Chapter Text
I.
Somehow, despite the long car ride home from Bly Manor the previous evening, sleeping under the same roof that night, crossing paths in the morning when Dani ran out to catch the bus to work, and then going to work at the same place, Dani and Jamie have managed to completely avoid talking about the kiss. And without knowing how Jamie feels about the kiss and about Dani herself, Dani doesn’t know whether she should be regretting that it happened or pretending that it never happened at all. The thing is, no matter how Jamie feels or what she says, Dani knows that she doesn’t regret it, that she can’t regret it, not when she now knows for sure what she’d long suspected. Hannah had been the first person she’d told, and Hannah had rolled her eyes and berated Dani for their mutual failure to communicate.
“Honestly, Dani, just talk to her, love.”
Hannah is watching her placidly, with a cup of tea in her hand. Lipstick stains the color of rich plum are littered around the rim of the cup and Hannah’s eyes are piercing as they
stare into Dani’s.
“Hannah,” Dani shakes her head and runs her fingers through her hair, “I don’t think I can.”
“Oh for heaven’s sake, I don’t know what I’m going to do with the pair of you.” Hannah snaps, “Have you seen the way that woman looks at you, Dani? Honestly.”
“Huh, I hadn’t noticed,” Dani tilts her head, “is it anything at all like the way my cousin looks at you?”
“Well,” Hannah frowns, “I’m sure that I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about.”
Dani sits up straight with a smirk and begins, “He lo-”
“Dani,” Hannah’s tone is sharp enough that Dani’s eyes snap to meet hers, “this isn’t about us, or me. We’re talking about you and our gardener and why the two of you insist on being so damned difficult.”
To date, Hannah is still the first and the only person Dani has admitted her feelings for Jamie to. She hadn’t intended to ever tell anyone, but over the week that she and Jamie hadn’t been speaking, (although it was mostly that Dani wasn’t speaking to Jamie), Hannah had gently asked Dani why she was so upset about Jamie having been with another woman.
Dani hadn’t known how to tell Hannah that it felt like she’d swallowed hot glass every time she thought about someone else touching Jamie, or making her laugh, or curling up next to her on the couch. So, she’d just shrugged and said, “It just felt...rude, you know? Her coming home so late, making noise, telling me that she…”
Dani had averted her eyes to worry at a loose thread dangling from the seam of her pants as she talked, grateful to have something to do with her hands, “Well, anyway. Then she came out in the morning all covered in hickies and messy…”
What Dani hadn’t said is that Jamie had looked absolutely adorable that morning and that despite her annoyance, she had wanted nothing more than to care for Jamie. To bring her medicine to soothe her hangover, cradle her head in her lap, run her fingers through brown curls…
But after enough prodding, Hannah had gotten Dani to admit that she might like Jamie and that she was beginning to think that maybe Jamie liked her, too. But she hadn’t divulged the two things she’d only recently been able to say to herself in the mirror: “I’m gay” and “I think I’m falling in love.”
Jamie Taylor with her quick wit, clever hands, and ability to nurture even the saddest, most wilted flower back to life. Jamie who had agreed to marry a complete stranger as a favor to her best friend, Jamie who looks at Dani out of the corner of her eye and smiles softly when she thinks Dani isn’t looking, Jamie who brings flowers back to their apartment and leaves them strategically placed where Dani will see them: near the key bowl near the door, on the dresser when it’s Dani’s night to have the bedroom, on the kitchen table when they have plans to make dinner together.
Jamie who guards her own privacy, space, and affection with an intensity that Dani has never known before. Jamie who allowed Dani into her life, into her workplace, into her home. Jamie who always manages to make even the most mundane, dull activity seem fun. Jamie who asks for so little and gives so much and never seems to keep track of who she has done a kindness for and what she might be able to extract from them in return.
“Ms. Clayton!”
Dani looks up to see Flora running toward the table as fast her little legs will carry her. Even from this distance, Dani can see that Flora’s cheeks are red with exertion and that she is wearing a brilliant smile that sends a pang of affection straight to Dani’s heart.
