Friend date
Ava was just on her way out of the house to meet Beatrice, when a familiar, deadpan voice held her back: “You are not going out like that!”
Ava stopped in her tracks, turned around to meet Mary’s judging look and looked down at herself. She was wearing a pair of sweatpants – her nicest ones -, a plain t-shirt and one of her comfortable sweaters. Simple and comfy. And most of all: unobtrusive.
“What?”, she asked insecurely. “I always go out like that...”
Mary huffed and rolled her eyes. “Yeah. When you meet up with me or Shan or Camilla.”, she drily pointed out. “Not when you have a date.”
And just like that, Ava’s mind went blank and her heart started racing again. Just when she had managed to talk herself into being calm enough to not look like the nervous wreck she was. Thanks Mary.
“It’s not a date.”
Another sceptical look from Mary, paired with her trademark raised eyebrow.
“We are just meeting for coffee to get to know each other better.”, Ava elaborated.
Mary’s eyebrow just rose more, her look as deadpan as her voice before. “It’s a date.”
“It’s not…”, Ava tried again, though it was a half-hearted attempt.
Mary stepped closer, her eyes scanning Ava’s outfit again with a “Ava, listen. Whatever this is: I am sure Beatrice will not show up to your not-date in sweatpants and a hoodie.”
Ava sighed, but refused to give in so easily. “Yeah, but that’s because she never wears hoodies...”
Mary just smirked at her. “And how would you know?”, she asked.
And it really was an innocent question. It really shouldn't have any effect on Ava at all. But for some reason suddenly all she could think of was Beatrice looking soft and cute and homey in an oversized hoodie and that was all it took for her heart to skip a beat. Ava internally groaned when she realized she had just completely zoomed out. She was really, royally fucked. And Mary seemed to agree if the amused look she gave her was anything to go by. She seemed to contemplate teasing Ava even more, put then took pity on her.
“Come on, I will help you pick something out that doesn’t scream don’t even think that I might have put an effort for you.” If only she knew how much time Ava had actually spent going through her wardrobe trying to find the perfect outfit that made her look cute but did not seem like she was in any way trying to cross the line Beatrice had drawn.
“That’s not… We agreed to be friends. And I don’t want to overstep. I also don’t want her to think…”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I am also not going to choose something that screams I want to marry you.”, Mary assured her and then drily added: “Your eyes are already doing that job all on their own.”
“Mary!”
*****************************************************************************
Mary was right. Beatrice was dressed nicely in a button-up and pair of semi-formal cloth pants, and Ava was very glad that she had listened to Mary and had eventually opted for her favourite short sleeved printed shirt blouse and a pair of shorts - casual, but cute. She was nervous enough as it was and the quick once-over and unreadable expression Beatrice greeted her with didn’t help that matter in the slightest. But she kept telling herself that Beatrice was here and she was early and she looked heartstoppingly stunning - so that had to account for something. Even though the latter point might just be Ava’s massive crush talking, because Beatrice had clearly decided for a simple, unassuming outfit.
Ava inhaled deeply, hands deep in her pockets, and approached the waiting woman with a shy smile. Beatrice just stood and waited, though her eyes were watching Ava’s every move with an en guard, but slowly softening look on her face.
“Hey.”, Ava greeted her, trying not to sound as breathless as she felt. Her heart was beating out of her chest just looking at Beatrice.
“Hey.”, Beatrice answered. She seemed tense, maybe even a bit nervous, too, but Ava wasn’t too sure how to read the unfamiliarly rigid posture Beatrice had.
There was a short, awkward silence, while they were just standing in front of each other.
Ava took a deep breath. “Thanks for meeting me.” She internally cringed at how absolutely not casual she sounded.
“No problem.”, Beatrice softly answered.
“You look…”, Ava started, unable to stop staring, but Bea instantly tensed and her eyebrows shot up in an alarmed way, so Ava stopped herself from saying what her mind was relentlessly supplying in an endless loop: gorgeous. “Yeah, sorry…”, Ava nervously stammered. “Do you want to go in?”
“Sure.”
Once they were seated, Ava inhaled deeply, looked Beatrice dead in the eyes and decided to just break the ice with the bluntness she was known for.
“Bea,”, she started, her voice both soft and serious. “I just wanted to say that I really am sorry about…” Before she could even finish the first sentence of the long apology she had gone over countless times in her head, Beatrice cut her off with a quick raise of her hand. “Can we please not?”, she asked, her voice distant, but with a faint hint of pleading that just increased when she continued: “I really don’t want to talk about that. You said it wasn’t going to be that kind of talk, Ava. So can we just…”
“Yeah. Yeah, sure.”, Ava was quick to assure her. She wasn’t going to force Beatrice to talk or listen to her apology. If Beatrice didn’t want to talk about what happened between them, she had to respect that. Maybe another time. Hopefully.
