Megan unlocked her phone.
“We are so pathetic,” she said.
“You’re right,” Vanessa agreed. “We should get dressed and go to the store ourselves.”
They both looked at each other again and after a second simultaneously said, “I don’t want to put on a bra.”
Postmates arrived less than an hour later.
After The Undiscovered Country they both agreed to skip The Final Frontier because each of them deemed it terrible. Besides, by then they were both in the mood for zombies.
They started with Romero’s classic, Night of the Living Dead, moved onto the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead—both of them admitting to having a crush on Sarah Polley—and then watched three really cheesy and bad zombie movies on Netflix, which were nonetheless enjoyable because they laughed so hard at how awful they were. DoorDash interrupted a quality zombie movie, 28 Days Later, delivering their dinner.
They finished the night with World War Z.
Vanessa noticed Megan’s eyes getting droopy right around when Gerry Lane and Segen survived the plane crash in the movie. Vanessa was getting sleepy also. It was just after ten o’clock and she had to get up early tomorrow to open La Vida Mocha at 7 a.m. And she knew that Megan started her workday early also and was usually in bed by ten on weeknights.
“Come on, sleepyhead,” she urged Megan, turning off the TV.
In the bedroom, Vanessa was struck by how easily they both went about their individual routines for getting ready for bed, without getting in one another’s way. As she brushed her teeth, Megan was next to her at the bathroom’s counter applying night cream to her neck, each of them sharing the counterspace without problem. When Vanessa finished brushing, Megan wordlessly handed over Vanessa’s hairbrush because Vanessa always brushed her hair right after brushing her teeth. Similarly, while Megan was changing into her pajama set, Vanessa plugged Megan’s iPad into the charger without being asked to.
It was as if they had been doing it for years.
In bed, with the lights off, Megan fit herself into a comfortable embrace with Vanessa and was asleep instantly. Just as Vanessa was about to fall asleep herself, she realized that her and Megan had spent the entire day together without once having sex. And it had been one of the best Sundays of her life.
Chapter 28
On Thursday, Megan was on the I-5, heading south to La Jolla to meet her family for her birthday lunch. She was dressed in gray boot-cut slacks and high heels and a dark green sleeveless cowl-neck blouse.
Twenty-seven.
As she did every year on this day, she mentally took stock of her life and decided, again, that she was doing okay. She had a dynamic career with a great salary and was about to be promoted to become one of the officers of a top software company; a fabulous condo that she owned and which was a five-minute drive from the beach; wonderful friends, and was now enjoying a summertime fling with an unbelievably gorgeous woman.
Megan smiled at the thought of Vanessa, and then smiled even wider as she remembered waking up with Vanessa today and how Vanessa had then given her a birthday orgasm with her lips and tongue, and then another birthday orgasm with her fingers, all before leaving to go open La Vida Mocha. Vanessa had jokingly suggested that she would try to make Megan come twenty-seven times today in honor of Megan’s new age. For her part, Megan didn’t doubt that if it was even possible for a woman to climax that many times in a single day, Vanessa would be the one who could make it happen.
So, at twenty-seven, Megan felt pretty satisfied at how things were going for her.
After a moment, her smile faded, to be replaced by a frown. She started nibbling her bottom lip.
Still, though…
At twenty-seven, she was still in the closet.
Every lesbian Megan was friends with was out and proud; some of them, like Vanessa, since they were in college, or even earlier. Hell, she knew women her age—sometimes even younger!—who were married to other women! Yet, here she was, one year closer to thirty and she still hadn’t come out to her family. How long was it going to take? And more importantly, what was she waiting for?
Her parents were never going to become open-minded enough to stop looking at the entire LGBTQ community as a bunch of sinful, misguided and confused individuals who just needed to find a closer relationship with Jesus. This was especially true now that Megan’s father had just been made deacon at their church and Megan’s mother was contemplating a run for the La Jolla city council. It was a shame, Megan thought. A shame that her folks could be trapped in such backwards thinking. How oppressive it must be, she considered, to live a life believing that just because people were different, that they were somehow defective.
There might be a chance with Molly, Megan had often thought. The key word being might. The truth was, however, that Megan truly did not know how Molly would react to discovering Megan was a lesbian.
Which brought up the crux of the matter, really, Megan considered as she bore right to stay on the I-5 past where it joined up with the 805.
Was Megan willing to risk losing her family in order to be out and proud like her friends?
Megan loved her family, but she had also known for a long time now that she wasn’t particularly close to them. Ever since high school she had realized that her and her parents had ideological differences on topics ranging from religion to science to politics to diversity. Megan had chosen to go to college all the way in New York City in part to put distance between herself and them, and even when she returned to California, she made sure not to settle in La Jolla. She only saw her mother once a month for their lunches and if Megan was honest with herself, she only put up with those lunches out of some sense of obligation rather than a desire to spend time with Audrey. And she saw her father even less; usually only on major holidays.
What all this was adding up to, Megan realized now, was the conclusion that it was downright stupid of her to not be out to her family. Sure, she hoped they’d accept her, even if that acceptance was given grudgingly; but if they didn’t accept her being a lesbian then that was their loss, not hers. She had a responsibility to herself to live her best life, not a disguised life.
She suddenly thought of Cindy, but not in the way she had been thinking of her over the past several months since their break-up. Now, Megan felt an almost overwhelming surge of gratitude and…guilt. For two years, Cindy had patiently and without complaint allowed Megan to keep Cindy hidden from her family, even when it meant missing out on important things like holiday dinners and birthday celebrations. Throughout their two years together, Megan had often left Cindy at home while she drove to La Jolla to her parents’ house, or met them somewhere nice for a meal—very often at places Megan knew Cindy would enjoy. And during their two years together, Megan made sure to never bring her parents over to her condo once Cindy had moved in.