Chapter 7: A Promise Made

Back in university, I made a promise with my friend Athy that, if we were both single when we turned thirty, we’d just marry each other. To be honest, it was just a joke at first. She was so pretty and fun to be with, I thought the only way she’d ever be single was by choice. As for me, well, I was the romantic sort who assumed that, by thirty, I would basically be set for life: job, partner, house, dog.

However, the last decade hasn’t been so kind to me. I should mention at this point that I am a woman interested in women. More accurately, I seem to be a woman interested in straight women or women in committed relationships, and one tipsy time I was (unknowingly) interested in an effeminate man… who still rejected me. I’m awkward around new people, yet not any better around people I’ve known for a while either. Even my attempts at online dating ended after a few messages.

Anyway, back to my friend. Every year when we met up for my birthday, she reminded me of the promise. I was the younger one by a few months, so it would come into effect on my thirtieth rather than hers. What had once been a joke gradually become more real. For my twenty-fifth birthday, we spent a half-drunk evening planning a honeymoon around Europe; my twenty-seventh, after a particularly brutal string of rejections, I whined about those women and promised her I would be a faithful and doting wife; my twenty-ninth, we went house hunting for the day, just to see what kind of one bedroom apartments we could afford on a double income.

She’d been single all those years too. If I ever asked, she had a reason. At university, she was focusing on her studies and, as a fellow computer science student, she had her programming projects on the side. Then she was focused on her career, and then she was too busy making a game in her free time (and dragging me into it, not that I was unwilling), and then… I stopped asking, afraid that I would see her one day with an engagement ring on her finger.

With how she brought up the promise every year, it can’t be helped that I had a sliver of hope, right? I mean, I knew it was wrong to think of a friend that way, yet, by the end, I often joked to myself that it was her fault I went after straight women. A false hope, but it brought me comfort on the loneliest nights. I was glad to know that she would always be with me as a friend.

For my thirtieth birthday, we got together at my place after work and both downed a glass of wine before ordering pizza. I’d not even had one in the last year, my war against tummy fat perilous and liable to turn upon the loss of a single battle. However, she loved pizza, so we had pizza.

We ate a lot and drank some more, turned down the lights and sat close together on the couch as we made fun of the latest romcom, laughing so much we had to pause at least ten times because my stomach hurt. The promise was still on my mind, had been for at least the month before, but it was more out of curiosity than anything, wondering what she would say about it now. I thought she might suggest we find a two bedroom place and live together, or we would put up a jokey message online, changing our relationship status to married, or maybe she would start calling me wifey nicknames.

After the movie, she had me sit at the small dining table and sat down opposite me. Then she lit a candle and turned off the light and served the tiny cake she’d brought. Finally, she gave me my birthday present: a small, wrapped box.

“Ooh, what is it?” I asked, turning it around in my hands. It wasn’t heavy, but it felt sturdy for its size. I couldn’t think of anything to do with computers that matched, or any fashion accessory either, her gifts usually falling into one of those two categories. “Can I open it or do I have to guess?”

She softly shook her head, and she said, “You can open it.”

My gaze flickered back down to the box and I slipped my nail into the neat wrapping paper, prying off the sellotape. With that bit undone, I could tear off the paper and reveal the box inside. It looked pretty posh, certainly for jewellery, and I imagined there was a beautiful necklace or bracelet inside. Still, I could tell it wasn’t cheap and said, “Come on, you shouldn’t have. I’m happy with whatever you give me, so don’t waste your money.”

She sighed in response and loosely gestured at the box. Understanding what she wasn’t saying, I pried it open, and I sort of broke a little bit. It was a thin ring, silvery, with a small aquamarine on it.

I tried to remember when she had asked what my favourite gemstone was, but it must have been back at university. Honestly, I didn’t have one, yet at that time I saw one on the webpage she was showing me which reminded me of her eyes; that seemed as good a reason as any other to make it my favourite.

“Will you marry me?” she asked.

I was too shocked to notice back then, but her calm voice had quavered and, if I had looked closely, I would have seen the worry hiding behind her eyes. Instead, I fell victim to my insecurities. “If this is a joke, it’s not funny,” I said, head bowed as I didn’t trust myself not to cry.

