Anne stood up too and shoved her hands into the pockets of her Celine jeans. This wasn’t going well at all. “Are you trying to tell me we don’t want the same thing?” she asked, barely getting it out.
“You want me to commit to you for the rest of my life, Anne. That’s as monumental as it gets. When I decide to give my life to someone, I give every bit of it.” Sadie swallowed. “I’m not exactly eager to catapult myself into that kind of promise,especially when there are implications you clearly haven’t thought through.”
“Right.” God, how could Anne have been so foolish? Why had she asked—no, begged—for so much? “Yes, of course you’re right.”
Sadie reached over suddenly and grabbed her wrist, pulling Anne’s unenthusiastic hand out of her pocket. She clasped it between both of her own and squeezed hard. “That was brave,” she said softly. “Thank you for telling me what you want. I’m glad you did it.”
Anne’s laugh was sharp and trembling. “Fantastic. That makes one of us.”
“Anne—”
She blinked back tears. Again. “If you’re rethinking what you said yesterday, if you don’t—”
“Oh, you absolute knucklehead,” Sadie said fiercely, not releasing Anne’s hand. “Listen to me, all right? Iloveyou.”
Her face was flushed, and her eyes bright, and Anne swallowed a gasp. Sadie had said those words before, but not for a while. And not like that. Not with so much force and intensity and—and heat.
“You’re the best friend I’ve ever had,” Sadie continued. “Your friendship matters so much to me that when I think about moving three thousand miles away from you, my throat closes up and I can’tbreathe. I can’t leave you. I can’t leave oxygen. Is this getting through to you, or do I need to rent a billboard?”
Why did everything inside Anne suddenly feel like it was pushing against her skin and trying to get out? Her hand felt cold and clammy in Sadie’s warm grip.
Sadie’s gaze was piercing. “I’ve loved you ever since that time I dragged you to Disneyland and you told Maleficent that being socially snubbed was a perfectly good reason to curse a baby.Likely even before then, but that’s the moment I remember realizing it.”
Anne had told Sadie she loved her, too. Sort of. All right, maybe she hadn’t actually said the words, but she’d put her feelings into action, which was what mattered most, wasn’t it? The special waffles Anne—who never baked or cooked anything—always made for Sadie’s birthday, with chocolate chips and raspberries baked in, and extra crispy, just the way Sadie preferred. The care box Anne had put together for Sadie after her cat Wordsworth had died, filled with all sorts of comforts and distractions: loose-leaf chamomile tea, a bronze-and-green candle in the shape of a succulent, a biography of Shirley Chisholm. She’d said it in texts:There’s a new season ofTiny Houseboat Hunters.Did you remember to pick up your Adderall refill? Happy first day of the semester. I got our tickets forCasablancaat the New Beverly Cinema. Hope the keynote goes well; I’ll be thinking about you.
“But what does all of thatmean?” Anne burst out. “What does loving me have to do with not wanting to make a commitment?”
“Because,” Sadie said quietly enough that Anne had to lean in a little, “the last time I promised my life to someone I loved, he broke my heart so completely, I thought I’d never get over it. And I refuse to go through that again.”
Anne couldn’t help herself. “This wouldn’t be like Fred. I won’t leave you. And besides, Fred was your husband. This is different.”
“You sure keep saying that,” Sadie said.
“I keep saying it because itisdifferent.” Anne pulled her hand back abruptly and turned away from Sadie, taking a few steps toward the dining table before twisting back around in frustration. “Why is that so hard to understand?”
Sadie took a seat on the couch again. For just a second or two, she bit her cherry red lower lip, holding it taut between whiteteeth. “All right, then walk me through it. What, precisely, is the difference between what you’re proposing and a marriage?”
“It’s nothing like a marriage.” Nothing like Anne’s marriage to James, at any rate. “Well, maybe it’s like those Boston marriages, you know, the ones that allowed women to focus on their own lives rather than take care of men. But what I’m suggesting really has nothing to do with the twenty-first-century definition of marriage. We wouldn’t do—what married couples do.”
“You’re talking about sex.”
Anne hadn’t been thinking it, hadn’t been the one to say it, it wasn’t her word, but it felt suddenly lodged in her throat anyway. She managed a breath. “I meant that we wouldn’t have a ceremony. Or a license. That sort of thing. I hadn’t even thought about—”
“Sex,” Sadie repeated. “So you’re saying we wouldn’t—”
“I never said we would.” The far wall was extremely interesting because it wasn’t Sadie’s face.
“Then whatareyou saying?” A strange tone tilted Sadie’s question. “Anne, I need you to be very, very clear with me right now. You’re proposing a permanent and exclusive commitment, possibly with cohabitation, that’s entirely platonic. Do I have that right?”
“Of course I mean a platonic relationship! We’re not lesbians.”
She’d never used that term in front of Sadie—lesbian—and Anne realized it at exactly the moment the saw-toothed word left her mouth, cutting right through their conversation. The air in the room got thinner to accommodate what she’d just said, and maybe that was why Anne suddenly found it difficult to breathe.
“No,” Sadie said very slowly after a long pause. “We’re not lesbians.”
The low and careful note in her words sent the hairs standing up on Anne’s arms.
“I’m not a lesbian,” Sadie repeated. She smoothed her hands slowly over her thighs, a gesture Anne hadn’t seen her make before. “But in the spirit of reciprocal honesty, I should tell you that I don’t think I’m entirely straight, either. And maybe you should know that before you decide you want to spend the rest of your life with me. Platonically.”