Chapter Text
On Boxing Day, after an entire 36 hours of her parents tripping over themselves re: the (extremely dramatic and externally fraught) revelation of Harper-and-Abby, and also re: the (less dramatic and internally fraught) revelation of not-Sloane-and-Eric, Sloane escapes. She mutters something about picking up her dry cleaning in town and, for lack of a better term, she flees. Eric, who Sloane presumes is still feeling guilty about his closet indiscretion, has the kids for the whole day, and Harper and Abby—and, to a certain extent, Jane—are still treating her with slightly chilly judgment and offense disguised as sisterhood, so Sloane feels like her absence at best won’t be noticed, and at worst might be welcomed.
It’s not a great feeling, the lodestone that’s sitting in the bottom of her core. Sloane knows, is the thing. To possibly the disbelief of everyone else, she does have gay friends; she knows she was wrong, can still feel the knee-jerk flare of revulsion she felt on Christmas Eve as the words left her lips. She thinks back on the night and tastes bile, but she also remembers the slick pulse of satisfaction and triumph she felt at seeing the fear in Harper’s face, at finally having the upper hand again, something to hold over her, that feeling of power.
Anyway. She spends the afternoon in town trying to distract herself, which sort of works. She buys new gloves from the overpriced boutique across from the liquor store, which makes her feel better for about half an hour; when the satisfaction fades, she finds herself in a sunglasses store, and then a jewelry store. By the time it’s dark she’s amassed a small but expensive array of purchases, but when she loads them into the trunk of her car and slams it shut it’s like she never bought them at all: the dread returns, heavy and dense in her stomach. She thinks about getting behind the wheel and driving back to her parents’ house, to face everyone’s judgment and sympathy and discomfort and surprise once again, and she physically cannot make herself do it.
Across the street, voices and laughter and warm light spill out from La Vara, the town’s only decent wine-bar-slash-restaurant. Sloane checks her watch: it’s six o’clock, the precise time when happy hour and early dinner bleed together, which means that a tapas bar will be bursting at the seams, especially given the holidays.
She crosses the street anyway.
The hostess (who Sloane vaguely remembers from high school, a freshman on the lacrosse team when Sloane was a senior and team captain) does a double-take when she sees Sloane, and mutters something about reservations.
“The bar is fine,” Sloane says, seeing one empty seat at the far end.
“Uh, sure, okay,” the hostess stammers, which is honestly embarrassing for a thirty-three year old woman. Sloane hangs her coat on one of the pegs on the wall and slides in between a couple clearly on a date and a dark-haired woman scrolling on her phone.
“Thank you,” she says to the harried bartender when he deposits a menu and glass of water in front of her. Her voice makes the woman on her left look up.
This fucking town, Sloane swears to god.
“Hello Riley,” she says, making sure to keep her expression neutral, because Grandma Caldwell had always said that when everything else is stripped away you still have your manners.
“Hello Sloane,” Riley says evenly. She has a half-drunk glass of red wine in front of her. “Good to see you again.” Riley obviously has a similar grandmother.
Sloane inclines her head and looks around desperately for the bartender, because the other option is running away. Which, to be clear, she has been doing all day, but she still has some vestige of pride left and she refuses to outright and so obviously run away from Riley Bennett.
The bartender is down at the other end of the bar, so Sloane stares at her menu instead. After a moment, out of the corner of her eye, she sees Riley look back to her phone. It’s fine. She and Riley are adults and acquaintances: they can sit next to one another at a bar and leave the other alone to deal with her own shit. Sloane breathes in silently, through her nose and then out her mouth the way her yoga instructor used to tell her to, back when Sloane did yoga.
“Can I have a glass of Rueda, please,” she says to the bartender when he finally appears, keeping her voice tightly controlled. Her phone buzzes, thank god, and she fishes it out of her pocket immediately, angling the screen away from Riley’s direction just subtly, just enough. Of course, Riley isn’t paying attention to her anyway.
Jane Caldwell, 6:13pm
Mom wants to know if you’ll be home for dinner
Sloane hesitates, but at the end of the day, spending a few hours awkwardly sitting next to and ignoring a woman she sees once a year unquestionably wins out over yet another tense, fraught, we’re-going-to-pretend-this-isn’t-awkward dinner with her family (plus Abby and John).
Tell her I ran into a friend in town, you should eat without me
She flicks her eyes back over to Riley as she types it out, just to make sure Riley isn’t somehow reading her screen (Sloane feels paranoid) and wondering why Sloane is calling her a friend.
