Author's Note: I know you all have been begging for another chapter, so hopefully this doesn't disappoint! I'd love to hear your thoughts, as always. ;) Three thoughts for now: 1) Are any of you male? I always kind of wonder! 2) I loved your comments about alone time… hahaha… keep them up! ;) And 3) I always want to answer your comments, and it's a bummer when they're anonymous and I can't! Make a random screenname to comment with so I can answer you! #selfishwishoftheday And off we go…
Chapter 14: It's a Crying Shame Not to Spend the Night
"This is so good," Jamie said, clicking on the next file. Tegan sat next to her, a bowl of mixed nuts in front of her.
"Mmhmm," she said, crunching on some cashews and almonds. "You're so good. It's good footage. Shit, though, why didn't anyone tell me I was singing out of tune? Fuck." Tegan said with a wince.
"Ah, you always make up for it, though," Jamie said, laughing and raising her eyebrows mischievously as she looked at Tegan.
"But, fuck. What's my job again? I forget. Messing up songs and telling long rambling stories about nothing or playing music?" Tegan asked, shaking her head at herself.
"Haha, both," Jamie laughed.
"- I either sing it terribly out of tune and forget the whole thing or it's so fucking great a few people might die," came Tegan's voice from the computer monitor, and Jamie snorted. She looked at Tegan, who shook her head again.
"God. I'm sooooo funny and charming," she said sarcastically.
"And somehow I liked you anyway," Jamie replied thoughtfully, as Tegan made a face of mock offence and threw a peanut at her.
"-my favourite person in the world," Sara was saying onscreen. "Dallas, from City and Colour. . ." They watched, and Jamie couldn't help but smile as Sara got the crowd to say holla! to Dallas Green, and then made a face of disgust and declared that she hated herself for doing it. The banter went on between the two of them, and Jamie chuckled.
"God, you guys are funny. Man," she mused, taking a few nuts from the bowl. "I just don't even know where you come up with this shit sometimes."
"-we basically willed it; we like, manifested. . . death," Sara said, and a moment later she was ordering Tegan to take off her guitar and hug her. Tegan made jokes about wearing tube tops and having back-up dancers on stage and Sara still insisted; Tegan handed her guitar to Shaun, fixed her shirt, smoothed her hair, tested her breath against her hand, nodded, and walked into Sara's open arms, to a wave of exuberant cheers and hundreds of bursts of camera flashes from the crowd. Sara patted Tegan's back and shoulders tentatively, and then Tegan buried her face in Sara's chest and clamped onto her as Sara struggled to get away, finally pushing Tegan's forehead off of her affectionately. The cheers were nearly hysterical.
"Man, the crowd loves it when you guys hug each other," Jamie said, and Tegan nodded. There was an awkward moment where Jamie regretted the comment, in light of everything, and then Tegan laughed.
"Yeah. Do you think they'd like it more if we like, made out on stage?"
"Maybe!" Jamie said with a laugh. Tegan laughed, too, her silent laugh with her head thrown back.
"God! Can you imagine? Ha. . ." she said. "That's not even funny."
"Well, it is and it isn't," Jamie suggested as they clicked on the next clip. There was a pause where they both thought, pondered.
"Well, you know. . ." Jamie started slowly. "There's like. . . um. . . a whole subculture of fans who, like, already think. . . already have all these theories about you guys, um, being together." Tegan looked at her in disbelief.
"Are you joking?" she asked. Jamie shook her head with a wry grin.
"Nope. They call it 'quincest'. . ."
"Ha!" Tegan laughed sarcastically. "Fuck, that's just too easy. . . jesus. . ." she said, rolling her eyes and shaking her head. "But come on, seriously, what kind of fucked up fans would. . . uh. . ." she started, and then stopped, awkwardly, embarrassed. "Right." Tegan picked through the bowl of nuts, picking out only the almonds, avoiding Jamie's eyes. She hesitated for a few moments. "I still wonder, I mean. . . it's okay but like, it amazes me that you aren't. . . disgusted," Tegan said awkwardly, not looking at Jamie. Jamie looked at her, struggled a little with her own embarrassment, but then decided it was more important to say it.
