It was early morning, well early for Katie, and she was lying on Chelsea's bed watching her roommate frantically rush around the room, throwing things into a large, purple suitcase.
"Have you seen my gray hat?"
"Um, last time I saw it was," Katie hesitated. "Actually I have absolutely no idea. You're the organized one who always tells me exactly where my misplaced things are remember."
Chelsea let out an exasperated sigh, before throwing a balled up pair of socks at the idle form on her bed.
"True. How are you going to survive Thanksgiving without my brain workin' for ya?"
"I guess I'll just have to stay right here all weekend," retorted Katie. "Maybe some of your leftover brilliance will absorb into my brain from your pillow."
Katie laughed at her own wit, but spared a few giggles for her dark-haired friend, who was now pacing back and forth in a clearly stressed out fashion. She pulled herself up off Chelsea's bed, threw the socks into the open suitcase, and stopped Chelsea's pacing with a gentle hand on her arm.
"Chels, relax. It's only one cab ride," Katie said in an attempt to calm her restlessness. "It'll be half an hour, tops."
"I know, but I don't know what to expect. We made the arrangements before...before he kissed me. He kissed me Katie. What did that mean?"
Katie smiled at Chelsea's remarkable success at working herself into a state.
"Chels, Tad likes you okay? He really likes you, and he wouldn't dare hurt you because he knows I would break his knee caps."
The quip earned Katie a small smile, which she considered a success, and she turned back to the bed.
"Aha," Katie exclaimed, as she noticed something gray and woolly in the spot she had recently vacated. "Found your hat. I wasn't laying on it, not at all."
Once Chelsea and Tad were safely on their way to Reagan National for their respective flights home, Katie contemplated the five days of freedom, and perhaps loneliness, that lay ahead. She briefly considered burying herself in bed and wasting away to a few seasons of Friends or a gross-out comedy or two, but decided getting out of the dorm and into the real world was a better option.
'That doesn't mean I can't bury myself in bed later.'
Stifling a yawn, thanks to what felt like a minute-by-minute recap of Chelsea's date with Tad lasting almost the whole night, Katie jumped on board the GUTS bus heading to Dupont. She was both looking forward to and dreading the five days she was about to spend alone on campus.
Both Tad and Chelsea had invited her to their homes once she decided not to go home to her own family, but she realized she had spent a vast majority of her time since breaking up with Jessie relying on one or the other for her emotional stability. It was time to take a shot at dealing with some serious alone time, even if she had to hang on to the end of that five-day tunnel for the moment.
As she stepped off the bus, Katie took a deep breath and surveyed her options. First stop, she determined would be Starbucks for a Grande Hot Chocolate and she made a mental note to make CVS the final stop before home as she was in desperate need of some shampoo and a stockpile of chocolate for the weekend.
As she sat in Starbucks looking out over the circle, Katie thought about being alone. For someone who always exuded a confidence that would make anyone think she would be comfortable in any situation, it was a little known fact that Katie actually didn't enjoy being alone. The silence of being alone had always unsettled her, and she wondered if it stemmed from how unsettled and disjointed she had felt in her own skin since her early teens.
She knew that, on occasion, she had complained about the people who had mindlessly followed her every move in high school but she always wondered if she hated it so much because it was when surrounded by a crowd that she never felt more alone. It was usually at this point in the thought process that Jessie would inevitably invade her mind. Thoughts of how, in Jessie's presence, Katie had never felt truly alone because she could never have felt alone in the presence of someone who could see inside her mind and her heart without even trying.
But today was not a day for thinking about Jessie, so Katie pushed the thoughts from her mind, grabbed her empty cup and tossed it in the trash on the way out the door. Pushing herself up the street and away from a place she didn't want to be, an emotional place rather than anywhere physical, she tried to clear her mind.
Striding away from Starbucks, Katie noticed a bookstore with a pride flag in the window. Reading the sign, Lambda Rising, she found it vaguely familiar and as she took a few tentative steps through the door, she realized it was a gay and lesbian bookshop.
Pride flags and posters adorned the walls, and a selection of rainbow stickers and key chains sat on the counter. As Katie ventured further into the shop, she saw a selection of magazines - some with titles she recognized, like The Advocate - and various shelves of books with signs like 'Lesbian fiction' and 'History'. Katie strolled through the shelves with purpose, putting her confident façade in place while secretly shaking in nervous skin.
Returning to the front of the store after completing a full lap, she stopped in front of the magazine stand and picked up the copy of the Advocate she spied earlier. She was busy reading about how UCLA researchers may have found 54 different genes that could be responsible for homosexuality and how lawmakers in Massachusetts were fighting about making gay marriage legal, when her peaceful afternoon was interrupted by a strangely familiar voice.
"Katie!"
'Oh god. Taylor.'
Katie dragged her eyes up and was met with an exuberant smile and a pair of green eyes that mirrored her own in color but not in excitement. She had always thought this meeting would possibly happen - DC is big, but not that big - but that didn't stop her from wishing it wouldn't.
"Wow, hey Taylor. What's up?"
"Not much. How are you?"
"I'm fine thanks," Katie responded politely, before looking back to her magazine and hoping the other girl would take her leave of the awkward situation.
"What are you doing now?"
'No such luck. I've never been lucky.'