“Flora, dear,” Hannah says when Flora skids to a halt in front of them, “I know that I’ve asked you before not to run in the house, especially not when you’ve got your shoes on.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Grose,” Flora pants, not sounding very sorry at all, “but it was really such an emergency and it couldn’t possibly wait, and I promised Jamie that I would -”
“Jamie?” Dani interrupts, sounding a bit too eager than she knows she should, “What about Jamie?”
“Well, that’s what I’m trying to tell you!” Flora exclaims, throwing her hands up in apparent frustration, “Jamie told me to bring you this,” she holds out a note, “and these,” she says as she pulls a few battered daffodils out of the pocket of her dress.
“Oh,” Dani says as she accepts the flowers and the slip of paper. Intentionally avoiding Hannah’s eye and accompanying smirk, she thanks Flora and then immediately unfolds the piece of paper as soon as she skips off.
“Poppins,” the note reads in Jamie’s messy scrawl, “I hope your day has been as beautiful as these flowers.”
The daffodils enclosed in her hand are definitely looking worse for wear, apparently having received quite the beating in Flora’s pocket, but they are a brilliant yellow that brings a grin to Dani’s face. If love was a flower, she thinks, it would be a yellow daffodil.
II.
When Owen strolls into the sunny kitchen later that same afternoon, Dani is surprised to see him, but offers a cheerful smile and wave.
“Dani,” Owen exclaims as he presses a kiss to her cheek, “haven’t seen much of you. How are you doing, love?”
“I’m good.”
“And how are things with our gardener?”
Dani narrows her eyes suspiciously and grumbles, “Hannah called you.”
“No, she didn’t call me.” Owen lies, and then when he sees the scowl on Dani’s face he adds, “She texted me, actually.”
“So then,” Dani sighs, “you already know how things are with Jamie?”
Owen jams his hands into his pockets and shrugs, “Maybe I’d like to hear it straight from the source.”
“Honestly, the two of you are being ridiculous.”
“That may be true, but I’m also incredibly nosy.”
“God,” Dani snorts, “at least you’re self-aware.”
“Have you told her that you like her?”
“Owen…”
With a dramatic eye roll he groans, “Well, has she told you how she feels?”
“No, not since that night. And anyway, she was so drunk...”
“My God! You two live and work together. Do you actually talk to each other or do you just spend all of your time together making eyes at each other across a crowded room?”
“Owen, really? I think you’re being rather dramatic.”
“Danielle, I swear to God. I’ve known her for years and I’ve never seen her look at a woman the way she looks at you. Not ever.”
“I don’t even know if I’m…”
“Gay?” Owen finishes for her, his eyes soft and his smile gentle.
Dani winces, but nods. There’s so much more to it, though. The fear that Jamie couldn’t possibly like her back, that Dani’s inexperience would annoy her, that it might not work out, that it might actually work out...
Owen's hand is warm and gentle when it closes over one of Dani’s. He gives her hand a gentle squeeze and raises an eyebrow, “Does it actually matter?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, if you like her and if she likes you, what does it matter? It’s just a word. Why should figuring out what label to apply to yourself matter more than how you’re both feeling?”
“She’s my friend. She’s actually becoming my best friend, and I don't want to make things awkward or fuck up by using her as some...experiment.”
“Are you unsure?”
“No. I know that I enjoy being around her…” Dani bites her lip and says, “And we kissed last night.”
“You did?” Owen cries.
Dani has to duck her head to hide the smile blooming on her face, “Yeah, we did. We were in the greenhouse and it sort of...happened.”
Owen breathes a laugh and wraps his arms around her, resting his cheek against the top of her head, “I think those are the best moments in life, right? Things that just happen even when they seem unlikely or improbable. Life finds a way.”
III.
Despite Jamie’s repeated offers to stay late at work so that she could bring Dani home with her, Dani usually refused, preferring instead to spend time lost in thought on the bus. Sometimes she would read, sometimes she would do some writing, and sometimes she would just allow herself to get lost in the meditative calm of riding along in relative quiet.
She’d only ever ridden the bus a few times prior to moving to England because Eddie hadn’t liked it, insisting instead on shuttling Dani to and from work anytime her old car needed to go to the shop, and when the car broke down entirely, he’d talked her out of replacing it and had restructured his work day so that he could shuttle her back and forth.
