Short Term Relationships Read online

  SHORT TERM RELATIONSHIPS

  A.K. ROSE

  Copyright © 2020 A. K. Rose; Angela Curran

  All rights reserved.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  ISBN: 9798686682894

  Cover design: Angela Curran

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2018675309

  Printed in the United States of America

  For Christine.

  I miss you every day, my friend.

  And for Marley.

  Never have I known a more special dog.

  “There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy, and the tired.”

  –F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

  ONE

  Kate Conrad had—in her opinion—perfected the break-up text. She read it one last time before she hit send, making sure it checked all the boxes: Firm, but kind. Appreciative of the time they’d spent, but offering no chance of hope for a future together. Short and to the point, but clear that she’d put thought into her words. She’d learned from experience that kindness mattered, hope was to be avoided at all costs, and text was an appropriate way to end short term relationships. She’d had it happen to her. More than once. She’d done it. Also, more than once.

  Short term relationships were her specialty. Not because she wanted them to be. No, not that at all. Too many heartbreaks in her past made her skeptical. Like rain in the winter and coffee in the morning (and noon, and 3 p.m.), it just was. Short relationships deserved short break-ups. She’d been down the path of the closure conversation and the trying again, and realized, she only had so many days, so many nights, to waste on people that didn’t light the fire in her soul.

  Emily Hall, despite her beauty and culture and perfect grammar, did not light that fire. Or even create smoke. They’d been on three dates and it wasn’t clicking. Not romantically. Kate liked Emily, but she didn’t see it going anywhere. Maybe it was true, maybe it was the skepticism, but whatever it was, it was over for her. They had plans to go to a Pride party together that Thursday evening in June, and Kate wanted to be on the market in case she met someone who did—well, light the fire.

  When she hit send, an involuntary sigh of relief escaped her lips. It was done, and now she could go about her day without that task on her to-do list. Not that breaking up with someone was a task, or that three dates required a “break up,” but it was, and it did. Sending the text early in the morning was part of the process. Most people were less argumentative or persistent in the early morning hours versus afternoon or evening. And you could forget sending the text after 10 p.m.—the most emotional time, in her experience. A software engineer, she couldn’t help reducing everything to the critical path—the most efficient process.

  Kate sat on her bed in her Greenlake townhouse, a stack of pillows behind her, legs crossed, eyes closing to revel in the moment of that being done. The early morning sun streaming in the window reminded her it was summer in Seattle, and the magpies in the large leaf maple tree outside the window did as well, their songs happy and high-pitched. How could they not be? For three glorious months, the rain stayed at bay. The sun came out. So did the newly gay. Or rather, those that had always been gay but were just now understanding it. Or admitting it. In any case, coming out was the theme of the season. That night’s party would be a chance to meet some new women on the market, and Kate was excited to see who was in the proverbial pool. As she stretched her arms overhead, thinking of coffee and a shower, her phone rang.

  It was Emily.

  That was fast.

  Kate forgot one important nuance about Emily—she was a schoolteacher, so she was up early, even in summer.

  “Hey,” Kate answered. Though she didn’t see a future with Emily, she liked her and didn’t want to give her the Seattle Freeze treatment. So many others had earned The Freeze, but Emily had not.

  “Hi,” Emily said, her English teacher precision evident with such a simple, exactly enunciated word. “I got your text.”

  “Yeah, sorry about that,” Kate said, running her fingers through her short blonde hair, bits of even blonder highlighted tips peeking out between her fingers. “I just think we aren’t meant for each other.”

  “I’m fine with that,” Emily agreed.

  “You are?”

  “I am. We’re not a romantic match. I was just waiting until after the party tonight to say something; I was giving it one more chance.”

  “Well, fuck me.”

  “No, thank you,” Emily didn’t miss a beat.

  “Good one,” Kate laughed, a genuine smile spreading across her face. “If you agree, why the call?”

  “Well, I know how this goes. Quick text goodbye, then we’ll see each other out on The Hill occasionally and either smile and pretend we don’t know how we know each other or just avoid each other completely. I don’t want that.”

  “Okay?” Kate was on her back foot with this one—a place of unfamiliarity. Maybe she’d misjudged Emily Hall.

  “While I don’t think we’re a romantic fit, I do like you. It’s hard to make friends in Seattle, especially at our age. I think we should be friends.”

  “You realize you just hit me with the biggest lesbian cliché ever, right? We should be friends?”

  “I do,” Emily said. “But you know just as well as I do that this is a small community, and if we cast out everyone with whom we went on three dates, we’d have no friends. Come on, how many of your friends have you been on a date with?”

  “You’re on fire this morning,” Kate observed, thinking it was ironic, since all she wanted was someone who could light her fire. And. She had been on at least one date with most of her friends. “Alright, so we should be friends. What does that look like?”

  “It looks like going to the Grrl party tonight, like we planned. Come on, let’s wing woman for each other.”

  “Wing woman, huh?”

  “Yes,” Emily persisted. “Or if you prefer to use non-binary terms, we can wing person for each other.”