It occurred to Katie that she shouldn't have been surprised that Taylor didn't pick up on her subtle hints, after all it had taken a good few weeks of unreturned text message s and phone calls to get the message through the first time around. In a way, Katie felt bad for her, but at this particular moment, she felt worse for herself.
"Not much, just getting off campus."
"Oh cool, so you're not going home for Thanksgiving?" Taylor replied.
Suddenly envisaging a weekend of activities that could suddenly be thrust on her unwittingly, Katie searched desperately for a plausible lie.
"No, not going back to Chicago," she began, and noticing the smile start to creep across the other girl's face, she quickly continued. "My family is flying in this afternoon and we're, uh, driving out to Maryland to see my aunt and uncle."
"Oh, I didn't realize you had family close by," Taylor commented, unable to completely hide her disappointment. "Well I'm not going home for the holidays either. Couldn't face the family you know, so I told them I had to work."
Katie nodded and her mind wandered briefly to her own family and their real plans for the holiday weekend. Her brothers were at their respective girlfriends' houses, and her parents had all but told Katie not to come home because they weren't going to "do Thanksgiving" this year.
"Well I'm sorry to hear it Tay, that sucks for you."
"Thanks Katie, so do you, um, want to grab a coffee? Or, uh, hot chocolate I suppose is more appropriate."
Katie paused and her eyes flashed up to meet Taylor's as she contemplated how to decline the invitation without hurting feelings that had already been bruised. Before she could speak, however, Taylor jumped in.
"It's okay if you can't, I'm sure you've gotta get home and get ready for your family. I just thought it would be cool to catch up, you know. How's things with you and Jessie?" she finished with an artificial lightness that she hoped would seem sincere to Katie.
Taylor wasn't an idiot, despite what anyone may have thought of her poor handling of the demise of her and Katie's brief, very brief, relationship.
'Not that you could call it a relationship. More like quasi-relationship. Or fling? Just barely.'
She knew Katie's heart belonged solely to Jessie, and despite still being overwhelmingly attracted to the tall, green-eyed beauty in front of her, Taylor simply wanted a friend because if she was honest, she didn't have too many of them.
"Actually, I do have to get back to campus," Katie spoke, interrupting Taylor's train of thought. "But maybe some other time?"
"Sure sure," Taylor replied quickly. "Give me a call sometime. Happy Thanksgiving Katie."
"You too Tay," Katie said softly as she watched her retreat back out to the street.
Katie took a few moments to run over the conversation with her...well, Katie didn't even know if there was a name for what Taylor was to her. They had only gone out on three or four dates and she would have liked to have stayed friends, but it hadn't worked out. She wondered if that might just be possible now.
Taking a deep breath, Katie put the magazine back on the shelf and headed towards CVS and then the bus stop. As the bus bounced along the dilapidated Georgetown streets on its way back to campus, Katie thought about her run-in with Taylor and the last time they had had contact.
After two weeks of not sleeping, not eating and crying, not to mention phone calls to Jessie every day begging her to come back and try to fix things, Katie realized she wasn't going to change her mind. Unfortunately for her, where most people might have taken that realization as a sign to try moving on with their life, Katie's pain was still speaking louder than reason when she suggested they have an open relationship.
At the time, Katie had thought it was the perfect solution, because it meant she didn't have to lose Jessie. So she ignored the smoldering flames of anguish in her stomach whenever she thought about Jessie and Rachel, and concentrated on her and Jessie. It wasn't an ideal situation, but Katie could sleep and breathe a little easier when she could speak to Jessie each day, speak the way they used to before everything fell apart.
When it came time for her college career to commence a few weeks later, Katie's parents sent her brother to help move her into the dorm, as they were too busy. Or was that just disinterested? She was lucky to have her brother though, because he understood that she wasn't looking to talk much, and they managed to pass most of the 12-hour drive listening to music.
Once she was settled into her dorm and made polite, but very limited, conversation with her new roommate's family, Tad dragged Katie along to the GU Pride's Freshman Welcome. It was the last thing Katie had wanted to do, but Tad had spend the last month watching Katie slowly transition from the indubitably vibrant best friend he had always known to the one that stood before him now, with dark circles under her eyes and a defeated, broken frame. If it was possible, she looked like she'd even lost ten pounds from her already thin body.
It was at the Pride welcome that Katie had met Taylor. Katie was immediately attracted to her, and despite the nerves, they hit it off quite well. They met up three times that week, but Taylor's shyness and Katie's apprehension had kept anything from happening. That is, until a GU Pride party that weekend when everyone locked them in a bedroom with the specific instruction not to come out until something happened. It took almost five hours until, at almost 3:30am, they finally, awkwardly, sweetly shared their first kiss.
What Katie hadn't anticipated was the conversation that would take place the next day, when Jessie called to find out how the party had gone. Despite any logical thought processes that reminded Jessie of her part in causing this situation to arise, she couldn't help the feeling of her heart breaking for a second time when Katie told her about the kiss she shared with another girl.
Katie hated doing it to Jessie, telling her about it when it clearly upset her, but it was the rule they had made when they agreed to an open relationship - don't ask, don't tell, but if someone asks, the other has to be honest.
It was after their date that night that Katie decided to end things with Taylor because, at the end of the day, she knew her heart would always belong to the girl who had stolen it away in an attic filled with love and the sounds of Billie Holliday.