“What do you want?” Royal walked back toward the center of the room, leaving Lovey standing at the threshold.
“I want to talk to you.” Lovey stepped inside and closed the door. She was afraid her voice was going to break. “I need to talk to you.”
“What about?” Royal was obviously very angry so she wasn’t going to make this easy for Lovey. Why should she?
“Royal, I know I upset you. I know that whatever you think is going on with Joe and me upset you. Can we please talk about it?”
“Yeah, we can talk about it. Why don’t you explain to me what the hell is going on? Laurel said you two have been courting for weeks. Exactly when were you going to tell me? Were you ever going to tell me?”
They were standing awkwardly facing each other in the center of the room. Lovey was suddenly lost to herself. What was she going to say? Had she planned to tell Royal? Probably in some part of her mind she’d believed she could maintain her double life for at least a little bit longer. Before she had to choose between what she thought was right and what she wanted.
“Royal, I’m so sorry. I never meant for you to find out that way. I never wanted to hurt you.” A lump was forming in her throat, and Lovey was having a hard time talking around it.
“So it’s true. You are seeing Joe.” Royal dropped into the chair near her desk. Her posture defeated.
Lovey stepped close and lifted the partial glass of whiskey that Royal had obviously poured for herself and took a few small sips. The warm liquor helped lessen the lump in her throat. She sat in the upholstered chair opposite Royal.
“Royal, I don’t really know what to say to you.” She looked around the sparse room for something to focus on besides the crushed look on Royal’s face. “Joe is a good man and he has asked me to marry him.”
“What?” She could plainly hear the hurt in Royal’s voice.
“I haven’t said yes yet. I told him I needed some time to think.”
“I’d say so. We were only just together Friday night, here in this room. We made love, right here in this bed. Was I the only one who felt something?”
“Royal, you know I feel something for you.” She brushed a tear away from her cheek. “I feel something I’ve never felt before, but we can’t really be together, can we? Not the way we want to be. The world doesn’t work that way.”
“So you’re just giving up? You’re going to just play by the rules, because you can, because it’s easy for you? I can’t do that.”
“This, what we’re doing, it isn’t real, Royal. Marriage is a contract, an arrangement. Marriage is what society tolerates. Not this. Not what we’re doing.”
“I know that deep down you don’t believe that, Lovey. It’s like you’re channeling your father’s voice. This…what we have…it is real. More real than anything I’ve ever felt before.” Royal placed her open palm over her heart. “This is the only thing that is real.”
“What do you expect me to do? Turn my back on my entire life up to this point? Turn away from my father, my faith?”
“If what you’re proposing is to live an empty life with someone you’re not in love with, then yes, that is what I expect you to do.” Royal moved so that she was kneeling in front of Lovey. She held both her hands. “What worth does love or faith hold if it doesn’t accept you fully, for who you truly are? That is a false love. A false faith.”
Tears started to slowly trail down Lovey’s cheeks as Royal spoke to her. Lovey believed that what Royal was saying might be true for her, but Lovey knew she could never go down that path.
“I’m not brave the way you are, Royal.”
“Lovey, I’m not brave. I’m in love. With you. Don’t do this to us.”
“Please don’t say that.” Lovey wiped at the tears on her cheeks and turned away. She couldn’t look at Royal. “Royal, I’m not like you. I care what people think. I can’t just be in the world and not notice what people think of me. I don’t know how you’ve managed to not care, but you clearly don’t.”
“It’s not that I don’t care what people think, Lovey. But I can’t be anyone but who I am. If people don’t like me for who I am then they don’t really like me and I’ve got no time for them. Does that make sense?”
“Our worlds are just very different, Royal.” Sadness settled over Lovey as if her heart was weighted down with heavy stones. “You’ve managed to somehow create a life that allows you to be who you truly are, to defy society’s conventions of who you should be. I wish I was that strong, but I’m not.”
“Lovey, come share my life with me.”
“Don’t…I can’t.”
“Lovey, I’ve never felt for anyone what I feel for you. Please don’t let us go.”
Lovey shook her head as the tears streamed down her face.
“Lovey, this can be real. If you’ll let it be real. We don’t have to settle for less. We don’t have to live our lives in hiding. You deserve to be whole. We deserve to be whole.”
The walls of the room were closing in on Lovey, the air suddenly thick, making it hard for her to breathe. She stood and moved away from Royal’s kneeling position. She paced the room, and for a few minutes attempted to visualize a different path.
She pictured herself telling her father that
