Chapter 66
“But you’re bound to find something up there that will interest you,” Bethany finished. “All within easy distance to wherever we live, thanks to the subway. I mean, traffic is a nightmare so we won’t be needing our cars, but we’ll still be able to get around.”
Dana sat back against the arm of the futon and stared at her friend. “You keep saying we, but you’re the one with the job interview.” She’d been invited to come along to the interview, but if Bethany got the job and moved up there, who could say Dana would be able to afford to do so, too?
“Well, duh.” Bethany rolled her eyes, bemused. “You’re coming with me, of course.”
* * * *
January 1999
Three years out of college, and Dana still didn’t know what it was she wanted to do with her life besides share it with Bethany. Unfortunately, she’d made little headway in convincing Bethany how much they were meant to be together—not as mere friends or roommates but so much more. Terrance was out of the picture, their families were miles away in Virginia, all they had was each other, and stillDana hadn’t managed show Bethany her true feelings.
How could she live with someone who had no cluehow much she cared about them? How much she loved them?
Would she never find the courage to admit her love to Bethany?
No, she couldn’t—what if Bethany laughed it off or turned her away? Better to be friends; at least she had something then, a part of Bethany, anything. She couldn’t risk losing it because she wanted more. If Bethany didn’t, then maybe Dana didn’t deserve more. She should be satisfied with what she could get. It was more than enough. She’d simply have to make do.
But sweet Jesus, Dana ached to hold Bethany at night, when she lay in bed alone, her friend asleep in the other room. And when they were on the sofa, sitting so close, it hurt her very bones whenever Bethany touched her so casually, not knowing what the slightest press of a hand on a thigh could do to Dana’s heart. Bethany’s smile lit up Dana’s days; her eyes haunted Dana’s dreams. As the months faded into years, Dana only loved her more with each passing hour. Bethany glittered like a star in the night, close enough to see but still out of reach, and no one else Dana ever met would ever hope to compare to her.
Dana already knew it, so she didn’t even bother looking around. She wasn’t interested in anyone else, didn’t date, didn’t hang out with others unless it was a group of friends and Bethany came along. In DC she had a few coworkers she chatted with at the coffeehouse, but she wouldn’t have called them friends. When Bethany landed a staffing position at the French Consulate in New York and they moved to Manhattan, Dana quickly found another barista job and met new people, but no one she particularly liked.
Why should she? None of them was Bethany.
It took her a while to get motivated enough to start looking into college again. She tried a few community center classes first—nothing with a degree attached, just things she thought she might be interested in, like pottery and jewelry making, theater and writing. Most of them were taught at a local art gallery not far from the small efficiency apartment Dana and Bethany rented in Chelsea. She learned pretty quick she didn’t particularly like acting, but she enjoyed working backstage with theater productions, doing wardrobe and scenery, stuff like that. Some of the crafts she enjoyed, too.
The writing classes were a huge disappointment. She thought she’d like them and didn’t. All her poetry sounded sappy and lovesick, like something a teenage girl with an unrequited crush would write. The stories she wrote never came together very well, and when she tried a memoir writing class, she was so embarrassed by the journal she kept, she never bothered turning it in at the end of each session for the teacher to read. Blame Bethany, she thought. It was painfully clear she either had to come clean and tell her friend how she felt, or she had to give up on the woman and find someone else to love.
Either way, one thing was obvious—Dana had to get laid.
Problem was, no one interested her the way Bethany did. No one was as gorgeous, or as funny, or as empathetic. No one knew her as well as Bethany, or had known her as long. No one gother the way Bethany did.