When she’d suggested replacing the car, he’d been very practical when he pointed out that with a new mortgage, they may not want to take on another car payment. She couldn’t find a reasonable argument against this, and so she had been stuck. That’s how things tended to go with Eddie: he never forced her to do anything or forbade her from doing something she wanted to do. Rather, he would offer a series of very reasonable and practical points that she couldn’t refute even if she had bothered to try.
Dani had been a nervous child, but she’d always been headstrong and able to muster the courage to do something scary when it needed to be done, but somehow, over those years with Eddie, that had changed. She’d slowly learned to make herself smaller and smaller until Eddie seemed to hardly see her at all, and eventually, she realized that she couldn’t see herself either. She would lie awake next to him in bed some nights and wonder how she ended up there, in a house she hadn’t chosen, on a mattress firmer than she would have preferred, next to a man she could never love. It had gone on that way for years, with Dani simply going along with whatever Eddie decided they should do, simply because she could no longer find the desire to try disagreeing with him.
That last night at dinner, she hadn’t gone there with the intention of returning the ring, of calling off the engagement, of telling him that she would be moving out of their house. But when he’d started talking about how she would obviously be quitting her job when, not if, they had children, something inside her had snapped.
It surprised her later when she realized that things like their home and their mattress, and in some ways the marriage itself hadn’t been worth the fight, but her job and those kids were. Only, instead of telling him that she would keep working, she’d told him that she didn’t want to get married at all. Somewhere deep inside herself, in the darkest parts that she would never allow light to touch, she wondered if she would have been able to stick to her guns with the break up. She wondered if she would have been able to get away from him if he had lived. She wondered whether she had only found the strength to pursue this life in the aftermath of his death, if his death itself had been the ashes she could spring from like a phoenix.
He’d been her best friend, and sometimes, like tonight, she wondered what he would think if he could see her now. Not the Eddie she’d been engaged to, or the man she’d seen die, but the boy she’d been friends with. The boy who had been her biggest supporter and loudest champion until he seemed to become hellbent on absorbing her very existence into his own.
Would that Eddie approve? Would he have understood what she meant when she told him what she was and that she would have never been able to love him properly?
It hurt sometimes to think of him, to remember who he had been to her when they were kids. He had been her protector, always coming to the rescue with a laugh and a homemade cookie from Mrs. O’Mara whenever her own mother was cruel to her. In some ways, what had happened between them hadn’t even been his fault. They’d been pushed together by their families and circumstance and expectations, and just as she had tried to convince herself that she could love Eddie properly even though she was beginning to suspect that she wasn’t capable of it, he had tried to mold her into the things he wanted in a partner. Sometimes, she wondered if he’d even actually been in love with her or if he had been so taken by the idea of her that he’d become unable to differentiate between the two. She had almost forgotten how to do it herself.
But Jamie.
With a soft sigh, Dani allows her mind to wander to Jamie’s laugh, the way she always encourages Dani to be herself, and the feel of their lips pressed together. The complicated, unfortunate reality of the situation Dani meant that by falling into a real relationship with Jamie, she would be risking her status in the country if they broke up and Jamie no longer wanted to help her, and the thought of returning to Iowa…
An involuntary chill ripples through Dani as she considers it, what life would be like if she returned to Iowa under the disapproving gaze of her mother and the needs of Judy O’Mara who would expect her to be the dutiful, grieving daughter-in-law, and the judgment from everyone she’d ever known if she did tell them all the truth.
It was stupid really, the idea that Dani would ever be able to tell the people she knew back home about her attraction to women when she couldn’t even allow herself to say that word in relation to herself.
Jamie is gay, this Viola woman she slept with is bisexual, and Dani, well, whatever a person was when she wanted to be someone’s housewife, someone’s daughter-in-law, someone small enough to fit whatever mold other people wanted for her, whatever that is, Dani now knew that she wasn’t that.
IV.
“Jamie?” Dani calls into the darkness of the flat as she nudges the door closed with her foot and drops her keys into the bowl.
“Out here,” Jamie responds, and Dani looks in the direction of her voice to see Jamie’s shadow moving along on the balcony, silhouetted in the darkness of the night sky.
“What are you doing out here?” Dani asks as she slides the glass door open, stepping out onto the balcony beside Jamie before she gives her the chance to respond.
