Say Say Say by Lila Savage

Author:Lila Savage
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2019-07-08T16:00:00+00:00

· 12 ·

“I leave town Wednesday, want to get a drink tonight?” Liz asked.

“I’m getting a drink with Liz,” Ella yelled down the hall with her phone twisted away from her mouth.

“Have fun. Tell her hi.” Alix was in the depths of a project and couldn’t be bothered to glance up, even when reaching for a plate of food.

Liz had been Ella’s first girlfriend, when Ella was nineteen, a college freshman. Liz was now finishing up her PhD on the East Coast and they didn’t see each other often, but when they did, Ella felt like a version of herself that she didn’t otherwise seem to have access to. It was like spending a prolonged chunk of time with her mother; she reverted into some earlier incarnation.

As she walked through the door of the neighborhood bar, she saw Liz standing, talking to two strangers, holding a beer that was already half empty, wearing a baseball cap crammed over her short hair. Every bit of it was so very Liz that Ella paused and took a preemptive draft of nostalgia that blended affection with irritation, for Liz’s extroversion had always wearied Ella, and Ella could never even begin to keep pace with her drinking.

They embraced, and as Ella dragged her toward a booth, Liz wrapped up her conversation with the strangers in friendly shouts. Within fifteen minutes Ella’s irritation had bloomed into exasperation, and yet she decided to nurse that same first beer for the rest of their conversation because she was already having trouble not kissing Liz, not settling into those familiar arms. It was a good thing there was nowhere to dance here; Liz had always been a dangerously good dancer.

“How’s Alix?” Liz asked early on, and when Ella replied, “Great,” she saw that Liz was both disappointed they were still together and pleased Ella was still gay. She had always hated it when Ella dated men, and presumably it had little to do with wanting to date Ella herself, because the time when it had counted, that time when the breakup actually took, she had been the one who had ended it. Ella assumed the reason Liz would prefer her single now was so that they could fuck, and also, like others Ella had dated, because she would like to hold Ella in reserve, a backup plan for the long haul in case nothing more suitable came along.

They talked about Liz’s thesis, and all of her numerous Plans, for Liz was a Visionary, she was practical, ambitious, and well girded with upper-middle-class money and self-assurance. Ella was confident Liz would end up famous, if only in lesbian-feminist circles, but were there more interesting circles to be famous in? Ella had her doubts. And then Liz wanted to know about Ella’s plans, and this made Ella feel suddenly tired and sad. Liz already knew all about why Ella had dropped out of graduate school, she both understood and didn’t—or, at least, if the reasons didn’t mean much to

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.