Anjali's Red Scarf Ch. 12

"Mmm-hmm."

"And then, uh, Anjali and I had a talk. She told me...I can't remember if I discussed this with you before. A while back I offered to go to Switzerland with her for a while, maybe share a place. She said no."

Lucy nodded. "She called me last week. She was worried about how you'd take it. How are you taking it?"

"Not sure. Feeling sad but I'm not sure exactly what part I'm sad about. I don't know if it's about losing what we had or about...I guess it was a bit of a fantasy, the Switzerland thing, not having to deal with her parents and not having to hide. Or maybe ego."

"I wouldn't be upset if you told me you were a little bit in love with her."

"Maybe a little?" I remembered, belatedly, that going to Switzerland would have meant not being with Lucy. Somehow I had never joined those dots; I had worked out a solution for me-and-Anjali without ever considering what it would have meant for me-and-Lucy. Tunnel vision. "Shit, I'm sorry, I came here to listen to you, not to dump my stuff on you."

"It's okay." She sighed. "Better than me gabbling about things I fucked up years ago. Look, I don't know if it's any comfort, but maybe you should be a little proud that she said no to you."

"What? Proud?"

"Easiest way to hang onto somebody," she said, refilling her glass from the tap, "is to make them think they can't live without you. I think you have enough sway over Anjali that if you'd told her that, she'd have believed you. But you helped build her up into the kind of girl who's able to say no when she needs to. Even to somebody she admires. Isn't that something to be proud of?"

I frowned, trying to make sense of this unexpected paradox. "I can't tell if you're serious or messing with my head."

"Not something I'd joke about. I know what she means to you. Well, a bit of it, anyway." She was fidgeting in her chair. "Hey, can we go for a walk? I need to get out of here, I think."

"Sure?"

So we went for a stroll around the neighbourhood, down to an old children's park. It was just beginning to drizzle, cold spring rain, but we were dressed for it.

"I broke up with Pippa three years ago last Thursday," she said. "Or was it four? I remember the date, right now I'm fuzzy on the year. Anyway." A loud sigh. "Took her years to forgive me. Sometimes it still feels like I made the wrong call. But I just couldn't go on the way I was. Needed to go do something with my life, even if it meant leaving her behind. Sarah, listen, Anjali asked me what to do, I told her that if she needed to go then she should do that. I swear I wasn't trying to break you two up but...I had to tell her. I'm not going to lie to you about it."

"It's okay," I said.

She peered at me. "I can't tell if you're mad at me. I'm not bad at reading people but sometimes you're a tough one, Sarah."

"I'm not mad," I said. "And I promise if you want to know, you can ask and I will tell you. No, I'm sad. Still working through it. Don't blame you though."

"Promise?"

"Promise." I took her elbow, pulled her close as we stood to the side of the path letting a cyclist zoom past. "And Lucy, if it happens again, if you message me and you don't hear back from me...please please call, or whatever it takes to get my attention. I swear it's not because I mean to ignore you, just sometimes I get tunnel vision and it takes a lot to get through. But you have permission to nag me if I need to."

"I'll try to remember that." She smiled sourly. "I'm not great at asking for help. Feels like I'm imposing, and I don't want to wear out my welcome." I started to argue, but she cut me off. "I know it's irrational, but sometimes the feelings are louder than the facts."

"Anything I can do?"

"Maybe, uh...it feels like it's always me making contact, arranging to hang out, asking if you want lunch. Then the insecurity starts feeling like you're just saying yes to spare my feelings."

"Oh! So if I initiated that more? I can do that." I took out my phone.

"Yes, that—" She stared at me. "Sarah, are you setting a calendar reminder for talking to me?"

"Yes? Is that bad?"

"No, I—well, I guess, whatever works."

I nodded. We were at the park now and without consciously thinking about it we'd slowed down, just ambling around the creaky swings and slippery-slide, wet tanbark underfoot. "Lucy, how serious is the drinking?"