“I’m not laughing,” she said, and she reached over, resting her hand on top of mine.

The next day, we went down to the register office and gave notice. Since we had to wait a month before we could get married, we went to look at apartments again—single bedroom ones—and we made an appointment at her bank to see what kind of mortgage we could get, and we went to furniture stores, looking at everything from plates to beds.

It sort of felt like I had imagined it: two friends deciding to live together. Yet, whenever I thought about it like that for too long, I remembered the ring on my finger.

At my age, months already went by quickly, but the day of our ceremony came up in the blink of an eye. Neither of us had wanted to make a big deal of it, so we just went back to the register office. For our two witnesses, she brought her older brother and I brought my cousin; they were thankfully relaxed about the situation.

When it came to the vows, well, I’m a romantic who has been working on my vows since I was like ten years old, and yet those vows were like they were written for someone else. Standing in front of her, I ended up saying whatever came to mind.

“I can’t put to words what you’ve been to me all the years I’ve known you. But, when I think back, it seems like every smile, every bit of laughter, every moment of happiness… has you in common,” I said as I stared into her soft eyes. At that point, I felt like I couldn’t say any more, choking up as the memories flooded back to me, only to settle when she gently took my hands in hers. Her touch reminded me of why we were there and, after a couple of breaths, I carried on. “Although I don’t know what the future will bring, it’s enough for me to know that you’ll be with me.”

They were, altogether, pretty simple vows, shallow even, but they were… honest. I felt like I could have said those words any time since I’d met her and meant them with all my heart. And even though I hadn’t exactly vowed anything, I knew she understood. She always understood me.

Looking into her eyes, I could see she knew that I truly did want to spend the rest of our lives together in whatever form our relationship took.

Her turn to speak, I felt my heart beat faster. “If I had to say what I love most about you, it’s that my home is by your side. The sense of peace and comfort and security you give me is what gives me the strength to try my best no matter what comes my way. Knowing that I will be by your side for the rest of our lives, I will try my best to give you peace and comfort and security, and to make my side your home.”

She said it all with practised ease, yet there was a noticeable strain in her voice. Upon finishing, she tried to smile, but her lips wavered and eyes teared up. Repaying the favour, I reached out and held her hands, lightly squeezing.

After giving us a moment to compose ourselves, the registrar asked us to exchange rings. She went first this time and presented me with the engagement ring—I wouldn’t let her go and buy another one when that ring was already perfect. When it came to my turn, well, a ring with a brown gemstone didn’t look great, so I went for a sapphire instead. It was a bit convoluted, but she’d first nicknamed me Saffron because of my very red hair, and that became Saffy, and then she started calling me Sappho after I came out to her (but she only called me that in private); since it’s close to sapphire and the colour went well with my aquamarine ring, I thought it was a good choice.

The way she looked at the gemstone when I slid the ring onto her finger, I knew she understood my thoughts. Of course she did.

From our research beforehand, only the vows and witnesses were actually required, but, when we spoke to the registrar at the start, we asked him if we could include the exchanging of rings, and we also asked him if we could include one more thing at the end.

“With their vows and rings exchanged, if the bride and bride would seal their oath,” the registrar said.

I looked at her, and my heart that had never settled after the start of the ceremony managed to beat even harder. Since our engagement, we hadn’t kissed, as if that was the line. It was stupid because I was sure that, before all this happened, if we got drunk and kissed, then we could have brushed it off and carried on being friends. Even if we’d slept together, I knew we would still always be friends.

But this wasn’t an accident. More than that, it wasn’t a mistake. I wanted to believe that.

Slowly, she reached up to cup my cheek. Her hand was cold. I hadn’t noticed earlier, I guessed because my hands were also cold; anxious as I was, my hands were definitely clammy. After touching me, a second passed and nothing happened. I almost burst into giggles. It was too funny to watch as her eyes fluttered closed and she stayed there, waiting for me to kiss her—she was the one who proposed to me!

Then I realised it was probably because she had proposed that she now waited for me: I needed to give her my answer.