“Well, I was smoking a cigarette, just thinking, you know?”
With a pointed look, Dani glances at Jamie’s hands which are closed into loose fists, gripping the railing of the balcony.
“Why didn’t you go inside when you finished smoking?”
“Dunno,” Jamie shrugs, “just needed to clear my head, is all.”
“How is it feeling, then? Clear?”
With a sharp laugh, Jamie glances over at her and says, “Hazier than ever, actually.”
“Look,” Dani begins, at the same time that Jamie says “Dani,” and then they laugh and stare at each other, waiting for the other to begin speaking.
Jamie breaks first, “About last night…”
Dani’s heart sinks in anticipation, steeling herself for whatever Jamie is about to say next.
“I just wanted to apologize,” she says, “you were emotional and I shouldn’t have kissed you and I don’t want you to think that I only took you there so that I could...make a move, or whatever.”
Dani frowns and shakes her head vigorously, “I don’t think that, Jamie.”
“No,” Jamie says, “I mean it. I never wanted to fit the stereotype of the predatory lesbian who goes out kissing straight women and taking advantage of them when they’re feeling low. I mean, that bloke you were with only just died, and there I am, kissin’ you and -”
“Jamie,” Dani whispers, closing her hand around Jamie’s wrist, “look at me.”
Slowly, shakily, Jamie does look at her with eyes narrowed in confusion, the color of her irises completely washed out by the darkness.
“I don’t know what I am, but I’m not straight. I can promise you that.”
“Oh?” Jamie says, eyes wide with surprise.
“Yeah. I guess I’m still trying to work out the finer details, but I really don’t think that I like men. That’s, um…” Dani drops Jamie’s wrist and looks away and doesn’t speak again until she feels Jamie rest a hesitant hand on her shoulder.
Dani leans into the soft weight of Jamie’s hand and says, “That’s why I broke up with Eddie.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, it took me a long time to figure it out, but when I did figure it out, I knew that I couldn’t go through with marrying him. So I told him that the whole thing was off, and he got upset. So he stepped out of the car and…”
“Fuckin’ hell,” Jamie breathes, “I didn’t realize.”
An involuntary shudder rushes through Dani, then, and she attempts to disguise it as a nod, “Yeah, that’s how it went. No one else knows that.”
“No?”
“Well, would you tell everyone that your childhood sweetheart died while trying to get away from you in the middle of a breakup conversation?”
“Fair point,” Jamie concedes and places a fresh cigarette between her teeth. She hesitates, and then holds the pack out to Dani who accepts a cigarette and then leans into the flame Jamie offers.
Jamie lights her own cigarette, and then on an exhale she says, “Fair’s fair. You told me about your ex. Wanna hear about mine?”
Dani just nods, savoring the unfamiliar burn of the cigarette smoke as it curls down her throat.
“Her name was Kristen.”
“What happened?” Dani breathes.
“She was older and I was fresh out of the foster care system. She’d been a bit of a street kid, too, and she seemed to understand me. She said she did, and I believed her. Looking back, I wonder if any of it was true. I thought that I loved her, I really did. Now I know that that wasn’t it, it couldn’t have been. Not with how things went between us. That’s not love.”
Dani exhales a puff of smoke from her own cigarette and narrows her eyes at Jamie in the dark, “How did you meet?”
“When you age out of the system, there’s really not a lot for you. You’re just kinda on your own out there, with the few possessions you’ve collected over the years and a few quid, but you’re really just on your own. No family...so I met her, and she made me feel loved. I hadn’t felt that way in…” Jamie laughs and shakes her head, “Actually, I’d never felt that.”
“What did it feel like?” Dani asks, sidling closer to Jamie.
“Intoxicating,” Jamie says, “being wanted is fucking intoxicating. The thing about being intoxicated is that it makes you do stupid shit, like taking the fall on a drug bust and serving a couple of years at Her Majesty’s pleasure. Fancied myself a Romeo of sorts, I suppose.” Jamie scoffs at herself, shakes her head, “She was lovely all through the trial, really. But as soon as I got sentenced and she knew I wouldn’t snitch, she was gone.”