"You know, honestly it was, uh. . . seeing it. . . I mean, seeing you two, together. . . it was. . . kind of. . .um. . . hot," she said, blushing furiously. They both kept their eyes on the computer screen for a moment, a welcome focal point. "And, really, not just kind of. . ."
"Seriously?" Tegan asked doubtfully, shaking her head, embarrassed. "God, I still can't believe you saw that. . ." She winced and took a deep breath, eyes dropping to the floor.
"Yeah and I know that's. . . weird. . . but it's. . . I mean, it was a complicated feeling, but it was definitely. . . hot." Tegan listened, biting her lower lip, her brow knotted. The flush of shame returned to her features as she anxiously rolled an almond between her fingers.
"But like. . . you have a sister, right?" she asked slowly, cautiously.
"Yes," Jamie replied.
"So would you-"
"No," Jamie said, too quickly. "I mean, we're not. . . it's not the same thing, like. . ."
"Well then. . ." Tegan said, still staring at the floor, afraid to finish her own sentence.
"I don't know. You guys are just. . . different," she said, somewhat at a loss. Tegan looked at her hesitantly, gave a little nod, and looked back at the floor. Jamie absently stroked Tegan's thigh reassuringly, her fingers sliding under the fabric of Tegan's shorts.
"Wow, look at that," Tegan mused, looking down at Jamie's hand. Jamie looked too, at where her hand had pushed the leg of Tegan's shorts high enough up her thigh to reveal several fresh bruises.
"Oh my God, I'm so sorry. . ." Jamie said, alarmed, gently lifting the other leg of Tegan's shorts to reveal similar discolouration on the inner part of her other thigh. "I'm really sorry. Oh my God. . . Did I. . . do any other damage?" Jamie asked, wincing slightly, meeting Tegan's eyes again.
"Nothing I didn't ask for," Tegan said with a grin, and kissed her quickly. Jamie kissed her back, her hand tracing cautiously over the purple marks on Tegan's leg. "Oh no, I wonder if I. . ." Tegan asked suddenly, turning Jamie in her chair and lifting the back of her shirt up to her shoulder blades. "Wow, holy shit!" Tegan exclaimed. "Haha, oh man. You've got finger marks, like. . ." Tegan's fingers gingerly touched the marks on Jamie's back. "Oops, scratches. . ." she said sheepishly, "sorry. . . ". Jamie laughed. "Does it hurt?"
"No, I didn't even-"
There was a rattling at the door, a clunking, shuffling song of someone coming in, dragging bags, bashing into the door jam, dropping things onto the hardwood.
"Hey, I hope you're not naked because I'm coming in. . ." Sara said, and Jamie and Tegan turned to her with a start, staring at her, as Jamie yanked her hand off of Tegan's leg and quickly pulled her shirt back down. Sara dropped her bag on the floor. "Whew, yuck, I thought I was going to get my organs stolen on the bus. Seriously, Tegan, could you have picked a sketchier area to live in? Like, I know we're not rich but it's like, it's kind of like you wanted to live in the worst possible neighbourhood, like you thought maybe you wouldn't get Jehovah's Witnesses knocking at your door because they'd be afraid of getting eaten," Sara rambled, going into the washroom, washing her hands and her face and coming out again, as Tegan and Jamie watched, frozen. "Hey Jamie," she said with a smile, going into the kitchen and taking a bottle of Orangina out of the fridge. "Shit, Tegan, do you ever buy food?"
"Um. . . no," Tegan said, looking at the bowl of nuts in her hands. Sara grabbed her bag and headed to Tegan's room.