"I've been worse. Could be better. Running low on sick days for work. Usually it's fine, just sometimes something catches me, and I tell myself I'll just have one this time, and it's never just one. If I was staying in a place of my own, I'd just keep it dry and reduce the temptation, but this one came pre-stocked."

"I have—" I was about to say room in my apartment and I can keep it dry easily enough but that would have been a terrible idea, rushing from one thing into another before the dust had even settled. Instead I stopped for a moment, unsure what to do with the sentence, until my brain supplied something else. "I feel like you're the sort of person who's better at keeping promises to other people than to herself."

"Fair, I guess."

"Here's an idea, tell me if it's stupid. I come around once a week, I take a count of all the alcohol in the house, I see whether it's changed since last time. If it hasn't, that will be great. And if it has, well, I'll keep an eye on things and I'll nag you if it looks like it's getting out of hand."

"You'd do that?"

"Uh huh."

"You're trusting that I wouldn't go out and buy stuff to replace what I've had."

"I'll ask you then."

"How will you know if I'm lying?"

I shrugged. "I trust you. And, tell you what, when do your aunt and uncle get back?"

"Just after Christmas."

"If you make it that far without slipping...you get a reward. Your choice, within reason."

She looked at me for a while, eyes narrowed, and then grinned. "I know exactly what I'm asking for."

* * * * *

The last few months of 2017 were a peculiar time, one of those times in life where everything in flux and you can only wonder what it's all going to look like when the music stops.

The marriage survey went on. I couldn't walk down the street or switch on the TV without being smacked in the face with somebody's opinion about whether people like me were a threat to the fabric of "the family". I very nearly invited one of my co-workers to fuck off when he started making cracks about trans people, but settled for just playing dumb and saying "I don't get the joke, can you explain?" until he got uncomfortable and fucked off of his own accord. Since I wasn't seeing her any more, I redirected my Anjali money to the equality campaign. I felt sick to my stomach on the day the results were announced, and then elated when I heard we'd won, and then I got maudlin thinking about all the people who'd been waiting decades for that right and the ones I'd known who hadn't quite made it.

I made the effort to check in with Lucy most days, and once a week on Tuesday nights I'd drop over to audit her aunt and uncle's liquor supplies. She slipped more than once, but each time she fell off the wagon she'd tell me about it before I could even ask, and these setbacks were shorter and shallower than before. We'd take turns to make dinner, and sit and watch movies and talk about work or her or me, and it didn't feel at all the same as spending time with Anjali.

When I was eight I went through a big Superman phase. It wasn't that I wanted super-strength and x-ray vision, and I wasn't yet ready to appreciate his quiet implacable goodness. Rather, he felt a kindred spirit to my own sense of alienation, growing up so far from a home that no longer existed.

At eleven I discovered Doctor Who, starting with the telemovie and then working my way through novelisations from the school library. I was fascinated by the Cybermen, humans become machines, and equally so by the Doctor, last of his kind.

At twenty-one I found it once more in Bowie as The Man Who Fell To Earth, yet another alien whose disguise as a human becomes a prison.

Then came Anjali, and from our first meeting I knew she was one of my kind. For all the differences in our backgrounds, speaking with her came naturally and easily in a way it seldom did with others. With her, I never felt like I was translating myself in order to be understood.

I was intensely fond of Lucy, but there was no doubt that she and I were made of different stuff. When I was with her, I knew I was in the presence of one of the locals. It took me quite some time to realise what this particular local was about.

Lucy would share her favourite music and movies with me, and watch my reactions, then ask me afterwards what I'd thought about them. Or we'd play a board game, and afterwards she'd ask me why I'd chosen one particular gambit instead of another. Or, on those occasional days when her work had intersected with mine, she'd ask me what I made of the discussions we'd had with others.

Eventually I realised what the point of all these questions was: to learn my language.

"I had so much difficulty reading your expressions," she said. "Normally I'm good at it, but I kept misreading you badly. For a while I thought it was just a matter of learning your tells, but instead, the longer I knew you, the harder it got. Instead, I thought, maybe I should just ask you."

