Wish You Were Here by Victoria Connelly

Author:Victoria Connelly
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781847562838
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Limited
Published: 2013-04-24T23:00:00+00:00

17

They played double solitaire, facing each other, wrapped in their sleeping bags, settled in for the long afternoon with cans of soda and a bag of potato chips. The upstairs was gray, darkening as if it were winter. Drops dotted the window by the top of the stairs. They lay across their pillows, propped on their elbows, slapping the cards down on the horrible carpet, sometimes hitting each other in a flurry, laughing. And then nothing came. They turned over their threes impatiently, going nowhere. Six of clubs, eight of hearts.

“Jack of diamonds, jack of diamonds,” Ella chanted. “Come on, jack of diamonds.”

One two three, one two three—

“Here you go,” Sarah said, and they flailed away. The end was fast, but Ella put down the last king. They finished and counted up the different backs, not really keeping track. They shuffled and cut again.

“Ready? Go.”

Ella thought the rain had stopped, but then it picked up again, racing wild, drumming the roof like hooves. She was happy to be alone with Sarah, to have something both of them could concentrate on. She was convinced that at any second she would blurt out what she hadn’t even practiced in her mind, cutting it short before it could form. She would say it flat out, “I love you,” or “I’m in love with you,” or “I think I’m in love with you”—totally at random, dumping the news on Sarah like it was her problem.

Because she was. She was mad it had happened (as if she’d been tricked), but it had. She thought about her all the time, she wanted to be with her, she couldn’t sleep and then when she did she dreamed of her. All the symptoms fit, so there was no point pretending it wasn’t love. The question was what to do about it.

The first answer that came to her was to do nothing, just be cousins, spend the week together and say they’d see each other soon, that they’d both write or, better, e-mail, knowing they wouldn’t. She could see herself back home, checking her e-mail every ten minutes. Sarah would be back with her boyfriend Mark, or with a new boyfriend. At least she didn’t say she loved him; maybe she was afraid of what Ella might think. But Sarah wasn’t afraid, Sarah wasn’t like that, and she and Mark weren’t really serious. It was up to Ella to make a move, and she knew that unless something big happened, she wouldn’t. The knowledge shamed her, made her feel weak and digusted with herself, but powerless to change things.

The second answer was to confess how she felt. Sarah might freak on her or they might talk. It was risky, too much thinking involved.

The third was simply to kiss her.

In her highest and lowest moments she preferred the third. It would be fast and honest, final. Her chances were the same anyway.

That was a last resort. Most of the time she navigated the space between the first two, trying to find a casual way of discovering how Sarah felt about being gay without being obvious.

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