“None of it worked. He left anyway. Said it was for both of us—that this way, we’d be happier not having to be someone we weren’t or trying to fit into a marriage that wasn’t right for us anymore. Except—I always thought our marriagewasright.” Tears trembled in her eyes again. “So I suppose it was just me. I was wrong.”
Anne had never met Fred Clark, who’d moved back to Oakland before she’d met Sadie, but now she had a few choice words ready for him if their paths ever crossed.Sadie was never too much. You just weren’t enough.“There’s nothing wrong with you.”
“That’s what you think right now.” Sadie began to cry in earnest, and the sound chewed Anne’s heart into crumpled paper. “But you’re beginning to change, you know. Just since yesterday. And it’s wonderful, it really is. I can see it in your face, in your eyes, in the way you hold your body. You’re starting to become another Anne.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You don’t know who that Anne is yet.” Even through her tears, Sadie’s gaze pierced Anne. “Who you’ll be. What you’ll want. Neither do I.”
“I wantyou—”
“But what happens”—Sadie’s voice shook—“if you wake up a year from now, five years from now, and realize that who you are then isn’t compatible with who I am? The same way Fred did?”
“None of us have any guarantees!” Anne threw her hands in the air, and all that gesture did was fan her mounting fear. “I’m telling you I want to be with you! How much clearer can I be? I want us to build a life. Our life! I want you to be the first thing I see when I wake up in the morning. For Christ’s sake, I want that so badly I’m willing to leave behind everything I know and move to New York just so we can be together!”
“But I haven’t even asked you to come with me!” Sadie cried out.
The sudden blow buckled Anne’s knees underneath her.
She stumbled, nearly falling. Reached out for the counter to steady herself. Even when her feet were solidly planted again, the world still pitched violently.
Sadie rushed forward, her arms out. “Oh no—I didn’t mean—that wasn’t—”
Anne couldn’t breathe.
Sadie wanted her. She did. But not enough.
“Anne—” Sadie was at her side, voice filled with sharp concern. She gripped Anne’s arm, keeping her upright. “That came out all wrong, I’m so sorry—I just meant that we haven’t even had the time to have that conversation yet, not that I don’t want you to—sweetheart, are you—?”
Sweetheart, Anne thought.Sweetheart. Her fingers, clenching at the counter’s edge, were pinched rigid with pain.Sweetheart.Sweetheart,sweetheart,sweetheart—the word banging around her head like a loose coin in a dryer.
Sadie might have the mark on her neck, but Anne’s entire body had become a bruise.
“You should sit down. Are you dizzy?”
Gray seeped into the rims of Anne’s eyesight. She fumbled her way toward the nearby dining room table, trying to regain control of her breathing.
Sadie was still clutching her arm. “I can get you something to—”
“Stop it!” Anne sat down hard in a chair, pulling her arm away. Had Sadie really just meant that they needed to have another conversation about moving, or was her damage control covering up an ugly truth? That outburst could’ve come from some subconscious place neither of them had known was there.
Her eyes burned, fear leaking down her cheeks. Last night, Sadie had kissed her, touched her, helped her come. But now—“Why did you have sex with me in the first place, if you’re so unsure about us?”
Sadie’s white face pinched with her obvious distress. “Because,” she said slowly, pulling out the chair next to Anne, “I wanted so fucking badly to touch you that I couldn’t stop myself.Maybe I should have figured out a way to hold back. Maybe that would’ve been wiser. But I couldn’t.”
“Oh,” Anne choked, her stomach cramping. Sadie regretted what they’d done.
“Please listen to me. I don’t want to move to New York without you. I don’t want to doanythingwithout you. But we have a dilemma here. You say you’re absolutely certain you’re ready, right this moment, for a permanent commitment. I’m not. And to be perfectly frank, I’m not sure you’re really ready either. So, if I have to be the one to make us slow down, then I will.”
“Slow down forwhat?”
“I don’t know yet!” Sadie exclaimed. “That’s the point. So we have more time to figure out what it is we both need before we make any lifelong promises to—”
“I needyou!” How many times did Anne have to say it?
“You need more than that!” Sadie knit her fingers together, squeezing hard. “Weren’t you the one who said you’ve started to think back over your entire life? Your feelings about women? What you’re discovering isn’t just about me, Anne. Don’t you see that?”
Anne couldn’t take any of this in. All she heard was Sadie pushing her away. “Are you saying you want us to be platonic again until you decide that we’re ready? Or—” Another possibility suddenly broke through her fear, bright enough to make it recede a little. Why hadn’t she thought of this before? “Is it that you just want us to, to be in a relationship for a while before we commit to anything else?”