I leant forwards, her face filling my vision, her hand a gentle pressure that never tried to push me away. At the last moment, I closed my eyes and kissed her. It was not my first time kissing someone, but it was the first time that kissing meant something to me—my first time kissing someone who meant something to me. A tame kiss, timid even, which didn’t even last a full second, yet I knew that we’d crossed the line.

While I pulled back, I watched her eyelashes flutter as she opened her eyes, and saw the blush dying her cheeks, and how her lips were slightly parted. I’d always known she was pretty, but I’d never seen her look so beautiful.

We didn’t have long to cherish the moment. The registrar handed us our marriage certificate and our witnesses were all too eager to pull us away for questioning, their cooperation to be repaid with answers. I wasn’t privy to what she and her brother spoke about, but my cousin wanted to know if I would tell my parents and things like that. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any real answers, so I got an earful until Athy rescued me.

On the bus ride back to her flat, we sat in silence with our hands entwined. As our vows had said, that was enough for us.

Things didn’t really change, except when they did, which I know is a weird thing to say. What I mean is that we acted and spoke like we always had, but now we really snuggled together when we sat together on the couch, and we would hold hands when walking together outside. We didn’t kiss again, and we still lived in our own flats while we waited for the mortgage to go through; it didn’t seem worth it for me to move into her flat (or vice versa) and then move to the new place when it should only be a month. So it was a state of being similar but not quite the same.

However slowly we moved, the world didn’t wait. I had told my cousin it wasn’t exactly a secret, and Athy seemed to have told her brother similarly, soon both of us bombarded by our respective parents. That was fair enough, likely few parents happy to hear they’d missed their daughter’s wedding.

In my case, even though I’d been out for a long time, my parents didn’t know. That was mostly because I’d never managed to start a relationship, so it was like, “Can I really call myself lesbian?” I mean, to put it lightly, it was more to do with me not having the best relationship with them. I had always been enough of a disappointment without also being a lesbian, so it seemed better for them to just think I was incapable of getting a husband—at least until I was in a serious relationship. Ignorance is bliss.

On the other side of matters, I’d known her family semi-well for as long as I’d known her. Her older brother was also in the computer sector, albeit IT, so we had common things to talk about, and they were otherwise close, so he’d joined us for dinner before (well, I guess it was more like I’d joined them for dinner). As her university housemate for two years, I had met her parents back then and they had invited me along for dinner whenever they visited. I’d seen them a few times since university, about once a year. They seemed nice and treated me well.

But with how she looked, I thought they weren’t exactly congratulating her either. I didn’t want to pry because I didn’t want to tell her what my parents were saying.

Coming to a mutual agreement on the matter, we went to visit her parents on the weekend, holding hands the whole taxi ride there. The closer we got, the harder she squeezed my hand. We let go of each other’s hand when we knocked on the door, and her mother welcomed us in, yet I could tell it was a strained welcome. Her father was already sitting at the table, and he put his phone down as we walked over. Our chairs had been spaced apart, but I moved mine closer as we sat down.

Her mother asked us if we wanted anything to drink, but we both declined; she excused herself for a cup of water anyway and left us in silence for half a minute or so. With her back, I felt the mood start to shift, the fake smile melting away.

“We know you two have been close for a long time, but you didn’t even tell us you were dating and we missed our daughter’s marriage—please imagine how humiliating that is for us,” her mother said.

It didn’t stop there, though, one sentence after another coming, and I felt an unease growing in the pit of my stomach. Athy offered quiet sorries. By the tone alone, I knew to reach out to her under the table and hold her hand. Her mother kept replying by saying she didn’t want an apology, yet she kept talking in that manner.

Eventually, my feelings crystallised, and I realised what was agitating me. I tried to interrupt by saying, “Um, if I—” only to be cut off by her father.

“We’re talking to our daughter,” he said sternly, and then gestured for her mother to continue.

Rather than silence me, that sort of amplified my feelings, making them sharp enough to cut through the awkwardness that usually stifled me. My voice tinged with righteous anger, I said, “No, you’re talking to my wife, and unless you talk to her with respect, we’ll be leaving.”