So, another shot at breaking the ice. It did not look like Beatrice was going to meet her halfway with that, which was fair, considering Ava had been the one that wanted to meet up and talk. But between her desire for this conversation to go well, to find the spark that had always been there between them again, to bridge the distance her indecisiveness had forced them into and the sudden, unfamiliar feeling of talking to an invisible wall around Bea’s heart, she found herself lose all the natural charm she usually had around people.
“So, tell me something about you. I know you were in Spain, but I'd love to learn more about your experiences there.”, was the best she could come up with.
Beatrice stared at her for a moment, opened and closed her mouth, and then answered: “Well. 5 years ago I started my doctorate programme in conservation and restauration in Spain, which I recently completed. I gave classes in art history and architecture at the University of Sevilla while cooperating with the Ancient History Museum on a restauration program of an ancient Christian church in the Sudan. It was a project connected to my doctor’s thesis, which…” She went on like this for a couple of minutes and Ava patiently listened to Bea list all her professional milestones until she couldn’t take it anymore.
“Ok, Bea, stop!”, she eventually interrupted her. She let out a toneless laugh. “This is not a fucking job interview.”
Beatrice blinked at her, then furrowed her eyebrows and for a second she looked seriously offended and Ava thought she had completely fucked up their whole none-date within the first 10 minutes of it. But then the look on Beatrice’s face changed slightly and Ava thought she could detect a hint of teasing in these beautiful eyes of hers. “Well, you started it.”, was all Beatrice replied.
“What?”
“You wanted to know what I did.”, Beatrice exclaimed, an surprising dryness in her voice. “That’s what I did.”
Ava nearly groaned. “That’s not… come on, that is not what I meant with that.” She nearly let out a nervous laughter from the awkward tension between them. Where was all that comfortable feeling of connection and familiarity that had always surrounded them? Had Ava, once again, just imagined it? Had she just made up a barely-existent bond and understanding in her head like she had so many times before? She hadn’t. She knew she hadn’t. She knew this was different. Had felt it with every fibre of her body. So where was it now?
“You literally said: 'Tell me something about you. I'd love to learn more about what you did in the past 5 years.''”, Beatrice huffed, crossing her arms in front of her body. “Sorry, that kind of triggered my job interview mode.”
Ava sighed. “Okay, fair.”, she admitted with a shrug. “Maybe we are just both shit at small talk.” We are also long past the small talk phase, she thought. But she kept the thought inside, because she felt like Beatrice was not open to any kind of mention of what had happened between them.
To Ava's surprise, her resigned comment made Beatrice smile, an easy, real smile, which tugged on Ava’s dormant heartstrings.
“Yeah. Definitely not our strength.”, Beatrice admitted with a soft chuckle. For a moment, they just looked at each other, both a hesitant, but gentle smiles on their lips. Ava was relieved to notice that most of the tension was lifted.
“So, what did you mean?”, Beatrice broke the comfortable silence.
“Hm?”
“With your question? What did you want to talk about?”
The question was posed softly and sincerely, but still managed to catch Ava off guard. What did she want to talk about? She hadn’t thought that far ahead. But the more she thought about what to ask Beatrice, the more she realized that she had lost her right to ask Beatrice any kind of intimate questions. She really couldn't expect the other woman to want to share anything personal with her at this point. So maybe it was on her to open up, to let herself be vulnerable in front of Beatrice, to share part of herself with the woman she hoped would let herself in again at one point. At least a bit. One step at a time.
“Do you remember the list we made together?”, she dared ask. It felt like a middle ground. Familiar, but not too intimate.
Still, she could see the guarded look return to Bea’s eyes. “Yeah.”
Ava smiled hesitantly. “It… it actually helped me broaden my horizon at lot. And overcome some of my biggest fears.”, she confessed.
She didn’t exactly know how to read the silence that followed her confession, but then an unexpectedly tender and understanding look appeared on Beatrice’s face. “You learnt how to swim.”
Ava nodded. “I did.”
“How did that happen?”, Beatrice asked carefully. “I remember you insisting that you would never learn it.”
Ava smiled at the memory. She had said that. But also: “I did let you put it on my list, though, didn’t I?” She hadn’t even argued, even though every cell in her body had frozen in panic at the very thought of it.
“Why?” Beatrice looked at her with her big, brown eyes, which never failed to melt Ava’s resolve.
“Remember how you taught me how to float?”, she asked. Because she did. Lying in the grass, shoulders touching, Beatrice’s hand on her diaphragm guiding her breathing, while she patiently whispered calming words into Ava’s ear at feeling her racing and tumbling heart. The way she had used scientific explanations about the density and buoyancy of salt water and the air bladder of different types of fish to illustrate to Ava how certain things can help with the floating and to reassure her. She remembered all of it like it had happened yesterday.