It’s surprising, Dani finds, that Jamie doesn’t sound particularly bitter or jaded, and when she tells her so, Jamie laughs and says, “That’s all owed to Tamara, my shrink. She helped me work through that and a bunch of other shit so that I could at least do an impression of a functioning adult.”
“You’ve got me convinced,” Dani chuckles and nudges Jamie’s foot with her own shoe, “especially the part where you agreed to marry a complete stranger.”
“I said that I was doing an impression of being a functioning adult, I didn’t say that I am one.”
“Fair enough,” Dani says as she grinds the cigarette against the bottom of her shoe, “thank you for the flowers, by the way.”
“Oh those?” Jamie says, sheepish and uncharacteristically shy, “All Flora’s idea.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Mhm.”
“And the note?”
“Forged it, the wee devil.”
“Alright,” Dani rolls her eyes and turns to go inside, “whatever you say.”
This time it’s Jamie who reaches for Dani’s wrist and pulls gently until Dani is facing her again, standing close enough that she could count every freckle on Jamie’s face, even in the darkness.
“Poppins,” Jamie says, “thank you for letting me talk.”
With a gentle shove to her shoulder, Dani says, “Thank you for letting me listen.”
V.
When Dani emerges from the bathroom freshly showered and wearing a comfortable pair of sweats that might actually belong to Jamie, she finds Jamie reclining on the couch, holding a paperback up over her face.
Dani loves watching her read, loves the way her lips move soundlessly and the way she excitedly reaches for a pen to underline a passage she likes.
“Dani,” Jamie greets her and places the book open on her chest, tucking one arm under her head, causing her shirt to ride up and expose a pale, freckled expanse of skin at her midriff. “How were the wee terrors today?”
“Oh,” Dani laughs, “they were good. We did some crafts, and as you can imagine, Flora was bouncing off of the walls with excitement while Miles pretended to be wholly unmoved.”
Jamie chuckles fondly and folds her legs up toward her chest, making room for Dani to flop down onto the couch next to her, “That sounds about right. Lemme guess, Flora thought that it was perfectly splendid?”
“How did you know?” Dani gasps, eyes widening in mock surprise, “She only said so about a thousand times.”
When Dani settles down on the couch, she taps Jamie’s shin, signalling that it’s okay for her to stretch her legs out again. Jamie hesitates for a moment and then drapes her legs over Dani’s lap.
Dani rests her arm on Jamie’s legs and sighs, “How was your day?”
“It wasn’t so bad.” Jamie shrugs, “Much less eventful than your day, I’m sure.”
“I didn’t see much of you today.”
“Yeah, I had a lot to do, so I ate out in the green house.”
Dani snickers, “Ate out, huh?”
“Oh grow up,” Jamie laughs, “you’ve sure gotten bolder and bolder. By the way, how do you know about U-Hauling?”
“Google,” Dani shrugs, a sheepish grin on her lips, “when you have a lesbian roommate, you kind of need to know what to expect.”
Jamie glances at her suspiciously and raises an eyebrow, “Sure,”
“So,” Dani says, “were you thinking of doing anything special for dinner?”
“I was thinking maybe we could order takeaway from that Indian place you like? I could do with a curry.”
“That does sound nice,” Dani agrees and plays with a loose thread on Jamie’s pants.
“Hey, Dan. Listen to this bit.” Jamie says and sits up a little straighter, flipping through her book.
“I read this bit and I thought you’d like it,” Jamie says by way of explanation as she brings the book level with her eyes and reads, “A kind of light spread out from her. And everything changed color. And the world opened out. And a day was good to awaken to. And the people of the world were good and handsome. And I was not afraid anymore.”
“Wow,” Dani breathes, “that’s lovely.”
“Call me crazy,” Jamie laughs, “but I think this Steinbeck kid is going places.”
“Hmm,” Dani hums, “I’m not so sure.”
“Wait, there’s one more bit here that might convince you,” Jamie says as she flips through the book again, nodding to herself when she finds the right page, “...it’s awful not to be loved. It’s the worst thing in the world...it makes you mean, and violent, and cruel.”
“Do you think that’s true?” Dani murmurs, a slight chill radiating down her spine when she locks eyes with Jamie’s over the rim of the book.