Riley, naturally, is completely ignoring her. Sloane takes the opportunity to catalogue what she can, because she can’t help herself: nice haircut, drapey blouse that Sloane thinks might be silk (she’d need to get closer to verify) under a subtle charcoal herringbone blazer, several layered gold necklaces but no earrings, Longines watch that’s probably vintage, iPhone X that’s flipping between a group chat thread and a news article and back again. Minimal makeup, not that it’s needed (strong brows that she clearly maintains, plus the genetic blessings of thick eyelashes and beautiful skin), no nail polish, clean-looking doctor hands with one flat gold band on the middle right finger that catches the candlelight and glints at Sloane like a beacon.
“Okay, here’s the Rueda,” says the bartender, placing the glass of white wine in front of Sloane, “and here are the bravas for you,” depositing a truly enormous pile of potatoes in front of Riley. “Sorry for the delay,” he says, and disappears again.
“Wow,” Riley says, after a beat. She scoots the plate of potatoes a couple inches to the right so it’s in between her and Sloane; Sloane realizes abruptly that she is ravenous. “Help yourself, there’s no way I can eat all this.”
“Thank you,” Sloane says, falling back onto politeness again.
“You’re welcome,” says Riley.
Sloane takes a potato and it’s a mistake, because now they’re sharing a meal and she can’t just ignore Riley for two hours in silence if she’s also eating her food.
“So how long are you in town for?” she asks abruptly, wiping her fingers on her napkin and picking up her wine glass. Riley looks up from her phone, startled.
“I leave tomorrow,” she says eventually.
“Back to work?” Sloane takes another potato.
“Yes,” Riley says, eyeing her with something that looks a lot like suspicion. “Well, work’s the excuse. The truth is that five days is about the maximum amount of time I can stay with my parents and not kill them.” Riley shrugs and sips her wine. “Smaller doses of family time is better for everyone, I’ve found.”
“Indeed,” Sloane says, and despite her best efforts something must seep into her voice, because Riley raises an eyebrow.
“What about you?”
“We’re here through the new year,” Sloane says, hating that her default is still to say we even though there hasn’t been a we for her in a long time. “The kids are on winter break, and my parents love to see them as much as they can.”
“Right, the kids,” Riley says, with the tone of voice of the childless, as if she’s just now reminded of the existence of other people’s children. “I thought their song was really cute at the White Elephant party, by the way.”
“Thank you,” Sloane says, trying not to flinch at the mention of the party.
Riley clearly sees it, and makes an awkward face. “Sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean to bring it up.”
“I can’t imagine why you’re apologizing.” Sloane is proud that her voice comes out perfectly even. “It’s not as if you behaved badly.”
Riley twists her lips but says nothing, just motions to the bartender for another glass of wine. Sloane’s phone vibrates again; it’s a push notification from Instagram, but she swipes it open immediately.
Riley returns to her own phone after a few beats. Sloane eats another potato and drinks her wine quicker than she should.
“I’ve been avoiding my parents’ house all day,” Riley volunteers after several minutes of silence, taking a potato and dipping it into the aioli before eating it neatly. Sloane watches the quick, elegant movements of her fingers, the polite and precise way she closes her lips, chews, swallows.
“Oh? Why?”
Riley shrugs. “Just needed a break. There’s a lot of… emotional energy floating around, with the holidays. Unrealistic family expectations, uncomfortable dynamics. I’m sure you’re familiar.” She’s not looking directly at Sloane, but instead at some indiscernible point over Sloane’s right shoulder. It makes Sloane bristle, for whatever reason.
“Are you trying to imply something?” she asks, cool.
Riley rolls her eyes. “Jesus, Sloane, get your head out of your ass. Do you always think everything anyone says is about you?” She shakes her head and goes back to her phone.
“No,” Sloane says, biting back the follow-up I’m sorry. She doesn’t know why she’d be sorry.
“Forget it,” Riley says, not looking up. “I don’t know why I bothered.”
Sloane looks back at her own phone, but not before she takes two more potatoes and finishes her wine. The only thing happening on her phone is Jane telling the family group chat that she changed the WiFi password, but Sloane stares at it like it’s a philosophical conundrum.
“Yes, another, thank you,” she says to the bartender, when he finally re-appears and gestures to her empty glass. Riley seems engrossed in her news article. “I’m also avoiding my parents’ house,” Sloane says next, for some reason.