I couldn’t say any more than that, unwilling to trust my voice to maintain that kind of brave tone. However, for her sake, I squarely met her father’s stare and didn’t give an inch. My whole body tensed, instinctually trying to shy away and even apologise, yet I fought it, desperately with all my might.

After a few seconds, she spoke quietly but with a certain conviction. “Whatever you think, whether or not you approve, we are married. And that’s something between me and Saffy. We’re not joining our families together or anything like that, we’re just doing what makes us happy.”

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Her words resonated with the feelings I had for her, a sense of comfort replacing the knot of anxiety. The uncertainty of the situation became almost meaningless as I knew without a shadow of a doubt that we would eventually walk out of there and carry on our lives together.

Before anything else could be said, the doorbell rang. Her mother glanced at her father and then excused herself.

“We’re not late, are we?” her brother loudly said from the doorway. I turned to look and his wife and children were with him—a young girl about six and a boy about four. Although I’d never met them, he and Athy had told me a lot about them.

She stood up to greet them, so I did too, and I let go of her hand only for her to grab it again. I looked at her to make sure, missing that her niece ran over.

“Aunty Athy!” she said, hugging her around the waist, and then she turned to me. “Are you really Aunty Saffy? Daddy told me you got married and he showed me a picture, but why wasn’t I there? Jamie went to her uncle’s wedding and even got to be a flower girl.”

I again looked at Athy, this time entirely unsure what to say or do, yet all she did was smile and softly nod. So I looked back at her niece—our niece—and I smiled and nodded. “We didn’t have a wedding, but we can still have a party and get you a pretty dress—is that okay?”

She grinned and gave me a hug too. “Yeah!” she said.

With the children around, her parents didn’t say anything else on the matter. My new niece is very much a tomboy princess, long hair often full of leaves and twigs, and my new nephew is her biggest fan, often stuck in bushes or up trees as he tries to keep up with her. And for whatever reason, she kept dragging me to play. I thought it was just me being a novelty as someone knew, but Athy later told me that her favourite movie was Brave and I had a bit of a Merida look—kind of curly red hair. Her brother’s wife was nice and I felt like she didn’t have any problems with our marriage, either with how sudden it was or it being a same-sex marriage, the way she talked with me like old friends who hadn’t seen each other in a long time. Not to mention that she actually congratulated us, something the parents hadn’t done at any point.

We excused ourselves after an hour. I was thoroughly exhausted, and she seemed to be too. However, I couldn’t stop thinking, thoughts new and old swirling around. When the taxi dropped us off at her flat, I walked up to the front door with her. She put the key in and turned it, and she stepped inside, and then she noticed I hadn’t followed, looking at me with a questioning gaze.

“Can I stay over tonight?” I asked.

Some colour came to her cheeks, muted from the makeup she’d put on for the visit, and her hands came together to fidget. Yet she didn’t look away from me. “Okay,” she quietly said.

To me, our engagement had been a surprise, but she had gone out and picked a ring and mustered the courage to ask that special question. Her vows had sounded like they were written with me in mind. And after what happened with her parents, I thought she probably felt insecure.

So I stayed with her through the afternoon, went out with her for a nice meal. In the evening, I had a shower and changed into a spare pair of her pyjamas, snuggling with her on the couch until we were both nodding off. Then we both squeezed into her single bed, unable to not touch each other. Despite it being hot and cramped, I didn’t feel restless, and I held her hand.

“G’night,” I said; leaning over, I gave her a little kiss.

“Goodnight,” she murmured, squeezing my hand.

I wanted to stay the next night as well, but my work clothes were at my flat and she said we should wait for our new apartment. Still, I called her in the evening to say that single word, and I kissed (just in front of) my phone, which she reciprocated.

The week felt so much longer. I spent my free time when travelling to and from work and in my breaks thinking about her. The momentum behind a decade-long friendship wasn’t easy to change, and I still didn’t know what she wanted out of this new relationship. My feelings hadn’t really changed. Whether we were lovers or if we only shared goodnight kisses, I could build my happiness around her. I did want more, but I wasn’t going to take more than a small step each time, carefully finding the boundaries of this murky relationship. There was no need to rush.