“You know, I think I do.” Jamie places the book face down on her chest again, “When I think back to who I was as a kid and the trouble I got into as a teenager and a young adult...I really do think that it came from knowing that no one loved me. Knowing that there’s not one person in the whole world who cherishes you, or loves you the best, or even sees you...it makes everything feel kind of absurd and pointless. Why not be a total arse to whoever gets in the way? Who is there in your life to care that you’ve gone down the wrong path?”
Dani just nods at this and settles her hand on Jamie’s calf. Her own father had loved her, she’s sure of that. Losing the only bit of parental love she was ever able to rely on at such a young age really had been such a tragedy. Her mom loved her in her own way, even though it was insufficient, and the O’Maras had loved her, even if that love was tinged with expectation.
Maybe if her dad had lived, or if her mom had been better, she wouldn’t have been so desperate to be part of the O’Mara family that she’d have fallen into a relationship with Eddie. Still, Dani had always known that someone loved her and that she had been loved. Knowing that Jamie hadn’t even had the sort of conditional love Dani had had breaks her heart. It makes her want to -
“Jamie,” she says, reaching for Jamie’s free hand, “I know it’s not much, but I see you.”
“You know, Dani?” Jamie chuckles, “I actually believe that. It makes me feel a little mad to believe it, but I do.”
“What about the other part?” Dani asks.
“What d’you mean?”
“The first passage you read. The one that says something about how his loving that woman sort of transformed everything else, or his perspective.”
“Oh, yeah,” Jamie says as she rubs her thumb along the peaks and valleys of Dani’s knuckles, “A sort of light spread out from her. And everything changed color. And the world opened up. And each day was good to awaken to. And the people of the world were good and beautiful. And I was not afraid anymore,” Jamie recites from memory.
“Do you think that’s really how it feels?” Dani says even though she now knows the answer, is certain that she does, “Being in love, I mean.”
“If you’d asked me that this time last year…” Jamie trails off, seemingly lost in thought, and Dani thinks the moment has passed. Is just about to offer to call down to the Indian place to order their dinner when Jamie says, “I think I’ve read this book about a thousand times. I read it for the first time when I was in prison, actually. I was never much of a reader before that, but Steinbeck...the prose and the beauty just jumps off of the page, you know? There were some bits that made sense to me immediately, things that I didn’t even have to question, like when he talks about the unique creativity of mankind, and the strength of women, and how knowing that you don’t have to be perfect allows room for one to simply be good…”
“But the parts about love and craving acceptance from the people who you love and wanting them to love you back, and being transformed and made better when they do. I didn’t understand that before, but now, I think I do. I think I know how it feels to want to be good so that you can be good to another person, and how loving and being loved can polish off rough edges, and how maybe the right kind of love can make all of this feel worth it. I believe that now. And it feels good, Dani, it feels good to believe it.”
“Yeah,” Dani agrees, “it really does.”
Jamie looks at her with an intensity that sets her green eyes ablaze, “You believe it, too?”
“I do.”
“Are we mad, Dani?”
“Do you care if we are?”
“Not particularly, no.” Jamie pauses for a beat and then adds, “Do you care?”
“You know, if you’d asked me six months ago if I care what people think, I would have probably lied and said no, but I definitely would have been lying. But now…now I see that there are more important things.”
“Like what?”
“Like being honest with yourself and letting yourself have things. When I was younger, it was like I almost intentionally sabotaged...or wouldn’t ask for the things I wanted. It was like I didn’t think that I deserved to have things that just made me feel good, or right, or settled.”
“What makes you feel that way?”
“This,” Dani says, perhaps a bit too honestly, and then amends, “being here with all of you in a life of my own. Living the way I want to.”
“What was it like before?”
“America? Or Eddie?”
“All of it.”
“You know what? It was fine. For the right woman it might have even been good. Some people enjoy living in a small town, never traveling further than their own state, falling into a relationship with their childhood best friend. Following the path that was laid for them.”
“But you didn’t?”
“No,” Dani agrees, “I didn’t.”
“Why not?”
“I wanted to see the things I’d read about in my books. I wanted to meet people. I wanted to know things. And Eddie...he wasn’t like that.”
“What was he like?”