"I'll just leave my stuff in here so that-" she stopped. Tegan and Jamie watched her from their positions in front of the computer, still glued to the spot, speechless. Sara stared into the bedroom, the bed with its twisted sheets, clothes all over the floor that definitely didn't belong to Tegan. A feeling of dread washing over her, Jamie frantically tried to remember where the strap-on had ended up. "Oh," Sara said. She half turned, turned back, half turned again, met Tegan's eyes. There was a moment, Jamie's heart in her throat, where she thought something would break, and she suppressed the overwhelming urge to dart under the table, to hide, half-expecting Sara to lash out at her as she'd seen her lash out at Tegan in the hotel room, resulting in Tegan's two black eyes. Sara's eyes on Tegan's, hurt, and then, blank. "Okay, um. . ." Sara said casually, walking back out and carrying her bag around the corner to the spare bedroom. Tegan looked at Jamie anxiously, and Jamie bit her bottom lip, eyes wide, terror still heavy in her chest, wishing Tegan would tell her what to do. But Tegan sat, tensely frozen, eyes on the guest room door. Sara was still inside. There was no sound, no movement, nothing, and Jamie could almost see the thoughts reeling through Tegan's mind like cards through a Rolodex.
A moment more of silence and Sara emerged with a tight smile and came in, sat heavily on the sofa. Jamie couldn't move.
"So," Sara said brightly. "Getting a lot of, um, editing done?" Tegan looked at her, dumbfounded.
"Yeah, we're getting there," Tegan said.
"Good!" Sara said. "Jamie, are you liking Vancouver?" A polite smile, eyebrows raised expectantly.
"Yeah, I haven't really seen much. . ." she started hesitantly, and Sara listened, earnestly. "Um, we've been editing. . ." Jamie could feel her face heat up.
"Good," Sara said lightly. "That's what you came for. Well," she went on, all normalcy, all calmness. "I wasn't in the mood for rubber chicken so I didn't eat on the plane. Are you guys hungry?" Tegan looked down again at the bowl of nuts.
"Yeah," she said, and Jamie thought that she'd never seen them interact so awkwardly before. Even when they fought, there was nothing like this hesitation, this uncertainty. Usually, all of their fighting seemed to involve just the two of them, in their own private world. . . but here she was, right in the middle of it.
"Okay then!" Sara said. "There's the shawarma place around the corner, some good sushi a few blocks down. . ." Jamie shuddered. "Okay," Sara laughed. "Oh, that Mexican place on Abbott is good. . ."
"Let's have Mexican," Tegan said, and Jamie felt the anxiety in her voice, like a vibration you couldn't hear, but could feel in your guts. If you have any left, Jamie thought.
The Mexican place was small and busy and the food was good, but not as good as in Texas or California, Jamie thought. She winced and shuddered again when Tegan poured hot sauce all over her enchiladas. Sara ordered a Mexican beer with lime in it; Tegan had something mango-y with no alcohol in solidarity with Jamie; when Sara's face was buried in the drinks menu, Tegan gave Jamie a wink, but fidgeted with the paper sleeve from her straw, folding it over and over into an accordion shape.
"Well, cheers," Sara said, raising her bottle. Tegan and Jamie clinked their fruity glasses against Sara's Corona and they all drank.
"You were great in that video. . . with The Reason?" Jamie said when it seemed like they were not going to speak. She thought it might almost be preferable if they were fighting, rather than this polite silence. Tegan's hands were constantly moving and Jamie wanted to put her hand on Tegan's, say something comforting, but she couldn't. She didn't know what she could do, really. Sara knew she'd been sleeping in Tegan's bed; Sara didn't know that Jamie knew about their situation. . . which was probably why she was acting so polite; if Jamie didn't know about the situation, Sara would have no ostensible reason for being angry. Jamie recalled the fight in the Safeway parking lot, and Sara's assertion that sleeping with Casey had nothing to do with Tegan, that they were two things unrelated. Would she think the same thing about this, now? The butterflies in Jamie's stomach couldn't decide.