Riley shakes her head without looking up. “We don’t need to do this. Truly. I can live my whole entire life, happily, without doing this.”
Sloane considers her, in profile. She remembers Riley primarily as her little sister’s childhood friend; Riley and Harper had been maybe thirteen when Sloane had left for college. In retrospect Sloane suspects that there had been more to that friendship, more that came out (ha ha) later, but Sloane had been relatively distanced from the drama of it all, had heard about it only second-hand and filtered through her mother or third-hand from other town gossip sources. Since then she’s seen Riley at the annual White Elephant party and pretty much nowhere else, aside from a few hometown weddings here and there over the past decade. She doesn’t, she’s realizing, actually know anything about Riley Bennett, aside from the fact that she’s a doctor (the town won’t let her forget it) and a lesbian (the town also won’t let her forget that, but for a different reason).
“My husband and I are getting a divorce,” Sloane says abruptly, because apparently that’s what she says now when she—feels bad, or wants to deflect, or something.
That does get Riley’s attention; she looks up from her phone and meets Sloane’s eyes. “Jesus,” she says, and turns her body towards Sloane a little. “I’m sorry.” She sounds genuinely sorry.
“Thank you,” Sloane says, picking at her cuticles and belatedly trying to hide the gesture in her napkin; it’s a nervous habit, but not one she can help. “It was a mutual decision.” Another glass of Rueda appears in front of her and she grabs at it like a lifeline.
“Still,” Riley says. Her eyes are sympathetic, warmer than Sloane has maybe ever seen them. “I’m… that must be hard.”
Sloane clears her throat, for some reason more affected by Riley’s forthright acknowledgement than any of her family’s heartfelt sideways hand-wringing. “Yes, well.” She sips her wine. “It was a long time coming, in many ways. Not that my parents understand that.” She looks at Riley, makes eye contact, raises an eyebrow.
Riley exhales and leans back, a considering expression on her face. “So they know? On Christmas Eve everything looked pretty…” She shrugs. “Perfect. On the surface.”
“I’m sure you understand the importance of appearances, having also grown up in this fishbowl,” Sloane murmurs. Riley laughs, a caught and abrupt sort of noise, as if she’s startled to find herself laughing at all.
“I suppose I do.”
“But to answer your question, I told them after the party.”
Riley tilts her head in acknowledgement. “It was an eventful night for secrets.” She says it mildly, but Sloane feels the familiar hot pulse of embarrassment, regret, and nausea all the same.
“I also apologized to Harper.” It sounds more defensive than she wants. “Not that it excuses my behavior, of course.”
Riley shrugs. “That’s between you and Harper. And Abby.”
“Did you know?” Sloane asks, for some reason immediately and impossibly curious.
“What, about Abby and Harper?” Sloane nods. “I mean, yeah,” Riley says, easily. “It was… not especially challenging to perceive.”
Obviously Harper bringing Abby home for Christmas at all was a sign, in retrospect, as was Abby’s desire to impress the family, and probably also, now that Sloane thinks about it, the weird hall closet kerfuffle with Abby, Tipper, and the Roomba. Also Abby’s clothes, which Sloane herself had clocked, and that look she’d seen Abby giving Harper during her dad’s speech. The icing on the cake is undoubtedly the retroactively hilarious conversation Sloane had had with Abby about converting Harper’s pantry into a bedroom. Sloane feels a tiny frown appear in her brow.
“Oh god,” Riley says, with outright laughter in her voice. “If you could see your face right now.”
“What?”
“Don’t overthink it.” Riley is grinning into her wine.
“You’re telling me you knew immediately?”
“Uh, yeah,” Riley says, and looks at Sloane like she’s insane. “Honestly, I sort of get how Harper could hide it from you guys, but Abby?” She opens her mouth to say more, but reconsiders. “Anyway. Let’s just say like recognizes like, and leave it at that. I also had additional context, to be fair.”
“So the rumors, from high school.” Sloane thinks back on what she had heard second-hand, but even more so she thinks about all the whispered conversations her parents had had about Harper behind closed doors over the years, their over-the-top exuberant delight whenever Connor would join them on family vacations, their constant needling about boyfriends and dating once Harper had finally dumped Connor two months into college.
Riley shrugs again. “Harper outed me,” she says, “as I’m sure you heard. Given the context of the past two days I’m sure you can piece together why, and how she knew in the first place.” Riley’s voice is even but Sloane sees her fingers tapping against the bar, one after another in a dancing pattern. The fidget is brief but telling.
