You didn't mean to fall for Cosima Niehaus. You didn't want to, you weren't supposed to.
But you absolutely have, and it's as awkward as it is uncomfortable, utterly opposed to your prior purpose, and distasteful in that it shows you exactly how contrary and distasteful your actions to date have been.
Cosima has gone from being an odd girl whose friendship you would seek out to make Aldous happy (the extent to which you cared about his happiness makes you queasy, now), to a charismatic young woman whose attention you wanted. To a brilliant mind who captured the science instantly, feeling through the implications in a way that far exceeded your initial grasp. To a beautiful woman who stood on her toes to kiss you, a kiss from which you'd taken a half second too long to pull away from. To a writhing, gasping woman who'd ground against your stomach and your hand at the same time, who had rushed out in her underwear to buy you icecream, whose cunt you want to put your mouth on.
(You blush a little at that. A tiny part of you is horrified, but the rest of you – well – you're a lot more bisexual than you'd thought a week ago).
You haven't done that, yet. The first time… you'd fumbled and flinched and she'd handled you gently, coaxing you, her hands beneath your underwear like they were the barrier that made the difference. The intimacy nearly broke you anyway, and you'd cried without wanting to, used the excuse to get her out of the room, and then broke her trust believing it would save her life.
Maybe you did, but the second time meant more, maybe because you weren't waiting for an opening, or maybe because you'd decided this was the last time, that you'd tell her everything before you told Leekie anything more. But this time you stripped your underwear off for her, and her face was like she'd been given a gift. You'd worked to get her bra off, partly because she fought you on it a little, and partly because the clasp seemed to be straight from Hell, and partly because she was sucking on your nipples and laughing when your hips rolled up to try and meet her.
You hadn't managed to get her underwear off, but you'd felt her nipple harden against your tongue, and the muscles in her ass flex under your hands as she thrust inside you. She'd kept her underwear on, like that was enough to stop you panicking, like they were what made the difference, and not superseded by her wetness on your thighs, or her tongue on your cunt (merde), or that you'd had your fingers inside her body.
Was that it, then? The moment when curiosity-cum-friendship-cum-lust became love? Because you'd left her room a different woman than you'd entered it, when you were flustered and conflicted and came to her wanting her body, wanting to touch her, but wanting to save her life by betraying her. You left it sure that there must be another way to be on her side. A way to stop lying, to build from the hellishly shaky platform you had built between you.
And maybe you would have told her, that night with the wine and the fucking truffles, if you'd known how to find the words. If she hadn't told you first, that she'd known, always known, and she'd trusted you anyway and you threw it away. For the sake of pleasing Aldous, for one last effort in his pursuit, you'd rummaged through her belongings and told him what he wanted to know. Not everything, but enough.
And she'd found out, thrown your identity in your face and her possessions in a bag, and disappeared from Minnesota.
You hate this town, and you'd leave it in a second if you knew how to find her. She has no other reason to leave town, her purpose is to avoid you alone, so… where? You cannot imagine she is nearby, she knows no one in Minnesota; and San Francisco seems as unlikely when there is no one there she could tell the truth to.
Toronto, Canada is where the other women are, and you know that she is in contact with them now. Maybe… maybe if that is where she is, and you can find her, maybe there will come a time when you don't regret this. Maybe there will be a time where you are glad you knew enough to be able to find her, and talk her down, and convince her that against all evidence and reason and decency, you love every cell and breath in her body. Maybe.
You book a plane ticket, hoping against hope on that maybe.