Say a Little Prayer(76)
A surprised laugh bursts out of me. I can’t help it; she says it so casually, like we’ve had this conversation a hundred times before. Like hearing her say it doesn’t light my skin on fire.
“I’m actually a lesbian, if we’re being specific,” she adds quickly. “I’m pretty sure. Because I don’t think I’ve ever liked anyone who wasn’t a girl, but I also never thought I’d ever say it out loud, so, guess my dad’s good for something, you know?”
She flashes me a wobbly smile, but the fact that she’s trying to make a joke now, when everything so far has been at her expense, makes me furious. “He’s not,” I say, more forcefully than I mean to. “It’s none of his business.”
“He seems to think it is.”
“Yes, well, he also thinks that economic recessions are caused by having gay people in government. You don’t ever have to talk about it if you don’t want to, Julia. You don’t owe it to anyone.”
It’s what Mom told me the day after I came out, when she found me in the driveway, trying to figure out how I was going to handle everyone at school. She’d sat down next to me, looked up at the darkening sky, and said, You don’t owe anyone a piece of yourself, you know. It’s okay to have it be just yours for now, and that doesn’t make it any less valid.
Julia looks down, bottom lip caught between her teeth. “I think I owe it to you, though,” she whispers. “I kissed you and then…Oh my god, Riley. I was so horrible to you.”
She buries her face in her hands and something in my chest crumples. I push myself off the wall, stopping just short of where she stands on the other side of the sink. Close enough for either of us to touch if we wanted to. “Yeah,” I say. “You were, but I think you’re allowed to be a little horrible when you’re having a gay crisis at church camp. It’s not like I was a shining example of good friendship either.”
“No.” Julia wipes the back of her hand across her face. “But I know what you were trying to do. I know it wasn’t personal.”
“Then why did you act like it was?”
She hesitates, gaze fixed somewhere between the toes of her shoes. When she speaks again, every word feels deliberate. “I know you hate the way my dad talks about being gay. I know you’re angry at him, and that makes sense. You’re allowed to be because he hurt you directly, and if I admitted that he hurt me, too, that I was also angry with him, it felt like I might as well write lesbian across my forehead. Because everyone would know.”
She leans back against the sink, shoulders angling toward me ever so slightly. It feels like an invitation, like a crack in the door, but I don’t know how to open it the rest of the way.
“I know you probably hate me, too,” she continues. “You probably think I’m a coward or that I don’t care about what happened to you or Hannah, but that is so far from the truth. I hate that you’ve been hurting all year. I hate that you didn’t feel like you could tell me, and I hate that I can’t do anything to fix it now.”
My hands ache, and when I look down, I realize I’m gripping the edge of the sink, too. I let go and rub my palms against my jeans. “I wanted to tell you everything,” I admit. “I thought about it so many times, but it didn’t seem fair. What were you supposed to do? Listen to all the reasons I hated your dad and then tell me he’s a piece of shit?”
“No, that’s your job, apparently.”
“Right.” I almost smile. “I’m sorry about that. And I’m sorry for comparing you to him. It’s not true.”
Julia’s shoulders sag with obvious relief, like that particular condemnation was still plaguing her. “Thank you. I want us to talk, you know. I want us to help each other.”
“Me, too,” I say. “I miss you.”
“I miss you, too.” For the first time all day, a genuine smile tugs at the corner of Julia’s mouth. “You know how many things happened this week? You know how many times I started to text you before I remembered we weren’t speaking?”
I look up. “What sort of things?”
“Like, did you hear Mike Fratt got arrested?”
“What?” I surge forward. “No! Why?”
“Tax evasion, I think. He never reported any of that money he won last summer.”
“Oh my god.” I laugh. “You know how many bad albums he’s going to drop now? He’s in debt, Julia. That’s how everyone makes money these days.”
She laughs, too, hand flying up to cover her mouth, and I feel the pressure between us snap. I wonder then if we’re ever going to talk about the rest of it. All the deep, secret feelings Pastor Young had pulled from her journal and poured into the chapel. I meant what I said earlier—we don’t have to—but that doesn’t stop me from wondering if the things Julia wrote are true.
I think she senses the shift in the air because she bows her head, hair temporarily shielding her face from view. “Those things I wrote…”
“You don’t—” I start, but Julia holds up a hand.
“I was writing about you. I think you probably know, but I’m sorry you had to hear it like that and not from me, because you…” Her voice breaks. “You are, without a doubt, one of the best things in my life. I can’t lose you, so if that means we forget I ever wrote that and just keep being friends, I don’t care. But I can’t take another week of you silently hating me.”