Sloane clears her throat; the conversation stalls and awkwardness settles in like an uncomfortable cat. She debates turning back to her phone and letting the conversation die. They both might be happier.
“My parents don’t approve of my specialty choice,” Riley says, after a beat. “That’s what I meant about unrealistic family expectations, earlier.”
“They’re dermatologists, right?” Sloane knows they are: the Bennetts run the only dermatology practice in town, and are single-handedly responsible for keeping the image-obsessed teenage masses supplied with Accutane and tretinoin, and the image-obsessed middle-aged masses supplied with botox and Restylane.
“Yes.”
“And what is your specialty, then?”
“Internal medicine,” Riley says. Sloane has little to no idea what that means, and Riley clearly notices. “Systemic internal disease, internal organs, and issues thereof.”
It sounds challenging (though, in fairness, all medicine sounds challenging). “I find it hard to believe they aren’t proud of you,” Sloane says, before she can think better of it. “Aren’t you at Harvard?”
“Johns Hopkins.” Riley runs her knuckle around the curve of the base of her wine glass and Sloane stares at it, mesmerized by the back and forth slide of Riley’s finger, unable to look away. “Internists have challenging hours, work in hospitals, et cetera. No work-life balance, makes it hard to have a family.”
“I see. Is that something you want?”
Riley snorts. “This is such a surreal conversation,” she mutters. “Ah, I don’t know. Not right now. If the opportunity presented itself sometime in the future, maybe.”
Sloane thinks of Matilda and Magnus and the impossibly tender love she has for them, how maddening and joyful and unexpected they are, how they’ve made her life a challenge but a delight for every day since they were born, and she smiles. “I never thought I wanted children, you know. But once I had them… nothing else in my life has been as magical, as important, as fulfilling.” It’s too bare and too personal and she has no idea why she says it; she chances a look at Riley and Riley is staring at her in utter bewilderment. “Not to say that you need to have any, of course.”
“Of course,” Riley echoes softly, gaping.
Sloane takes a sip of her wine and looks down at the menu to cover. She’s still hungry, and the potatoes have been long since demolished.
On the bar Riley’s phone buzzes several times in rapid succession: incoming messages. She looks down at it and thumbs the app open, and Sloane relaxes, momentarily freed from scrutiny. She can see it’s a group chat, but nothing more, not without craning her neck or scooting closer, neither of which she is willing to do.
Sloane doesn’t even know why she’s curious, really, except that whoever is texting Riley is making her grin, making her wrinkle her nose, making her pick up her phone and type back, thumbs flying across the screen, tongue peeking out between her lips.
“Apparently your parents are in fine form this evening,” Riley says, setting the phone down and turning back to Sloane with a knowing expression. “Also, I’m touched, I didn’t know you considered me a friend.”
Fuck.
“Surely you’re familiar with the concept of lies of convenience,” Sloane says, happy that her voice comes out mostly even. “Are you texting my sister and Abby?”
Riley rolls her eyes. “Please, even I have not yet reached that level of stereotype.” Sloane looks at her blankly. “Never mind. You’re half right, it’s Abby and John. They’re still at your parents’ but we’re getting drinks later.”
“I didn’t know you were all friends.”
“Abby’s pretty great, and from what I saw at the White Elephant party, so is John.”
“So you’re just going for casual drinks with the current girlfriend of your secret high school ex-girlfriend, and the current girlfriend’s gay best friend.”
Riley nods, unbothered. “Yep.” Sloane stares at her. “God, I can, like, see the gears turning,” Riley says, shaking her head and smiling to herself; Sloane feels like there’s a joke somewhere that she’s not getting. “The gays gathering together to support one another during the holidays and other trying times is an age-old tradition, Sloane.”
“But no Harper?”
Riley shrugs. “I have no idea. I am not the organizer of this excursion.”
“It doesn’t bother you?”
“What doesn’t bother me?”
“Abby and Harper.”
Riley frowns at her. “Why, because Harper and I used to awkwardly make out behind the chem lab after school almost two decades ago? Good lord. If you think I’m still carrying that torch, well. I have news.”
“I meant with what Harper did to you.”