"Oh, you saw that?" Sara asked, surprised. Tegan made a face.
"Of course we saw it," she said, her tone incredulous, and Sara met her eyes, unwavering for several seconds before faltering and looking down to her beer label.
They ate, the silence only broken when Sara looked up to ask polite, meaningless questions, the kind of questions one would ask someone at a bus stop or in a dentist's waiting room, the way you talk to someone when you don't know them, and not the way you talk to someone when you share everything with them: share their DNA, share their face, share a soul. Once again, Jamie felt like an intruder, but then Tegan put a hand on her knee and squeezed, and she held her breath. Sara didn't notice or pretended not to.
They walked the three blocks back to the apartment, stopping along the way at the government liquor store where Sara bought a few huge bottles of Japanese beer. At the apartment, Sara asked if she could watch TV, like a guest. She offered to share her beer with Tegan and Jamie, who passed, and they all sat and watched TV: the local news, a glossy American crime drama, an insipid sitcom with a stupid laugh track. Nobody spoke; nobody laughed. Jamie sat on the long, leather sofa between the two of them, her thoughts tumbling over each other like children rolling down a hill. What will happen when it's time to go to bed? she wondered. Obviously I won't be going to bed with Tegan and sending Sara off to the guest room. . . Are they going to fight? They aren't speaking. Are they going to touch each other? They haven't touched each other at all. They must want to. Tegan is so edgy. . .
Tegan sat on Jamie's left, biting her nails. Jamie took hold of her hand, and gently lowered it. Tegan wordlessly submitted to it as she always did. When Jamie returned her eyes to the TV, she could see Sara, in her periphery, looking over at Tegan momentarily, and then back to the TV. The only thing she thought she could do that might enable something to happen was to leave them alone. After a moment of thinking over where to go, she realized she needed to go to Tegan's room, where they all knew she'd been sleeping, where her clothes were scattered far and wide. And Sara's bags were in the guest room. If she went first and closed the door, they would decide on their own what should happen.
"Uh, I think I'll go to bed," she said, stretching. "Okay? Goodnight guys."
"Goodnight," Tegan said, nervously.
"Night, Jamie," Sara said, and she went to Tegan's room and closed the door.
Jamie didn't wake up when Tegan came to bed, and Tegan didn't wake her. She half-awoke on her own before sunrise and saw Tegan sitting in the window seat, looking down into the street below. Tegan's still, pensive silhouette was printed on her retinas when she closed her eyes again.
The next day, Jamie went along to film an appearance they made with just the two of them at a local radio station. They were funny and charming as always and she didn't think anyone would be able to notice the change in the energy between them. They played five songs, told some amusing anecdotes, and afterwards signed some posters and CDs and took pictures with fans. Jamie recorded it all, recalling countless times when she'd been the one waiting in line in the cold to be admitted to such an event. It was good to have a job to do and to not be at the apartment, waiting for them to fight, waiting for Sara to stop pretending to be fine, waiting for Tegan to cry. She watched them maneuver around each other in an awkward dance of avoidance. Sara was coolly polite; Tegan's cracks were showing.
. . . . . . .
"I think it will be better once you add the lemon," Sara observed, leaning around Jamie to see. Jamie continued mashing the avocados, a displeased expression on her face.
"I hope so. I just think they're not ripe enough," she said, pausing to look at the lumpy green mess. "There are lots of hard bits in them."
