Black Bird Wine, Blackberry Kiss

“You look the same,” she said. I can’t help but hear the accusation of the years in between our sightings.

We had dated in college. Well, “dated” is a strong word - we had slept together and spent a few meals together for a couple of months while I was in college, but we never actually went out on a date. She’s my best friend’s sister, and my best friend, Sarai, still doesn’t know about it.

This is our first time seeing each other in 10 years, but the intensity I feel is the same. How are you supposed to act on a first date with a childhood-friend-to-ex-lover?

“I’m seeing Raven tonight,” I had told my spouse, Remi, earlier in the day.

“Another reconnection, right? Apparently with hippie parents?” he asked. He was taking a break from writing his dissertation, and I took the opportunity to hug him, laying my head on his chest.

“Yep, to both,” I paused, getting hit with the ways I know her. “We haven’t seen each other since college.” He knew how I had felt about her, even when I had thought marrying her would be inevitable.

“Are you going to be okay?” He stroked the nape of my neck, helping me relax my shoulders.

He had comforted me a lot this way recently. I’m currently waiting to hear back about the results of a biopsy. I am Schrödinger's cat, in limbo between death and a faster death. In an attempt to reconcile with the faster death, I made a list of people I hadn’t thought I would need closure from for another 40 years. For her, maybe 10 years had been enough between us.

But right now, he wasn’t asking if I was anxious about waiting for the results, but whether I was going to be okay and not end up yelling at her. He had no idea of my plans.

“I’ll be fine, thank you love.”

At the restaurant, the dim lights played over Raven’s face, and her eyes on me were bright.

“A bottle of the Blackmail Merlot, please,” Raven told the waiter, without asking me what I wanted. She had thought about me a lot back then, from when she would come over next to how to lie to her sister, but she had never been considerate of me. She had been mean and rude and degrading, and hadn’t believed me when I told her so. She had had no motivation to change, since she found others who would put up with her.

We started seeing each other while I was in college because I missed home, and Sarai’s place in it. If Sarai was like my sister, then Raven was a doting older step sister. Sarai and I had known each other since second grade, and Raven had been in sixth. I looked up to her and called her “Raen” (pronounced “rain”), like Sarai did. Raen had loved me as a little sister then, a childhood love.

A decade ago, I called Sarai, crying, and she gave me Raen’s number, since she was in the area. It turns out that Raen had been feeling the same way. We fed and drank in our homesickness over the weekend at a fall festival with pumpkins and a corn maze, and I held hands with Raen, thinking of platonically holding Sarai’s hand instead. Raen was gracious enough to let me stay at her apartment. We shared a bottle of merlot then too, although she was a recent college graduate and I was under 21, so it was nowhere near as nice as the one we would have in 10 years. We talked about home, about Sarai, about the music she had drank to it in college while I had danced to it in high school. We ended up talking about both being queer, and the hand holding from earlier came into my mind. It was getting late, but we hadn’t found that smooth transition from sharing to saying good night. We put on a TV show, sitting on her couch, tipsy and slowly tipping our heads closer. The episode ended, and we turned with only an inch between us. She leaned in, and I kissed her back.

We took what we wanted from each others’ adult bodies. The sixth grade girl I had looked up to was suddenly a woman on top of me, and then below me. After we exhausted ourselves, I wanted to die. My heart wanted to remove itself, shaking my foundations like an earthquake until it ripped my skin and vibrated out of my chest. There was no voice saying “we should not have done that,” just one that knew that everything was different now, that she was in control if I wanted to continue seeing her sister.

She didn’t like it when I called her Raen. It was a childhood name and didn’t seem appropriate once she had heard what I sounded like when she tasted me. So she was now Raven, to fit into her adult life with our adult - although not mature - relationship. This switch helped me. I loved Raen, but Raven was demeaning to me.

I also couldn't break up with her - she was capable of being vengeful, ripping me away from Sarai, and losing my best friend would break my heart the most. I wanted Raven and I to be a steady flame, being passed from wick to wick to last for years. Instead, we were a firework that went off too close to my face. So, I let Raen be mean to me, and I did enjoy the sex, until she tired herself out waiting for me to trust her while I asked her to listen to me. When she finally broke it off, she said “I didn’t think you would take this so well.”