  “Okay, but Liza’s going, so we have to hang out with her, too.”

  “Wow, she’s taking a night off for a party?”

  “She’s decided it’s time to partner up—but she’s looking for a training partner above all else, naturally,” Kate laughed about her fast-talking, fast-training, triathlon-obsessed roommate. “You wanna get a drink beforehand and strategize?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Okay, we’ll meet you at Rain City at eight.”

  “Deal. And Kate?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Never mind. See you there.” Emily wanted to ask Kate more about her roommate’s newfound interest in looking for a partner. But it could wait. It would wait.

  “See you there.”

  l l l

  “We’re meeting Emily for a drink before the party tonight,” Kate announced as she poured a cup of coffee into a mug that said Lake Tahoe on it, knowing “a drink” for Liza meant a can of La Croix or if she was feeling splurgy, a ginger beer. Kate tried not to trip over both her dogs, who were sitting at her feet, looking up at her, hopeful for an early breakfast. “Guys, come on—” she muttered, pushing past her yellow and black labs. “You know you have to wait until seven.”

  “Who’s Emily?” Liza asked, taking the coffeepot that was handed to her and putting it back on its base. She
didn’t need it. Besides the fact that she’d made the coffee, she’d been up for hours and had already swum two miles in the city pool across the street.

  “That teacher I went on a couple dates with, the really femme one.”

  “Oh, right. I talked to her class a couple months ago about non-traditional writing careers. Blogging counts as a writing career today. I thought you weren’t into her?”

  “I’m not.”

  “I’m not tracking. Why are we getting a drink with her?”

  “I sent her the text this morning—” Kate started.

  “Right?” Liza flipped her eggs as she listened, moving forward at the stove to let her friend by. She and Kate had a dance they did in the kitchen and in life. They’d lived together for years, through girlfriends and break-ups, and all the relationships in between.

  Kate didn’t need to tell Liza she’d sent her trademark text or what happened next. Liza knew the drill but listened, anyway.

  “And then she called me,” Kate said.

  “Shit, really?”

  “Yeah. Said she wasn’t into me either, but she did like me and it’s hard to make friends, so we should be friends. And then all I could think about was that Miranda Lambert song.”

  “I don’t know what that means—you and your country music. And, wow, she’s kinda ballsy.”

  “She is. Surprisingly. Because her English teacher look would make you think otherwise. Can I have an egg?”

  “Already made you some,” Liza offered, as she slid a plate with two eggs and toast across the granite-topped bar top that separated the kitchen from the family room.

  “You know me so well,” Kate smiled.

  “I do. So, you’re going to be friends with the teacher, huh?”

  “Yeah, we’ll see. She’s not wrong. It is hard to make new friends in the community. People are partnered or super introverted or just flat out crazy. So far, she’s none of those things.”

  “I’m not any of those things!” Liza blurted, her trademark fast talk blurring her words together as she spoke. She’d just sat next to her friend at the bar, ready to devour her food. Swimming always made her so hungry.

  “Right, none of them,” Kate deadpanned, pursing her lips and placing a kiss on her friend’s cheek.

  “Come on.”

  “You’re not, babe, but you are kinda married to triathlon. When was the last time you prioritized a date with a person instead of your bike?”

  “Not nice.”

  “But, true. Does your Specialized keep you warm in bed at night? Does its precision shifting and aerodynamic frame make your heart race and your loins tingle?”

  “Let’s not talk about my loins. But it makes my heart race. And, I have been on dates!” Liza’s face was becoming the color of her hair—bright red. “There was Carrie last fall. We went on dates.”

  “And, since then?”

  “I have a big race coming up. You know I’m trying to qualify for Kona this year.”

  “My point exactly. But it’s okay. You do you. Anyway, women are crazy, and I sometimes think you have the right idea to not bother. I’ve gotta get to work. Thanks for the eggs. Can you feed Hunter and Dallas? See you tonight.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I’ll feed them. See you tonight. Text me where. Good luck creating a killer app today.”

  “Good luck killing the hills today.” Kate petted Hunter’s head, and then Dallas’s as she turned to leave. “You boys be good for Auntie Liza.”

  TWO

  Across the lake, Emily Hall looked down at her phone and smiled. She’d done something out of her comfort zone by calling Kate. She’d been working on standing up for herself and asking for what she wanted. And what she wanted was more of a “who.” Maybe she didn’t ask for what she wanted, but she kept the avenue to getting there open. It was true she wasn’t attracted to Kate; it was true she wanted to be friends. It may have also been true that she was more than a little interested in getting to know Kate’s roommate as a side effect of their budding friendship.

  Liza Barrett had come to Emily’s classroom to talk to her students as part of an Ask the Experts series she’d hosted to expose the kids to a variety of ways that one could make a living as a writer. As an English teacher, Emily felt compelled to show that writing didn’t just mean books or newspapers, that writers exist in all forms, in surprising ways. That even non-traditional writers could make money with words. And writers could be edgy and cool, not just bookish and cerebral. As a sports blogger, Liza was intriguing—she had turned a hobby into a part-time profession that worked well with her other job as a wedding photographer.