At the time I just nodded. But a week later in the middle of some other, unrelated conversation, I replied: "I think I know why it got harder to read me."

"Oh?"

"Trust. When somebody's a stranger, I put a lot of work into remembering to smile and manage my tone of voice and all the rest of it. But the more I trust you, the less I think about what I need to project to you, and the more I can just focus on what you're saying and what I think about it."

"Huh. Okay, that makes sense..."

And over time, she got better at it, not by learning how to interpret my face, but by hearing how I thought. It still didn't come as naturally to me as hanging out with Anjali. But some things have to be worked for.

Had it been almost anybody else, that level of attention might have been creepy, being studied like some rare beetle. But from Lucy it felt like a compliment: You are worth learning. And perhaps the reason it took me so long to recognise what she was doing, learning my ways, how to communicate with me, was that I'd only ever seen it from the other side.

I'd spent a lifetime learning hacks for social situations. Training myself to make eye contact, but not too much. Reading books on body language to understand what others might assume if I happened to fold my arms or stimmed with a pen while somebody was talking to me. Memorising scripts for sending an email (always begin and end with a salutation) and for a good-bye and for all the other occasions where you can't say what you actually want to say.

Like almost every autistic woman, I'd taken it for granted that it was my eternal duty to bridge the chasm between me and my neurotypical fellows. I'd never expected to find somebody willing to put in the work from the other side to meet me halfway. Still nowhere near as easy as being with somebody who was born on the same side of things as me; it's not the kind of thing you can take a crash course in, and the self-examination required to answer Lucy's questions was challenging in itself.

But some things feel more valuable for having worked for them, and it is such a feeling to learn that somebody considers you worth working for.

We were cautious. We were friends, and we were co-workers, and we didn't want to prejudice either of those things. Moreover, Lucy had her own work to do. During one of our deep-and-meaningful chats, she told me that a lot of her issues with alcohol came down to self-medication: she had difficulty sometimes keeping her emotions in balance, and when they got too loud for her to deal with, alcohol was a way of blunting things. From my own experience with stimming I knew all too well that taking away somebody's coping mechanisms, without addressing the reasons why they need a coping mechanism, is a recipe for disaster. So Lucy needed to navigate that, getting to grips with the situations that made her need that self-medication, and figure out other ways for dealing with that.

It was a tough enough time for her without further messing with her emotional equilibrium. So we took things very slowly, and didn't talk about how our regular Tuesday evenings were beginning to feel more and more like dates. But we were slowly drifting closer together, and I was starting to think I might like that.

And yet, and yet, and yet.

I missed Anjali. I liked Lucy more and more with every time we talked, but it didn't make me miss Anjali any less.

We weren't dating and she'd had to give up the evenings at Games Pixie, but we were still in touch online. We'd chat regularly about German separable verbs, about how she was structuring her thesis, about anything other than us. I found myself missing the smell of her hair and the warm presence of her body against mine. I wrote a lot of ill-advised flirtations and deleted them all unsent. Whatever it was that I felt for her, I couldn't quite let it go.

* * * * *

Lucy and I bailed early on the office Christmas party that year. It was too loud to talk comfortably and well-meaning people kept offering us drinks; I could see Lucy getting antsy, so I made excuses for the both of us.

The night was still young. I didn't want to ditch Lucy but I didn't fancy our chances of finding anywhere quiet and non-boozy, not in party season, so without thinking I asked her, "Want to see my place?"

She took a moment to respond, which gave me just enough time to belatedly recall that this was a standard form for a pickup line but not enough to do anything about that before she said, "Sure!" By the time I could think of the right words to clarify that I'd just meant it literally, the moment had passed.

I gave her the tour and then we sat by the window, devouring a couple of ice creams and looking out over the city.

"Well," she said, "you've been at P-K a year. What do you think?"

"Starting to settle in. It was all a bit terrifying at first"—she knew how I felt about change—"but I'm getting the hang of it. With your help."

