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Chapter Twenty: Every Move You Made
They had their five minutes of band-only alone time after the show in Munich, so I found a quiet place to plug in my laptop and upload some videos. That's where I was when I heard Sara's voice, and looked up reflexively, before I had time to remember to be embarrassed.
"Hey, Jamie," Sara greeted me with the ironic-humourous voice she sometimes adopts when she's embarrassed. I was reminded of her oh, good morning, Jamie from a few days before, with a tremour in my guts.
"Oh- hey, Sara," I heard myself mumble, closing the screen on my laptop.
"Feel like walking with me to the pharmacy down the street? I want to pick up some weird German stuff and some Advil for Tegan." She sounded easy, deliberately so, but her face was reddening nonetheless. I was sure mine was too, and in that moment, I felt her lips again, and her warm skin as I recalled my hand stroking over her chest.
"Uh, sure," I said, futilely trying to push away those thoughts as I set my laptop down and got up. I followed her out into the chilly night air. There was a long enough stretch of silence, as we walked side-by-side over the cobblestones, to intensify the embarrassment to the point where I couldn't stand it.
"So, um. . . what kind of weird German stuff?" I asked, trying to keep my mind off of the memory of her hands on the inside of my thighs. The harder I tried to keep my mind off of it, the more vividly it struck me. It was funny in its own way to feel a little bit of electricity now next to Sara, when I had never felt that way before.
"I don't know, like, chocolate, gum, candy. . . stuff like that, with weird names. Like I once got some chocolate from Poland, and it was called Fart," Sara explained with a laugh. I laughed too.
"I don't think I'd want to put that in my mouth!" I said, only a half-second before the reflex to stop myself kicked in. Thinking of what had recently been in Sara's mouth, I bit my tongue and was glad to be on a dark street.
"Yeah, it was still chocolate, though," Sara pointed out.
"This is true," I said, feeling like an idiot. There was more silence as we passed an enormous church, bathed in an amber glow. We gazed up at its spire silently. After we had passed it, Sara spoke.
"So, what do you think? Is it more awkward to like, pretend it didn't happen, or to like actually talk about it and then, I don't know, try to like. . . get over it?" I felt something twitch in my stomach and I was entirely unsure of the answer.
"Uh. . . I guess it's better to, um. . . talk. . . but I, uh. . ." I started, then stopped, glancing at her face, patterned with high-contrast shadows and warm light from the streetlamps. In a second's memory, my mouth was on hers as she whimpered, shuddered and came with Tegan's head between her legs. The image was at once hot and confusing. I couldn't reconcile the Sara I had known - the Sara who was at times reserved, at times funny, but almost always a little hard to read - with the Sara whose tongue made me come as Tegan's tongue pressed against mine.
"Well, uh. . . it's pretty awkward, eh?" Sara laughed, and I laughed too, a little, nervously, as we crossed the street and carried on.
"Haha, yeah," I agreed. I wished I could just relax and say something to make the tension go away, but I honestly couldn't. If I was the kind of person who could do that, I probably wouldn't have been tense in the first place.
"I guess it's because you and I don't have, like, that kind of. . . like, I mean, you probably didn't feel like this after you and Tegan, um. . ." Sara trailed off, as though halfway through her sentence she decided she didn't like the way it was shaping up. I laughed again.
"Uh, well. . . that was pretty awkward, too," I said, nervous still but feeling the rush of warmth inside of me at the recollection of it. It was garnished with a nice amount of disbelief that I was talking with Sara about having sex with Tegan. And her. With Tegan. I could almost see Kim's blank stare as I imagined telling her, which would never happen.
"It was?" Sara asked, with such a note of curiosity that it was endearing. It was like she was trying not to be bothered.
"Uh. . . so much. So, so. . . incredibly. . . awkward," I said, irritated with myself for feeling so flustered over this conversation.
"So how did you get over it?" Sara asked. "I mean, if you. . . if you know some kind of like, trick or. . . haha. . ."
"Uh, I don't think I am over it," I said, surprising myself. "I mean. . ." Part way through that attempt, my throat started to feel tight. "It's still pretty surreal. . ." For a moment I thought I'd mumbled too quietly and that she hadn't heard, but she nodded and took a moment. We passed through a little square with a fountain in the centre, saying nothing. There was a sculpture in the centre of the fountain and I thought of the sculpture we'd looked at together, at the Rodin museum, and wondered if Sara had given any thought to my words. I hadn't expected it, but standing there with the two of them, the day after watching Sara break down in tears over the possibility of her mother finding out about her relationship with her sister. . . I hadn't expected it but I was struck with the feeling that there was something so profound about their love for each other that the idea of wasting it seemed to me like a crime.
