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All things considered, it was a beautiful day.
Dot had her hands in the pockets of her jeans as she walked down the sidewalk. It was a nice town. Big enough that she didn’t recognize every single face, big enough to let her live in relative anonymity. Small enough to still have some of that sort of charm small towns have, like this street downtown, where couples and families wandered in and out of shops and restaurants.
Downtown, the people here called it. It was nothing compared to downtown Los Angeles, the city that became her home in the three years she lived there. Nothing quite made a city lose its sparkle like losing the love of your life in it did. The last year she spent there, alone in the apartment that she used to share with Fatin, was near unbearable. It had taken years but now Dot was able to think of her small house and property on the outskirts of town here as home, too.
Dot’s heart ached. She liked to think she was better at feeling her feelings in comparison to her teenage years, but sometimes the years of practice squashing emotions came in handy. Like now.
She was going on a second date today. Ellie was a nice woman, maybe a couple years younger than Dot. Bright ginger hair, glasses. Short, white, pretty in a nerdy sort of way. She worked at the library. She’d helped Dot find books on gardening a couple weeks ago. As it turned out, Ellie was quite the gardener herself – they’d ended up chatting for thirty or so minutes. Another patron showed up needing help, and Dot asked if she’d like to continue talking over coffee. Ellie flushed red and agreed.
The funny thing was, Dot didn’t mean it to be a date, but she ended up being happy it was taken that way. She’d been with several people since Fatin, sure, but none for more than six or so months. As relationships drew on longer, Dot always got scared and broke it off. If she took the time to psychoanalyze herself, she was sure she could dissect why quite easily. But it was easier not to think about it. And maybe this time, it would be different.
The coffee date went well, and so this week they were meeting up at a diner, the Orange Tulip. The building itself had seen better days, but they always kept it well-decorated inside. They hung up a pride flag for June, which was whipping around in the wind as Dot approached. Ellie was already sitting down.
“Hey! You look nice,” Ellie said as Dot approached the table.
“Thanks. Haircut?” Dot asked. Ellie nodded with a tinge of red in her cheeks. “It’s cute. I like it.”
Conversation flowed easily. They fell back on gardening, a safe, common interest. Dot updated her on the haphazard plot in her backyard; Ellie asked to see it sometime. They talked about favorite flowers, then the burdens of capitalism and the importance of stewardship. Dot invited her to go volunteer with the habitat cleanup organization she worked with every few months. As the conversation turned to a lighthearted argument of the superiority of coffee over tea and vice versa, Ellie reached out to hold Dot’s hand over the table. It was a sweet gesture. Dot took it with a smile.
On the pads of Ellie’s fingertips there were callouses. The realization left her shell-shocked. It was like cold lightning tracing the path of Fatin’s own rough fingers on her back almost six months ago in a soft, golden morning in Chicago.
“What do you play?” Dot choked out, consumed by memories of Fatin laughing as she drunkenly played a melody on her expensive-ass cello, of Fatin’s fingers gripping her back, of Fatin holding back tears as she disappeared into an Uber. Again.
“What?”
“Your fingers. Do you play something? Guitar?” she asked.
“Oh!” Ellie blushed again and pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “Cello.. I took lessons when I was a kid, but sort of fell off the horse. Actually, I’ve been playing more recently, trying to get back into it, you know?”
Dot felt like shit, but she turned into a brick wall after that. Ellie asked questions. Dot gave her two-word answers until the bill came and she took it to pay at the front. Then Dot headed straight for the door.
Later, she’d shoot Ellie an apologetic text, telling her she did nothing wrong but she’s just still working through her own shit. Dot knows it’s something an asshole would do, but it’s all too much. She should’ve known it would be too much.
In the afternoon, Dot pruned the garden. She checked the library books about what to do exactly, and decidedly did not think about how she would never be able to step foot into the library ever again. She decidedly did not think about how she had no friends anymore, save for an elderly tuxedo cat, and despite how much Dot adored him, he served as a constant reminder of heartbreak and hollowness. She did not think about the uncrossable divide between herself and the rest of the survivors. She did not think about how much she wanted her dad back and how she just felt like a little kid again and how she was so, so lonely.
“Mrrow!”
Dot looked back at her screen door. She’d finished garden maintenance ages ago and was sitting lost in thought on the porch as the sun set. “Hey, Mister.”
“Mrrp.”
“Yeah, bud, I miss her too.”
She cooked and ate dinner alone. She watched home renovation shows. Mister sat on the arm of the couch next to her. It was the same as any other night.
Something, though, made her open her phone and open her message history with Fatin.
Dot cringed at her last message. When Fatin left for the airport, she texted “you know it’s never too late” in one last desperate bid to make her come back. Fatin never responded. That night, Dot got unimaginably drunk at the hotel bar and cried so hard her nose started to bleed. Not her finest moment.
A typing bubble appeared. Then vanished.
What?
Dot sat up. Mister lifted his head to her curiously.
She didn’t believe in a higher power, but damn. That was one hell of a coincidence.
Dot steeled herself for a moment, feeling an aching, powerful warmth inside her chest, and called.
-
Dot whistled as she entered Fatin’s mansion. The ceiling gaped above her, a wall of windows opened out to the ocean before her. “Crazy place you got here.”
Fatin shrugged and slung her purse over a hook by the front door. “You know me.”
I suppose I do, Dot thought with a painful twinge. “You’ll have to see my place sometime. Mister misses you.” So do I, she wanted to say. But Fatin knew. Of course Fatin knew.
“I want a drink,” Fatin said suddenly. “You want a drink?”
Dot chuckled. “Sure. Dealer’s choice.”
They stood out on Fatin’s deck, where they could hear the endless crashing of waves. “It’s like exposure therapy,” Fatin explained. “I hear it all the time and I’m safe, you know? It doesn’t have power over me any more.
I know, Dot wanted to say. I know you. Instead, she asked, “D’you ever go swimming down there?”
Fatin scoffed. “ Hell no. I’ve had enough sand up my ass in this and every lifetime, thank you.”
The sun was low in the sky, not quite setting yet. Dot turned towards Fatin, admiring the way the light accented her face. Admiring the way a couple years of age had settled across her features. Admired her shorter hair, her earrings glimmering in the sun. Fatin always found new ways to take her breath away.
“I want to try again,” Dot said before the nerve left her body, breaking the barely-comfortable silence. Fatin looked at her with sad eyes.
“I’m not good for you.”
“But you’ll find me in Chicago for a night of comfort anyway? It’s okay to just… use me like that?”
“I’m sorry for hurting you. That was wrong.”
“But it felt so right, didn’t it?” Dot pleaded. “It was perfect. Us, together again.”
“It’s been so long, Dottie,” Fatin countered. “We’re different now than we were.”
“Why is it only your choice? Why don’t I get a choice?” Dot asked, voice breaking. She breathed to regain her composure. “I have loved you for ten years, Fatin. Nobody else, not really. If you can tell me you truly, honestly don’t feel the same anymore… I’ll go. I’ll never bother you again. I promise. But if you do, don’t we deserve to be happy again? Don’t we at least deserve that?”
Fatin looked out into the ocean, then down, then over at Dot. She could barely hold back tears waiting for her to say something. Say anything.
“I do love you, Dot. Of course. I always have,” Fatin finally said. “I’m so scared I’ll just hurt you again.”
“Me too,” Dot gave a watery laugh. “But try? With me?”
Fatin smiled. Dot heard the barely restrained tears in her whisper. “Okay.”
“Okay.”