  It was summer break, but Emily was teaching summer school to earn extra money. Being a single mom meant giving up certain perks of being an educator—she almost always took the summer school classes, the extra hours, the tutoring gigs. Tight margins came with the territory. Her fifteen-year-old son, Angus, had his first job as a grocery store bagger, so she set an alarm for him to wake up by noon to get to work on time and headed off to work herself, mentally preparing for the commute from their house in Greenlake to her school in the burbs. One of the positives that came out of her divorce was keeping the house—she’d never be able to afford a home on a teacher’s salary in the crazy Seattle market. Especially a ‘20s Craftsman with a view of the little lake in the middle of the city. Seattle’s other lake, which was dwarfed by the size of Lake Washington, but not in personality. Everyone in the gay community was obsessed with Capitol Hill. But in her mind, Greenlake was the most desirable place to live in the city. It was eclectic and tight-knit, brimming with bars and restaurants, and a popular destination thanks to the 3-mile path that traced the edges of the lake.

  As she drove, she thought about her lecture. That day’s lesson focused on The Great Gatsby, one of her favorite books of all time, and the story of unrequited love. Her mind spun circles around the concept of unrequited love—why it was so painful, so purposeful, so persistent? Why could she not let the idea of Liza Barrett go? They’d met once. Liza was in and out as fast as possible, showing no interest in socializing. She barely knew her. They had nothing in common, aside from their queerness and interest in writing. From the moment they met, Emily was fascinated by the little redhead with the killer smile and fire under her feet. There was something there she couldn’t ignore, and it made zero sense. And that was what made unrequited love—or unrequited like, as it were—so powerful. The something you couldn’t ignore.

  Hands stuffed in the pockets of her prairie skirt, Emily’s painstakingly curled brown hair bounced on her shoulders as she paced the front of her classroom. As it went most days, she was trying to gain the attention of a dozen teenagers who were eager to hop back into whatever was going on in their phones. Teaching was so much easier before the iPhone.

  “So, Nick has somewhat unknowingly become a part of Jay Gatsby’s quest to attract Daisy’s attention,” she started, leaning against the front edge of her desk and crossing her legs at the ankles. “Who thinks this strategy is going to work for Gatsby?”

  Crickets.

  “You guys! Focus, okay? Let’s get out of Instagram and into the Roaring ‘20s. Music. Passion. Glamour. Are you with me? Jay Gatsby is overwhelmingly attracted to Daisy, but she’s married. He can’t have her. But he wants her. And he doesn’t know if she wants him in return. Who can relate to that dilemma?”

  They were giving her nothing, except blank forward stares, as if the whiteboard behind her were filled with complex calculus equations. Or worse, essay question prompts.

  “Okay, let’s try this another way. Think about who you like right now. Don’t tell us who it is, we don’t want to know. But think about them. Do they like you back? How do you know? What emotions does not knowing stir up for you?”

  A lone hand went up in the back of the room, young Delilah brave enough to volunteer her thoughts.

  “Fear?” Delilah said, more question than a proclamation, finger tracing circle
s on the top of her desk.

  “Yes! Exactly. What else?”

  “Uncertainty.”

  “And?” Emily continued to draw the girl out of her shell.

  “I guess nervousness, ‘cause like, what if they don’t like you back?” Delilah was getting it.

  “Or, what if they do?” Jonah chimed in from the seat next to her.

  “It might be worse if they do,” Eric said, his head in his hands and eyes cast downward as he spoke, teenage angst on full display.

  “Precisely,” Emily encouraged. “And that’s what unrequited love is all about. Not knowing. Uncertainty. Fear of putting yourself out there to be potentially rejected—and potentially accepted. Sometimes we make people out to be something in our minds that they couldn’t possibly live up to, so we want to keep them that way. Do you think Gatsby put Daisy on a pedestal that she couldn’t live up to?”

  Heads nodded. She’d gotten them. It just took getting one kid going to get the rest of them. With Delilah’s help, she had a room full of teens talking about classic literature—and liking it.

  “So, if Daisy’s married and he knows he can’t have her, why does Gatsby keep trying?” Delilah asked, finger still drawing circles on a notepad that wasn’t there.

  “Well, I think this is something that’ll make more sense over time,” Emily said. “Sometimes, our heads and our hearts don’t align. We know something shouldn’t be, for whatever the reason, but we try for it, anyway. Because we are inherently full of hope. We hope for things to be the way we think we want them.”

  As Emily talked, she returned from pacing to her power position at the front of the desk. It was time to hit the next point home. It was, in her mind, the most important point.

  “One of the beautiful things about literature is the interpretation is up to the reader,” she continued. “F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote this book with one meaning in mind—his meaning. But once it left his head and his hands, it became ours—all of ours—and it can mean something different to each one of us. What I take from the book may be very different from what you take from it. And we’re both right.”