was a shock, but that she loved Shari very much, and, more important, her dogs, Scooter and Jethro, seemed to love Shari very much.
To which I didn’t know what to say, except that I’d like to meet Scooter and Jethro someday.
So Shari and her new girlfriend invited me over to watch the Jets game next weekend.
I seriously don’t know which is more shocking to me: that my best friend is in love with a girl, or that she’s started watching professional football.
In any case, I said I’d be there. And then Shari walked me to the elevator.
“Are you sure you’re okay about this?” Shari wanted to know, as we waited for the rickety two-person lift to arrive. “Because you look kinda… well, the way you looked that day Andy showed up at Luke’s cousin’s wedding.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Because I don’t feel that way at all. I’m totally happy for you. That’s all. I just… how long have you known?”
“How long have I known what?”
“You know. That you like girls.”
“I don’t,” Shari said with a smile. “I like some girls. Just like I like some guys. Just like you like some guys.” Her smile faded, and she added seriously, “It’s about the person’s soul, Lizzie, not the parts they have on the outside. You know that.”
I’d nodded. Because that’s true. At least, that’s how it’s supposed to be.
“I don’t love Pat because she’s a woman,” Shari went on, “any more than I loved Chaz because he’s a man. I love them both for who they are on the inside. It’s just that I realized the one I’m most romantically interested in is Pat. Possibly because she doesn’t leave the toilet seat up.”
I stared at her until Shari nudged me. “That was a joke,” she said. “It’s okay for you to laugh.”
“Oh,” I said. And laughed. But then my laughter faded as I thought about something else.
“Shari,” I said. “What about your mom and dad? Have you told them yet?”
“No,” Shari said. “That’s a conversation best saved for the next time I see them in person. Christmas vacation, I think.”
“Are you going to take Pat to meet them?”
“She wants to go,” Shari says. “But I’m trying to spare her. Maybe after they’ve gotten used to the idea.”
“Right,” I said. I tried to push down the spurt of jealousy I felt that Shari’s girlfriend actually wants to meet her parents, whereas my boyfriend has expressed not the slightest iota of interest in meeting mine. There were much more important things to take under consideration, after all. Like, I couldn’t even imagine how Dr. and Mrs. Dennis were going to react to the news that their daughter is in a romantic relationship with a woman. Dr. Dennis will probably head straight to his liquor cabinet. Mrs. Dennis will head straight to the phone.
“Oh God!” I’d stared at Shari, wide-eyed. “You know what’s going to happen, don’t you? Your mom is going to call my mom. And then my mom is going to find out I’m not actually living with you anymore. And then she’ll know I’m living with Luke.”
“She’ll probably just be grateful,” Shari said, “that you and I aren’t a couple.”
“Yeah.” My shoulders sagged with relief. “You’re probably right about that. Hey—” I glanced at her in some alarm. “We’re not, are we? I mean… you never felt about me the way you feel about Pat, did you?”
Please say no, I was praying.Please say no, please say no. Because I value Shari’s friendship more than anything, and if it turned out she was in love with me, well, how could we be friends anymore? You can’t be friends with someone who’s in love with you if you don’t love that person back the same way…
Shari regarded me with an expression I might almost have called sarcastic.
“Yes, Lizzie,” she said. “I have been in love with you since the first grade when you showed me your Batgirl Underoos. The only reason I’m with Pat is because I know I can’t have you because you stub bornly refuse to love me and not Luke. Now come over here and kiss me, you little minx.”
I blinked at her. And she burst out laughing.
“No, you idiot,” she said. “Although I love you dearly as a friend, I have never been romantically interested in you. You’re actually not my type.”
I don’t want to sound pejorative, but her tone seemed to imply that she couldn’t understand why anyone would be interested in me romantically.
I didn’t say so at the time, but I was kind of wondering the same thing. I mean, doesn’t Pat realize that Shari is an inveterate blanket hog (as I discovered to my disadvantage when we were forced to share a sleeping bag at camp that time those mean girls threw mine in the lake) and has, to my knowledge, never once returned a book she borrowed? It was a miracle that Chaz, a known bibliophile, even put up with her as long as he did. I purposely never loaned Shari my clothing, because I knew I’d never see it again.
Of course Shari never asked to borrow any of my clothing. My style is just a little too retro for her, I guess.
But, whatever.
“You have a type?” I asked her with a raised eyebrow. “Because you seem to cover a pretty wide range —”
“Primarily,” Shari interrupted, “I like people who can keep their mouths shut once in a while.”
“Well, then, it’s no wonder you and Chaz broke up,” I said, just as the elevator, groaning with the strain, finally arrived.
“Ha ha,” Shari said. Then, giving me a hug, she said, “Take care of him for me, will you? Don’t let him slide into one of his funks where he stays inside all day reading Heidegger and never ventures out except to buy booze. Promise?”
“Like you have to ask,” I said. “I love Chaz like the brother I never had. I’ll make sure to get Tiffany to invite him out with her and some of her model friends. That should cheer him up.”
“That ought to do it, all right,” Shari agreed.
And the elevator doors closed and she was gone.
And that was that.
Well, except for the part where now I can’t sleep a wink, because I keep replaying it all over and over in my head.
“Hey.” The word, spoken so softly beside me, causes me to jump. I turn my head. Luke is awake, and blinking at me sleepily.
“Sorry,” I whisper. “Did I wake you?” I hadn’t been making any noise. Had I managed to wake him with my noisy thoughts? I’ve read that couples can become so close that they can read each other’s minds.Ask me to marry you, Luke. Luke, ask me to marry you. Luke. I am your father… Oh no, wait—
“No,” he says. “It’s this damn metal bar—”
“Oh yeah. It’s killing me, too.”
“Sorry about this,” Luke says with a sigh. “We just have to put up with them for one more night and then they’ll be gone.”
“It’s all right,” I say. I can’t believe he’s worrying about me when he has something so much bigger to worry about—his mother’s secret affair, I mean.
Except of course he doesn’t know about that. Because I haven’t told him. How can I? He’s so happy his parents are back together.
And something like that could totally sour him against marriage forever. I mean, what if he concludes, from his mother’s catting about—not to mention Shari’s recent abandonment of Chaz, and his own ex-girlfriend’s leaving him for his own cousin —that women are incapable of fidelity?
And things between us have been going so well—familial visitations aside. Even having Tiffany and Raoul to Thanksgiving dinner didn’t prove the disaster I thought it would, as they provided a welcome distraction for Chaz, who seemed to take great pleasure in watching Tiffany gad about in her thigh-highs and catsuit—I really think Luke might have forgotten all about that whole “people our age don’t even know what love is” thing.
Maybe I’ll even be getting an extra-special present for Christmas. The kind that comes in a very small box.
Hey. You never know.
“Well,” Luke says, his lips suddenly in my hair, “I think you’re a trouper. You’ve gone above and beyond the
