"The next train arrives in 3 minutes," said that over-courteous voice that reminds Cara of plastic daffodils. She stared at her dreamy, lop-sided smile in the reflection. The day had gone well. It wasn't anything special - she woke to the reassuring sound of her landlord shouting at the plumber, electrician or laundry man, flipped through her stack of grossly expensive 'lifestyle' magazines and met up with Jae and Abbie in the afternoon, cafe- and bookshop-hopping the day away. When dinnertime came around they weren't exactly hungry, but went anyway to the Farmer's Market to pick up whatever the vendors had left (pumpernickel, gruyere, half an organic lettuce, kurobata sausage), then set themselves up at Abbie's with a ten year-old soap series. The wine flowed with the conversation - from patisserie to politics, there was nothing they didn't share.
As the train pulled into the station, Cara plugged in her iPod. Doors opened and closed, children fell asleep in their parents' arms, lovers cooed in the darker corners of the car, but Cara was in her own cosmos. All she could see was Jae making fun of her clumsiness at the bookstore, Jae pulling her 'retard' face when she didn't get her too-obvious joke, Jae telling her about the interns at her office... She suddenly felt a rush, an urgency to give all the love she had to Jae, to drown her in this intense feeling that was boiling inside her like a rattling kettle about to burst into a screeching whistle. Her heart was beating at Formula One speeds.
She had felt this before, but never with such vehemence, shocking even herself. This is the Cara who had refused to even toy with the concept of falling in love with another girl, let alone one of her best friends. It would be akin to wearing five-inch Louboutins on a cobblestoned Italian street - nice on the silver screen, painful in real life. Just imagine: your soul mate, the childhood friend who already knows every quirky, ugly nook in your personality and adores them - this was the perfect relationship, minus alienating all your other closest friends, and oh, being the same sex. She exited into the cold winter air, taking deep breaths that she hoped would numb every muscle in her body, including that relentless, pulsating one.
Excerpt from
The Living Field
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