I Wish

Chapter 47

The next morning when I woke up… it was worse than any hangover I have had in my entire life. My entire body felt like something scraped off the bottom of a bird cage, if that particular bird cage happened to be a zoo avery. My head felt like there was a nasty cross between a thunderstorm, and a bag of fighting alley cats. Emotionally? I was just empty, and not in a way that could be considered kind, more of a hollow, and it hurts the situation. I’ve honestly been more excited about getting up with fractures and literal broken bones than I was right at this moment. Don’t freak out about that, they were sporting injuries. When we play netball, we go hard. My pillow felt like a cloud underneath my head, and the heavyweight of my blankets downright laughed — in the most condescending way possible, at any intention I had to remove myself from them.

On my bedside table sat my phone. With Wi-Fi, and social media, and my reading app, and more dumb games than you could shake a stick at. I had no urge to pick it up. It was one of the first things I was planning to do here, but right now, I didn’t care. It just sat there, taunting me, until finally, I decided that I had been stewing in my own self-pity for long enough. There was only so long that I could stay up here without intervention, and I was not prepared for that, so going downstairs when everyone else is preoccupied and leaving signs of life was the best way I could do that. So, my plan was to get up and make a coffee, because the kitchen should still be empty, and come back to my room before anyone got the chance to talk to me. Not because I wanted to avoid talking to them, but because they would know that something was wrong. They would know something was wrong, and I wouldn’t know what to say about that because it would be true.

It was easy to pull that off. Leaving the plastic ring from the new long life milk on the counter, and stirring my coffee loud enough that the tinkling noise should just about raise the dead, I all but sneaked back into my room and shut the door behind me. All of this part was incredibly easy, it was phase two that was going to get me in trouble. I sighed just thinking about it, and then winced because deep breath hurt. I needed an outsider's opinion, and I needed to get them to explain the whole what girls-do-together thing. Which only left one option…? Candice. Fortunately, there was a green dot next to her picture on messenger, the only question was if she was going to leave me to read once I had messaged. I sent a tentative ‘Hi,’ and waited.

It didn’t take long for her to message back, and before we knew it, we were trading stories about the last almost two years. Catching up with everything that had happened, mostly to her, because what I had going on here wasn’t that interesting in comparison, with the air of people who had caught up in person last Tuesday. It was great to catch up with her, even if it was only over DM’s, but because I was most likely defective and ungrateful it didn’t help with how much missing Ivy hurt. Finally, I bit the bullet and asked the question that needed to be asked if this conversation was going to get where I needed it to be. ‘Hey, so… what is it exactly that women do together? Like, in reality, not porn.’ Not two and a half minutes later after no reply, my phone lit up and started buzzing. A picture of her smiling out from the screen. It baffled me that she hadn’t changed her number, and we still only talked as little as we did. I swallowed nervously, unsure of exactly how this was going to go.

“Why?” she asked, before any greeting or hello.

“What do you mean, why?” I replied, sounding vague to my ears.

“Of all our friends, and plenty that weren’t, you were the only straight person who never felt the need to ask,” she said softly, and I felt a pang of irrational guilt, “Not once since I came out, not ever. Why now?” I bit my lip.

“I need to know where exactly the line is for s*x because I’m trying to figure out if I put out,” I told her bluntly, a deep-seated need to correct where she was going with that. No. There had been a reason that I needed to ask now, and it was because I hadn’t before on principle. Candice squealed so loudly that I had to temporarily yank the phone away from my ear. They were ringing so loud that little spots danced in front of my eyes. Ow.

“Hell yeah, you joined the dark side. Now you can help me spread the lesbian agenda,” she cheered exuberantly. Lesbian age…

“There’s an agenda?” I spat out in disbelief. She chuckled, as if I were some poor sweet naive thing. 

“Absolutely. What we do is, we pretend we have an agenda… and then do absolutely nothing but amuse ourselves watching anyone that freaks out, over something that is clearly a joke,” she said, and I giggled. It burned coming out, even though it was only tiny. As if to say Ivy wasn’t here, and I didn’t get to be happy. 

“You’re having way too much fun with this,” I told her, and she hummed.

“So do you think you slept with her?” she asked, and I snorted.

“If I knew that I wouldn’t have finally broken and asked you,” I said defensively, “Honestly, how am I supposed to know.”

“Did someone orgasm?” she enquired, and it sounded absolutely polite. The only reason I didn’t choke on my coffee then and there was because I knew her well enough to expect her to say something like that. I flushed anyway, but that was more about the response to the question than anything. I answered properly the first time, knowing that Candice was more than capable of dragging it out of me on the best of days, and this was not the best of days.

“I did,” I confirmed, and I will always be thankful for the fact that she did not judge me at all about that. Nor did she ever bring it up, I just wish that her opinion changed.

“Then you definitely had s*x,” she told me, shooting down any hope I had of avoiding that. Honestly, I knew better. Ivy can’t lie. It didn’t mean I had to be happy about it, though. 

“Well s**t,” I cussed, much to Candice’s amusement. This was going to be a long phone call. 

“You realise that now that you’ve called me, I’m going to make you tell me everything about her?” she asked me, and I say asked but it was pretty clear that it wasn’t a question. I sighed.

“I knew that,” I responded huffily, “But I have questions, and you’re the only person I trust to answer them without messing with me.” 

“Aww,” she squealed, “That’s sweet. Wait, what about this girl you're banging? Why didn't I talk to her about all of this?” Hmm…. Well, where did I start with that one?

“I didn’t bang her,” I refuted immediately, and I knew I should have shut my mouth. Candice was smart enough, and knew me well enough, to infer that I was very much the one taken for a ride… I think. She chuckled, and it didn’t sound right. It sounded like she was struggling to breathe. I opened my mouth to ask her about it but she spoke rapidly to cover it.

“So she banged you then, got it. Still, why don’t you talk about it with her?” she said, and it was my turn to laugh this time. It wasn’t pretty, and even if it sounded like laughter it felt like the worst coughing fit I’ve ever had in my life. 

“Let me tell you about Ivy,” I told her breathlessly, trying to act a little less like a hysterical crazy person. I won’t lie, it took a couple of minutes, and Candice got more and more concerned as each second of them passed.