“He was kind and sturdy. He was good to me, but I don’t know that he ever really saw me. If he ever did, he definitely didn’t after we started to feel the expectations of what a friendship will be like between a boy and a girl. How friendship can never be enough. How it has to turn into more.”
Jamie squeezes Dani’s hand and says, “It shouldn’t have had to turn into anything more. Getting to be your friend should have been enough.”
“Want to know something?” Dani sighs, “I don’t even miss him. We were together nearly every day from when we were six years old until the day he died and I don’t miss him. Of course I’m sad that he’s gone and I wish that he’d lived, but I don’t wish that he was here. I wouldn’t rather be with him. A small part of me was even relieved. Is that awful?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I don’t know if I ever would have left Iowa if he hadn’t died.”
“I think you would’ve.”
“I don’t know.”
“Poppins, you’re so brave. So kind and clever. You’d have left Idaho eventually. Or Illinois. Or wherever.”
Dani smacks Jamie’s thigh and says, “You know what it’s called.”
“I do.”
“You’re an ass.”
“You’re in England now, Dani. I’m an arse.”
“Actually, you’re annoying. Got any alternative words or spellings for that one?”
“Yeah,” Jamie nods, “it’s spelled F-U-C-K Y-O-U.”
“Bet you’d like that, huh?” Dani retorts and then her eyes widen, “I just mean. I meant that...forget that I said anything.”
Despite the red flush apparent on Jamie’s face and chest, her voice is as calm and steady as always, “You really want me to forget it?”
“Jamie, I want…” Dani bites the inside of her cheek, “I know what I want. I just don’t know how to want it or if it’s okay to want it.”
“Dan, you feel how you feel. There’s no right or wrong or okay.”
“Not where I come from,” Dani snorts.
“Well, Indiana sounds like a shit place, anyway. Who gives a damn what those ghouls think?”
“I do. Or, I did.”
“Well, what do you want?”
“Last night, when we kissed…” Dani looks down at their hands clasped together, “I’ve never felt that before.”
“Felt what?”
“I didn’t know that kissing could feel so good. Or so right. I always thought that people were exaggerating. Eddie would kiss me and I would feel nothing at all, and I thought that I was broken, but kissing you made me feel like maybe that’s not true.”
“Dani, do you think you’re…” Jamie raises her eyebrows and nods at their clasped hands, “you know?”
“I don’t know.” Dani says and then stops herself, starts over, “Well, that isn’t true. I do know. And on some level, I think that I always did.”
Jamie gestures between them and asks, “Did you know when you agreed to do this?”
“I was pretty sure, but that isn’t why, I promise.”
“I believe you. Even if you knew you were gay, I’m sure you wouldn’t be mental enough to marry a total stranger unless you had to.”
“You were the first woman I’ve kissed.”
“Really?”
“Well,” Dani shrugs, “yeah. I mean, Eddie and I got together when we were really young.” Then she hesitates, brushes a lock of blonde hair behind her ear and asks, “Have you kissed very many?”
“Women?”
Dani nods.
Jamie winces and nods, “Yeah, more’n I can count, to be honest.” She seems to notice that Dani’s smile falters slightly because she hurries to add, “But this, this is a first.”
“What, kissing an American?”
“No,” she laughs, “getting engaged. Living with a woman.” There’s a beat of silence and she adds, “And the first American.”
“I’m glad to hold that honor.”
“You really ought to be, Poppins. Don’t know that I ever would have kissed an American otherwise.”
“Speaking of Americans, have you ever watched that movie with Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds?”
“That one where Sandy exploits her position of power over Ryan and forces him to marry her by dangling his dream of being a published author over his head?”
“Yeah, that one.”
“Aren’t they Canadian?”
“Hmm,” Dani frowns, “I think she’s Canadian in the movie, but American in real life, and he’s Canadian in real life, but from Alaska in the movie.”
“Alaska is in America, right?”
“Jamie,” Dani smacks Jamie’s shin and laughs, “you know that Alaska is part of America.”
Jamie smirks and repositions herself to rest her feet on the coffee table, “I do, but it’s fun to get you all exasperated.”
“Whatever,” Dani laughs, “you find the movie online somewhere and I’ll order the takeout.”
“Takeaway.”
“Takeout.”
“Takeaway.”