Friday evening, I picked up some clothes from my flat and then went to hers. The next day, we went to a restaurant for lunch… to meet my parents. I’d been anxious all morning, told her a hundred times we didn’t have to, but she insisted that we make things clear for them, and that she would be there for me.

Despite arriving ten minutes late (on purpose) we still got there a good five minutes before my parents. They were neatly dressed, their affluence thick in the air. I could barely breathe. We weren’t exactly in a crop top and jeans ourselves, yet any onlookers would have thought my parents sat at the wrong table. Though, that had as much to do with how they looked at me as it did with how we were dressed.

None of us spoke until the waiter came over for our order, and Athy ordered for me as if she knew I couldn’t speak. There was a knot in my stomach, echoes of distant memories bouncing around my head. I couldn’t focus well, any thoughts interrupted by my body complaining, everything sounding a bit muffled, everything looking a bit distant, even my hands feeling rubbery, clumsy, worrying me that I wouldn’t be able to hold the cutlery.

As if they were waiting for me to reach this point, my father finally spoke. “So this is the woman you… married.”

“Yes,” I said, forcing the word out.

“What was that? I didn’t hear you,” he said coldly, his mouth resting in something like a diluted snarl, the top lip ever so slightly pulled up.

I swallowed the lump in my throat, yet it didn’t budge. My every muscle tensed, ready to flinch. In my mind, I played over how the conversation from here would go, how it had gone so many times before, the way he gradually raised his voice, asking me if I was dumb, or hit the table when I tried to speak, scaring the words away. The last time, he’d even loudly asked me if I was drunk, and I’d felt the judging stares of everyone in the restaurant. Yet I didn’t dare invite my parents to my flat or visit them at home.

Trapped in the twilight of past and present, I could only lower my head and hope I wouldn’t cry. And I blamed myself. If I’d told her the truth, she wouldn’t have made us come. I didn’t want to be humiliated in front of her like this, but I’d hoped that it would be different. I hoped that they wouldn’t treat me like that in front of someone else, or that they would have realised I hadn’t met with them in years because of how they treated me.

And then I realised that they might treat her like that.

I pushed through everything and clearly said, “This is my wife, Athy.”

For a moment, I thought he would still insist he couldn’t hear me. However, he simply grunted, and it became my mother’s turn to twist the knife. “Are you keeping her as a pet, then? She keep the place clean and cook you dinners? Goodness knows how desperate you are, I suppose anything would do.”

What I hated most about my parents was that, horrible as they were, they were happy. They loved each other and had friends and hobbies and money and slept easily night after night. The only thing they didn’t have was an obedient daughter married to a doctor or a lawyer, and even then they were all too happy to play the victim to their friends and indulge in their sympathy. Maybe they had once loved me, back when I was a child and still conformed to what they wanted, but I could only remember struggling through my adolescence.

I knew they didn’t love me, that the sole reason they came was because I had some use to them. At that moment, the reason was to torment me, to find pleasure in punishing me for not being the daughter they wanted me to be.

But I don’t think they could ever understand just how successful they were being. Even though my mother degraded Athy like that, I was too broken to say anything, and I broke all the more for saying nothing. My silence compounded just how much I had failed her. Never mind as my wife, as my best friend for a decade, I shouldn’t have been able to let anyone talk about her like that, to reduce her to a thing, and yet whatever righteous anger I might have been able to summon was suffocated by the layers of fear and shame wrapped around my childish heart. Lost, I couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, the world reduced to the painful thumping in my chest, violent and restrained.

Yet, when she spoke, as if her voice came from inside the walls surrounding me, I clearly heard her. “Since Saffy never talked about you, I thought you were terrible parents, but you’re both utterly insane. It’s no wonder she struggled to get on with other people. Really, I’ve stepped in dogshit with better personality.”

In the following silence, I realised it wasn’t just our table that was silent. I looked up, and my parents both had expressions I’d never seen before, too alien for me to even try and recognise.

As long as it felt, I think it was only a few seconds, my parents surely not the type to be so easily cowed. My father turned to me, his eyes more intense than I’d ever seen, and he asked me in a loud whisper, “Are you really going to let this bitch talk to us like that?”