Back in the dimly lit restaurant, Raven’s inconsiderate choice, the merlot with little black birds on it, arrived - she was always so conceited. The only real decision we had made together ever was to not tell Sarai about us, and we hadn’t even talked about it. We had talked about being exclusive, and she said I was scaring her away. We had talked about sleeping in the same bed together, but she didn’t want to smell like me. We had talked about the clutter in my dorm room, and she wouldn’t talk about the clutter in her mind.

Normally with all of these issues in a relationship, I would have called Sarai, ranting to her for hours. She wouldn’t have told me to drop the bitch directly, but she uses tone extremely well. During Raven’s and my time together, I would text Sarai that we were having lunch, again! She was so glad we were getting close. I wonder how much she noticed the radio silence about her sister later on. I wonder how she takes my silence now? I want her to know that my silence is not, and yet all, about her. My silence is because I love her so much, that I don’t want to tell her how her sister hurt me. I can’t ruin her sister for her. Because of Sarai, kissing Raen was supposed to have meant more. Raen had loved me because her sister loved me. Raven proved that vicarious love doesn’t translate well.

Raven is two glasses in when she finally asks, “Why did you call?”

I look at my glass, my lipstick imprint smudging the more I drink. I thought putting the red shade on would prevent me from kissing her, even though the last time we had seen each other ended with my wine-red lipstick all over our faces. I was hit with the same things I had been thinking against Remi’s chest.

She likes cold on her nipples. They get hard, and she yelps when she’s up against a wall and you lick her breast with ice in your mouth.

She doesn’t like pubic hair and will ask you to shave it.

She doesn't like when you have other friends besides her, even when you have both agreed to stop sleeping together.

She’ll be surprised at how well you’ll take it when she writes you a letter about how she won’t trust you with her body until you trust her with your heart. She won’t know that you’ve been waiting for her to do this, because you couldn’t risk losing Sarai if you were the one who broke it off.

You’ll continue to write about her for years, because she should have been your one true love. You’ll write until all the love that she was supposed to have for you, all of the rude things she wasn't supposed to say, unlatch themselves from your soul and instead find solace in ink that fades away with time and memory.

I forced my mind to slow down so I could answer her evenly.

“I called you because in the process of reconciling with death, I would like to kiss you again.” We were supposed to be forever or not at all, and this is the most forever I can muster.

All she could do was scrunch her eyebrows at me. She stared at me for a few moments before she proved that she had stayed mischievous.

“Is that all you want?” her voice was low.

“At this moment, yes,” I responded, emphasizing that I could change my mind, could be convinced of wanting more.

She picks up her glass of merlot again, not taking her eyes off of me. She puts it down, leans across the tiny table, and kisses me. I relish it. I can’t tell when a wine is dry, or the difference between front notes or back notes, but the blackberry note on her lips quenches me. Maybe I will tell my spouse about this, only because she doesn’t have the access to that relationship to destroy it for me - I can just sabotage it myself. I had done that with Sarai already anyway.

She intertwines her fingers through mine, and our mismatched wedding bands clink together. She had found someone who had convinced her of commitment, and I prayed that she was better to her wife than she had been to me, even as this kiss proved otherwise.

The first time we had kissed on her couch, I didn’t immediately sleep with her afterwards. She had cockily told me that it was the first time someone had resisted her. Now, kissing her over a table, I change my mind about changing my mind. This would be the second and final time I resist her, both with a merlot on the tongue.

I leave the restaurant and the rest of the Blackmail with her. That hadn’t been my plan, but now I know Remi was right - I wouldn’t have been able to sit much longer without telling her how she had hurt me, standing up as my voice grew stronger and louder to announce publicly how she had made me lose my mind in private. I would rather not know her reaction than face her denial. I would rather not risk Sarai knowing I yelled at her sister. I call Remi to pick me up.

“How’d it go?” He’s lucky I don’t slam the door. I melt into the seat.

“I thought I wanted closure while I'm in limbo, but it wasn't worth getting kicked out of a restaurant,” and possibly having Sarai hear about it. If nothing else, this date has taught me I can’t face closure with Raven if I can’t face the truth with Sarai.

He takes my hand and squeezes it, driving me to a home where I can fall into arms that believe me when I am hurt. I let him kiss me, and I’m not afraid to stop him. There is nothing he can rip away from me but the color on my lips.

Maybe I won’t lose him if I don’t tell him.