"Yeah. . . so. . ." Sara started hesitantly as we crossed the square and continued up a narrow lane. "So I hope you don't feel like. . . I think. . . I was just kind of realizing that we kind of like. . . took advantage of you and how you, um, feel. About Tegan-"
"No," I said quickly. "I don't think that." I hated the idea, suddenly, that she thought that.
"No?"
"I think we all, uh. . . wanted to do it and we all got something out of it and. . . the alcohol just made it, um, easier." All of those words flooded out at once, before I could stop them.
"Yeah," Sara said after a while. "You're right, I think."
"Maybe we should give the cupcakes and cocktails a break," I laughed, swallowing the sudden lump in my throat that was conjured up by images of the warmth in Tegan's dark eyes, the softness of her lips. Without cocktails and cupcakes, would I ever feel her lips again? But with them. . . it was all getting too hard to take. I couldn't decide, there, in the alley in Munich, which way was better. But I knew, whatever I decided, if Tegan approached me with a cocktail, I wouldn't hesitate. But if she didn't. . .
"Yeah, maybe," Sara laughed. "But can we like, try not to be embarrassed? I mean, it's just sex, right?"
"Uh, true," I said, laughing. I'd been in bed with the two of them, together, and she was calling it just sex. I'd had just sex and it wasn't like that.
"I mean, so what, right? It was good. We were drunk and we got each other off and so what?" Sara's bluntness reminded me of moments on stage where she would say things that made Tegan cringe in horror. I remembered her going on and on about masturbation while Tegan almost crawled out of her own skin.
"Haha, uh. . . yes."
"I mean, it was good, wasn't it?" she went on, her confidence suddenly bolstered.
"Yeah," I admitted, nodding. I seriously couldn't lie about that.
"But we. . . I'm sorry," she said suddenly, and I looked over at her. "I'm sorry because. . . all of it must be. . . hard. . . with like, because of. . . how you feel. . . about Tegan." I felt alarmed momentarily about the turn of the conversation; if Sara was going to talk about me and Tegan, I couldn't be sure I wouldn't cry, and I didn't feel like making an idiot of myself, in a pharmacy in Munich, in the middle of the night, with Sara Quin. Her voice, though, was a gentler version of her. I felt, again, the weird connection I'd felt with Sara that night in Vancouver when we sat on the bench in front of Tegan's building, and the woman in yoga pants had walked her French bulldog around the fountain while Sara and I both wept.
"Well. . . yeah. But. . . it's hard for all of us, isn't it? I don't think. . ." How could I answer? How many hours would it take us to get back to the bus if I said all I wanted to? Sara sighed.
"I think. . . Tegan needs you," Sara said seriously. I could see the pharmacy sign glowing up the street.
"She needs you," I replied.
"But I cause her. . . so much pain," Sara said quietly, and the words created a tightening in my chest that made me take a breath.
"Well, the situation does," I said, as her eyes flickered up to mine, momentarily. She opened the door of the pharmacy and I followed her in, and she quickly found the candy aisle. We looked at foreign names, unfamiliar wrappers, mixed in with Mars and Hershey and Snickers.
"Yeah but. . . you don't," Sara said. "You don't cause her any pain." I shook my head, swallowing, as Sara picked up a bag of gummy bears and a few other weird foreign products, and I followed her up and down the aisles until we found the one with the headache tablets, muscle relaxers, and so on. "Does Tegan have a headache?"
"Cramps," Sara said, locating the Advil and taking a package of blue gelatinous caplets from the shelf. She looked over at me and laughed. "So weird."
"What, talking to me about this while buying painkillers for Tegan's cramps? What's weird about that?" I joked, and Sara's eyebrows shot up before she laughed.
"I don't know. Nothing, I guess. Pretty normal. Maybe we could like, compare notes," Sara suggested, grinning.
"Oh wow."
"I mean, it's a pretty funny thing to have in common," Sara went on.
"Hilarious," I said, the wave of sadness lapping at my knees. It was converging on me, then, of all times and all places, at 1am in that pharmacy. We weren't drunk, and we had experienced something and learned something and we wouldn't be drunk like that again, I felt certain. And in the sober, fluorescent light, that night, it felt like a conclusion to me, and I felt something slip away. I saw Tegan laugh silently, with her head back, and I tried to hammer the dents out of my heart before it collapsed entirely. Sara looked at me then, at the wrong moment.