I looked back at him, and I was confused. I was really, really confused. What did he think I would do? Like, did he want me to make her apologise? I knew they lived in their own, twisted reality, but did they really think I cared about them more than her? Or was I supposed to be afraid of them?

Because I was so focused on that, it was like I forgot that I was supposed to stutter and mumble, so I loudly said, “Yes, I am.” I noticed then that other people were looking at us, some with their phones (not so) subtly out, and… it didn’t bother me. Even if they were judging me, the only person there I cared about was on my side.

No doubt worried a fight would start, the waiter served our drinks then; I had to praise his composure, able to say, “Enjoy,” with a straight face.

Of course, my parents were far from finished. However, whenever they started speaking, Athy would hold my hand under the table, and she would simply ignore them and talk to me; I had to listen when she spoke, my brain wired to hear her voice. We’ve been close for so long, I can pick her voice out on a crowded train station, and in fact I have some four times? Maybe five? Anyway, she kept doing that, and I couldn’t really hear my parents any more. I answered her questions and asked my own, smiling, laughing. My neck started to hurt from turning to face her, so I shuffled my chair round a bit.

Still, my mother knocked over a glass of wine and spilt it on Athy’s dress, but Athy laughed it off and didn’t even leave the table. She had me dab at the stain, which so happened to be around her upper thigh, and someone wolf-whistled at us for it. Rather than upset or annoyed by that, I had to giggle. I mean, it must have looked very suggestive, right? Me vigorously rubbing another woman’s thigh. With that in mind, I left her to finish drying it herself.

I don’t really know what my parents did after that. With people watching, I guess they couldn’t be loud enough to get my attention. Well, our food arrived and she kept having me try hers, and so I had her try mine as well, constantly on the verge of giggling as we must have looked so silly feeding each other. We’re thirty-year-old women, not teens. When we finished, she ordered us dessert and coffee; I hadn’t noticed how much I’d drunk, but maybe that was why I felt so giggly. Somewhat sobered, I remember clearly how, at the end of the meal, she helped me stand up and then said to the waiter, “My parents-in-law will be paying,” and tugged me out.

In summary: she called them worse than dogshit, ignored them for half an hour while flirting with their daughter, and then had them pay for dinner.

I wasn’t exactly happy on the way home. I mean, I was happy, but it was more a feeling of contentedness. It’s like, having seen how she treated them, I realised that I really had loved them all this time in the way that hatred is still a form of love. Maybe it’s better to say that you can hate someone you love. There’s not really a good way to say it, but I guess an example is that I thought I had to answer the phone if they rang me; I realised then that I could block their number.

Otherwise, she didn’t apologise for insisting on the meeting, and I didn’t want her to. I didn’t thank her for what she did, and I didn’t think she wanted me to. It’s probably strange, but, when it comes to us, we only apologise or thank each other over small things—if we’re late or bump the table, or if we’re given a cup of tea. If I broke her laptop, of course I would be sorry and pay her to replace it, that’s obvious. And when she buys me an expensive present, I chide her for wasting her money, but of course I cherish it, it just goes without saying.

We got back to her flat midafternoon. I was as tired as after visiting her parents the last weekend, but I also felt a lot better without the threat of my parents hanging over me.

Once we’d taken off our shoes and hung up our purses, I pinched her dress and tugged, making her turn towards me, and then I hugged her. More than that, I embraced her. She was a little cold, not really the best weather to go out in only a dress, but I felt her cheek heat up against mine, so I snuggled my chin between her shoulder and neck. Her arms lightly held me at first, yet my show of affection made her pull me close, almost painful. My breath must have tickled her, because she shivered after I let out a long sigh.

I relaxed my hold on her, and she did the same, the two of us slowly coming apart. Yet, when I could see her face, I went in closer again and kissed her. This time, it wasn’t just a peck. I didn’t really know what I was doing, sort of trying to pinch her top lip with both of mine, and I gently sucked on her lip, which made bizarre and wet sounds that were almost, but not quite, erotic.

We had a long way to go.

Moving on, I kissed along her jawline, coming all the way to her earlobe. And I stopped there, pulling her into a hug as I whispered, “I love you.”

We had a long way to go, and a lifetime together to get there.