt her.”
“It’s fine” Bea says, clearly not fine.
“So, how’s Meg?”
“Since when do you care?”
“Bea, what’s up? Did I do something, because if I did-”
“No no, Peter, it’s not you, it’s this whole fucked up situation.”
“It’s for the best.”
“You always say that, and it’s not true. We aren’t happy and you know that.”
“Well, what do you want to do about it? You wanna just start coming out to people in this close-minded town? Like, we’re both captains of our teams - we’d get kicked off! I know you want to be free and go out for milkshakes and be grossly close in public, and I bet that’d be great, but it just isn’t reasonable right now. I’m sorry.”
Beatrice stays quiet on the other end of the phone for almost a full minute before she responds.
“I’m gonna do it.”
“What?”
“You heard me, I’m coming out.”
“Bea-” Peter bursts out desperately, but the only response he receives is the never-ending dial tone. “Goddamnit.”