"Oh, Jamie, I'm sorry-"
"No, no," I started quickly, "I mean, it is funny," I tried to say, but just as the word funny crossed my lips, the tears spilled over, and it was too quick and I couldn't stop it in time and Sara's face, taken aback, her brows knit together. Her mouth dropped open a little.
"Oh, God, I'm such a jerk," she said and I shook my head dismissively, determined to get my shit together before it got worse but knowing that lines like that would make me lose it. I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes for a moment. "God, I mean, your heart must be like. . ."
"If you talk. . . like that. . . I will fucking cry right. . . here. . . in the pharmacy," I said, forcing myself to sound flip but my voice was shaking.
"You're already crying," Sara pointed out helpfully, with a sympathetic laugh.
"Helpful," I chided her, wiping my eyes with my sleeve.
"God, I'm sorry," Sara said.
"Can you. . . just. . . not say sweet things for a minute? I would like to not cry in front of you-"
"Too late," Sara said, her smile a mixture of cheek and sympathy that reminded me so much of Tegan that it made my nose start to run.
"Fuck, you're just like Tegan," I said, with a wet laugh. I sniffled. Sara laughed too.
"Good one," she said.
"Why aren't we in the tissue aisle?" I complained, as Sara pulled out some napkins from her pocket.
"From the bakery at breakfast," she said, handing them to me. I wiped my nose.
"God, I feel stupid," I said.
"Why?" Sara said with a frown. "You've had the most fucked up year ever, and you've cried, like, I don't know but I've seen it happen twice." I nodded. "Only twice? Well fucking kudos, dude," Sara laughed. The way I missed Tegan in that moment twisted my guts into a tight, aching knot. "Here, have a gummy bear." Sara tore the bag open and held it out for me. I took a few of them, sticky and tender, and chewed them as I got myself together. "I mean, really, you're like. . . you're pretty awesome. Come here," Sara said, surprising me, taking a step towards me with her arms open. I walked into the hug as she stood up a little on her toes to reach me and returned it, trying not to get snot on her shirt this time. "I'm sorry we've totally fucked up your life." There was laughter in her tone, but gravity behind it. I shook my head as she squeezed me, trying to remember what life had been like before they started fucking it up. I drew a blank.
"I'm okay," I said thickly. "Tegan fucked up my life the first time I saw her, so. . ."
"Oh man, shit. Seriously. You're so unlucky for meeting us."
"Haha, yeah. . . kind of," I said, only half-joking, and she gave me a sympathetic smile.
"Let's get this stuff back to Tegan. Gummy bears and Advil are the only way to fight the monster," Sara said. I smiled back at her, still blinking quickly.
"You bought gummy bears for Tegan," I said. I'd thought they were for her. A sudden surge of affection for her filled me up. "That's pretty fucking sweet." Sara blushed as she placed the stuff on the counter and handed some money to the cashier.
"Yeah, well," she muttered shyly.
"You're pretty sweet, aren't you?" I teased. She snorted.
"Yeah, I'm fucking delightful," she said ironically as we left the shop and started back.
"You are," I agreed.
"You sure you don't want to compare notes?" she asked comically.
"Haha, oh God. . ."
"Like, Tegan likes it when you put your fingers-"
"Holy Jesus," I said, my face burning.
"Does she top you?"
"Sara! I can't . . . I. . ."
"Yeah, she does, doesn't she?" Sara went on, using the present tense, as though it was something ongoing, something that could happen again, a given. I laughed, embarrassed, shaking my head.
"No? Aha! Femme in the streets, butch in the sheets?" she laughed, nudging me with her elbow.
"I'm. . . I'll. . . can you please. . . um? Ah. . ." I stuttered. Sara was completely getting the better of me and I hated it.
"I should have known. Tegan is such a fucking sap," she said, and I laughed, nodding in agreement. "You know. Look at you! You know. You've seen it. You know."
"God, I. . . she's. . ." I sighed, in spite of myself. I remembered the morning in Vancouver when she brushed a sticky strand of hair back from my forehead. You're sweet, she'd said. My throat started closing again. "Yeah," I finally said.
"Yeah," Sara agreed. For the rest of the way back, we talked about gummy bears, Advil, and not about Tegan.