"Yeah, it's so hard to tell if they're ripe before you cut them open." Sara placed the lemon down on the counter next to Jamie. "Um. . . salt, cilantro, and. . . " she continued, her head in the fridge. Tegan had run down to Whole Foods to get some tortilla chips, leaving Jamie and Sara alone. Jamie half-expected Sara to bring something up with her, but Sara was maintaining the polite distance of the last couple of days. Tegan continued sleeping in the same bed with Jamie, but things were not the same. The nakedness had obviously stopped. Tegan was tense and strained, anxious. Jamie couldn't help but wonder if Tegan was lying in bed with her and wanting to be in bed with Sara. She wanted to talk to Tegan about what was happening, but she didn't know how or where to start. It was such a bewildering situation; Sara and Tegan didn't even so much as brush against each other. They hardly spoke. Jamie feared what kind of destruction would ensue if the dam finally broke. Would she be intervening again, pulling them off of each other while they made each other bleed? Would blunt objects be involved this time? Did they have 911 in Canada? This time though, it would be her fault. Part of her wanted to say something to Sara, to acknowledge this situation, but she couldn't bring herself to do it.
"So," Sara said after a while, watching Jamie mix in the lemon juice. "Back on the bus in a few days. . . looking forward to it?"
"Yeah," Jamie said. "I mean. . . I love seeing you guys play and recording the shows, so. . ."
"Sleeping on the bus, though. Kind of a drag," Sara suggested, and Jamie smiled nervously, continued mixing.
"I guess I haven't been doing it long enough for it to be a drag for me, yet."
"You aren't sick of us yet?" Sara asked, seemingly guileless, taking a bit of the almost-ready guacamole with her finger.
"Nah," Jamie said. She met Sara's eyes and gave her what she hoped was a reassuring smile. She was suddenly struck with the desire to hug Sara. And, maybe, to apologize to her. "I love being around you guys, and the boys."
"Even when we're punching each other?" Sara asked ironically.
"Ha, well, it is definitely better when you're not punching each other. But the punching was just once. That's not so bad, considering. . ." she trailed off, not knowing how to finish the sentence, afraid she'd already said too much. She mixed the guacamole in earnest, her face heating, Sara's eyes on her in the periphery.
"Yeah, considering. . ." Sara started when Tegan came in with two bags from Whole Foods, her hair wet.
"Raincouver," Sara said. "Rainy and boring."
"It's not boring," Tegan said, opening the fridge and emptying the contents of the bags into it.
"Jamie, don't you think Vancouver is boring?" Sara asked innocently. In a flash, scenes from the last two weeks flitted through Jamie's mind, and prominent among them was the image of Tegan's naked body rocking against hers, her hair falling in her eyes.
"Uh, well-"
"Yeah," Tegan started with more of her forced-cheerful tone. "Vancouver was so boring for Sara that she had to run off to Montreal by herself." Tegan opened the bag of corn chips, poured some into a big plastic bowl. "Right Sara? Nothing to keep you here in this boring town. . ." Tegan carried the plastic bowl to the coffee table and Sara sat there with a tense, forced smile. Her eyes flicked up to Jamie's and then away.
"Sometimes, we just do what we have to do to stay sane," Sara said flatly to the room. Jamie ground some fresh pepper into the guacamole and waited for Tegan to say something.
"True. How's that working out for you, then?" she asked. Sara spoke over her shoulder.
"Great. Thanks for asking."
"Well good for you," Tegan said.
They sat together and watched a movie on TV, which was fine because that took away the pressure to talk, and all the weirdness associated with not talking about the elephant in the room. Jamie sat between them again, like a buffer. Late in the film, when Tegan fell asleep and her head dropped onto Jamie's shoulder, Jamie could see Sara's eyes on them, and then back to the screen, and she felt a pang of guilt and a pang of sadness for Sara. A while later, when Sara too had closed her eyes and Tegan had shifted and lay with her head on the arm of the chair, Jamie got up quietly and went to the bedroom, but felt too anxious to sleep. She changed into an old t-shirt and a pair of shorts and flipped her laptop open. Three hundred and seventy eight unanswered emails. She sighed, scrolling through all the tirades from her mother, clicking on a few newsy, friendly emails from friends. She didn't know where to start to answer the messages from fellow fans, those who had traveled around and had gone to shows with her and were now desperate for information, for details, and some of them were outright resentful that she was not forthcoming. It made her tired, just looking at her inbox. She put her computer aside and turned out the light.