Ava wondered if Beatrice had since realized that Ava’s heart beating so fast had had little to do with her fear of water and everything with Beatrice’s hand on her abdomen, dangerously close to her chest.
“Well, about one month after…” You left. I let you go. “…we made the list, I borrowed Mary’s car, just drove out to the seaside and tried.”
“Alone?” It was cute how Beatrice looked concerned even though Ava sitting right in front of her, good and healthy, should make it obvious that nothing bad happened. “Why didn’t you take someone with you?”
Ava thought about how to answer this question. She once again decided to be as honest as she could be without pushing Beatrice’s boundaries. She looked up into Beatrice’s eyes, a bit shily, and replied with a small smile and a shrug: “There was no one around I would have wanted with me.”
It was mesmerizing how, when you just paid close enough attention, you could see the emotions flash through Beatrice’s eyes, even when she tried hard to keep up that collected look she had perfected after years of hiding how she truly felt from her parents. Nearly perfected. Because Ava had seen the passing hint of vulnerability and something Ava couldn’t quite place. The timid look and hesitant smile Beatrice gave her afterwards let Ava’s heart jump hopefully though. Maybe not all was lost.
“Did it work?”, Beatrice asked.
Ava grimaced playfully. “Not at first. I did sink a couple of times.”, She chuckled and was glad to see a fond smile appear on Bea’s face. ”But then I remembered what you taught me about just trusting that the water will carry me. That it has carried much taller and heavier people than me. It helped me relax. And after a while it worked. I was floating. In the sea. Like a boat.” She paused, smiling to herself at the memory, before continuing: “It was… I cannot even describe it. I just felt…”
“…unburdened?”
Ava snapped out of her revery at hearing Bea’s soft, knowing voice and when their eyes met, Ava instantly remembered why looking into Bea’s eyes had always had her spellbound.
“Yes.”, she near-whispered, unable to look away. It was Beatrice who broke eye-contact after three breathless heartbeats. She was biting her lips with a pensive look on her face and Ava couldn’t help but stare and wish it was her teeth gently nibbling these lips she wanted to kiss again so desperately. “I used to do it a lot when I was a kid.” Bea’s confession brought her back to reality and she quickly snapped her eyes up from Beatrice’s lips to her eyes, trying to remember what they had been talking about before she had gotten distracted. “The floating.” Ah, yeah. That was what they had been talking about. “I loved the sea. And whenever I could, I would go for a swim and then spend hours just floating. I felt most free and careless when I did.”
It took a moment for Ava’s brain to catch up, but when it did, she tilted her head, intrigued. “Why did you stop?”
Beatrice sighed. It was a heavy, loaded sigh. “No time. Too many responsibilities. Too many expectations. I never really went to the sea again.” She paused for a moment. “But when I was still living with my parents I would often sneak out of the house at night to lie in the pool in our backyard and just look at the night sky. It was the only thing that could make me pause and just breathe for a while.” She paused and Ava, though her overactive mind was throwing countless questions at her, waited patiently for Beatrice to continue. “That night. Showing you how to breathe. It reminded me of how it made me feel so liberated. So when I arrived in Spain, the first thing I did was drive out to the sea, get into the water and concentrate on feeling my surroundings - the water, the sun and the sea breeze. It made me feel alive." Another pause. "It felt like a rebirth. So I kept doing it. I just lay there, looked at the sky and felt… unbound. Unburdened. I felt like I could just be, you know?”
She did. And she was glad that Beatrice had found something that could help her let go of all the thoughts occupying her mind, all the responsibility she felt, all the pressure that had always seemed to subtly wear her down. It made her feel warm and proud and a little less guilty to know that going to Spain had helped Beatrice heal part of the trauma her parents had inflicted on her.
But another part of her, the selfish part, was still stuck on the fact that Beatrice, just like her, had carried the memory of that night with her and that maybe she had also chosen to relive part of their night to feel close to her. Ava liked to think that maybe sometimes they had both floated in the sea at the same time, thousands of miles apart, looking at the same sky, thinking of the same night, feeling at peace with themselves.
Maybe Beatrice was thinking the same. Or maybe she was just remembering these weightless moments. Whatever it was that was going through her mind right now, Ava was grateful for it, because it made Beatrice look at Ava with the warm, fond smile she hadn’t been sure she would ever see again directed at her. Ava held her soft gaze with an equally tender one.
And there it was again. The reason why she had never quite been capable of letting go of that memory she had shared with Bea. The inexplicable bond she felt whenever they were together. A feeling that just got stronger with every look, every touch, every word they exchanged. The feeling of falling deeper into those brown eyes every time Bea let her look at them, really look at them, without her guards up. The realization that this might be it, this might the feeling she had been looking for all her life.
But this time it didn’t scare her. It didn’t make her want to run and hide. It just made her want to spend the rest of her days getting to know every part of Beatrice she was willing to share with her.