Riley meets Sloane’s eyes and Sloane realizes, abruptly and immediately, what she’s walked into, what trap she’s set for herself. “What Harper did to me?” Riley leans forward, suddenly intense and quietly furious. “Harper was a child, a child growing up in your family.” Riley blows out a breath. “This isn’t your damn house to throw stones in, Sloane, especially given how you walk around in the world and what you did two nights ago, as an adult woman fully aware of the consequences of her words and not a terrified closeted teenager." Sloane opens her mouth but Riley keeps talking. "Was what Harper did inexcusable and unconscionable, did it ruin four fucking impressionable and formative years of my life? Of course. Did I pay for it in a decade of therapy and internalized self-hatred? Yep.” Riley rubs the side of her jaw. “Would I have done the same to her? No. But with the distance of years do I get it, now, even if it was still wrong? Yes.” On the bar, Sloane sees Riley’s fist clench in her napkin. “Don’t even start with that shit. It’s my prerogative to judge Harper if I want to, but it certainly isn’t fucking yours.”
Sloane, who has felt herself recoiling more and more throughout Riley’s monologue, stares down at her lap, picks at her cuticles more where she hopes Riley can’t see them. “That isn’t what I meant,” she says, even though it sort of was. She hates that her voice comes out sounding less than even, although perhaps not enough that Riley notices.
“I hope it wasn’t,” Riley says, downing the rest of her wine. “Don’t try to police something you can’t possibly understand.” She motions to the bartender for her bill and clears her throat. “To answer what I think you were clumsily asking, I moved past it a long time ago.” Riley squints and pinches the bridge of her nose. “It’s easier to find compassion for her as an adult now. And holding onto it would have just perpetuated the cycle of self-harm.”
Before she knows what she’s doing, Sloane is reaching out to touch Riley’s forearm, between her elbow and where the cuff of her jacket is rolled to expose the bones of her wrist. The wool is smooth underneath her fingertips; she thinks she feels Riley’s muscle twitch under her touch.
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?” Riley says, staring at Sloane’s hand on her arm. “None of it has anything to do with you.”
“Maybe not,” Sloane says. “At least not directly.” She takes her hand back when the bartender appears with Riley’s receipt; Riley pulls a matte black credit card out of her wallet and hands it over without looking at the bill. She’s tapping her fingers against the wood of the bar again, Sloane notices, a mesmerizing tell: of impatience, or nerves, or something else entirely.
Riley’s card comes back in silence. Sloane feels something itchy and unsettling worm its way down into the back of her mind as Riley slides the card back into her wallet and begins to gather herself and her outerwear. The idea would have been ludicrous to her not an hour earlier, but now Sloane realizes, abruptly, that she is disappointed that Riley is leaving, despite their uncomfortable dynamics; she feels lit up, engaged, interested in what Riley is going to do next.
Riley clears her throat. “Well, this conversation was probably the second-weirdest thing to happen to me the entire holiday,” she says, standing up. “To be clear,” she adds, “the weirdest is still watching Harper break a massive painting of Main Street over your head.” She raises an eyebrow at Sloane. “Somehow you’re involved in both incidents.”
“Maybe I’m turning over a new leaf,” Sloane says, an unusual lilt in her voice. “Spontaneity. Surprises.”
Riley looks at her askance. “Something like that,” she says, shaking her head. “Bye, Sloane. Have a… good year, I guess. See you next Christmas.”
She leaves and Sloane watches her go, ducking into the restroom on her way out.
Later, looking back, Sloane will blame many things for what she does next: two glasses of wine on a stomach empty except for some potatoes; residual guilt about outing Harper that she’s maybe, sort of, hypothetically transferring onto Riley; disappointment at the loss of the only person to talk to her like a normal human being all day; the desire to not be left alone with her own thoughts; the dark red wine stain on Riley’s lower lip, just in the middle where it’s fullest, where her napkin hadn’t caught it.
She hesitates for no more than a minute before getting up to follow Riley into the bathroom. Riley is drying her hands on a paper towel.
“Honestly, what—” Riley says, which is all she gets out before Sloane is kissing her, going up on her toes just a little to get a better angle, not even caring if there’s anyone else in the restroom.
Objectively it’s a short kiss, no tongues and no teeth, and Riley just sort of… stands there for it. Her eyes are wide when Sloane pulls back, and she has a tiny smear of Sloane’s lipstick outside of her lip line. The image of it, coupled with the knowledge of what she’s just done, makes something hot and frantic slide down Sloane’s spine.
“Thank you for the potatoes,” Sloane says, which, what the fuck honestly, and then she does it: she flees, again, flat-out runs away from Riley Bennett.