"It's been nice having you around," she said. "And full of surprises."

"You're telling me. Thanks for being there for me."

"Likewise—oh, look!"

Out at Docklands, over the water, purple-blue-green fireworks were blossoming in the sky.

"One of the restaurants does them," I said. "Gotta lure people to Docklands somehow. I get a nice view of the New Year's fireworks from here too. If you're not doing anything"—or if you're avoiding parties, I didn't say—"you could come by for that."

"Oh! You know, I'd love that." She touched my hand, just for a moment, and it was nothing she hadn't done a dozen times before during our lunches, but this time it felt different. "This is a lovely place you've got here."

"I'm fond of it. Hey, your aunt and uncle get back some time soon, right?

"Yes, on the twenty-eighth."

"So you're moving on? How's the house-hunting going?"

She made a face. "I hate real estate agents so much. Everybody talks shit about lawyers, but we're not as bad as real estate. Nowhere near as bad."

"That good, eh?"

"Don't get me started. And it's a bad time of year for it."

Maybe I shouldn't have offered, but I did. "If you need a place to crash for a while, while you're looking..."

She took her time answering. "That's so kind of you, but I'm sure they'll let me stay on for a couple more weeks until I can find somewhere." And then, she added, "Also, Sarah, if I were to move in with you, I don't think I'd want it to be as a temporary thing."

"I understand—"

"And even if you were offering that"—which saved me having to decide whether I was offering—"I'm not quite at the place to be making that kind of long-term decision yet."

"Fair." I felt relieved. "Honestly I still need to get my head straight about some stuff myself."

"Anjali?" she said.

"Yeah. I still...I always knew it had to end at some point, but it was sooner than I was counting on, and that still hurts. She's going away in a few months and I still can't let go of it."

Lucy let me babble on for some time, and when I was done, she leant in and said gently, "What do you think she feels about it?"

"I...I don't think she does?"

Lucy shook her head. "Sarah, Sarah. I've told you before, that girl adores you, and from what she told me, she was quite enjoying your arrangement too. Not just for the money. What makes you think she wouldn't be sad about it too?"

"She's never said anything about it—"

"To you, maybe. I talk to her now and then, and she asked after you. Wanted to know how you're going, if you were okay. Doesn't mean she wants to marry you, but Sarah, I don't think you're the only one there who's sad about how things ended."

"Okay." I absorbed that information. "I'm sorry, Lucy, I know it's weird for you being dragged into this—"

"I don't mind weird. It's not bad weird." She patted my hand again. "Let's get this straight, Sarah. I don't do jealousy. Anjali's not my rival, and you liking her, that's just good taste. Wouldn't bother me if the two of you were still sleeping together. Where it becomes an issue is when you get so wrapped up in moping over her that you can't be present for me—"

"Okay."

"—and that's how I feel things are at the moment. Would that be a fair comment?"

"Yeah. Yeah, it is. I'm sorry. I just haven't figured out how to quite get past it."

"Mmm-hmm. Actually, I had an idea about that. I don't know if it's what you need, but..."

"Okay?"

"You've got some leave saved up, right? You transferred it over when we merged."

"Yeah. Couple of months worth."

"And Anjali submits her thesis in February, so that the referees have time to review it before she starts in Bern in April, right?" A couple of months was a short turn-around for a review, but I gathered one of Anjali's reviewers was part of the same group in Bern she'd be working with, so we weren't expecting too much trouble on that front.

"Yes, she—oh, I think I see where you're going with this."

"Take a holiday. Spend some money, go somewhere nice with her. God knows the poor kid deserves it. Say good-bye properly."

"Really? You think she, she'd go for that?"

Lucy shrugged. "Maybe. Guess you'll never know if you don't ask."

"I think..." I tried to come up with reasons why it wouldn't work, but in the end I realised it wasn't actually my job to reject the idea. "That really would be lovely, if she's up for it. But Lucy, are you sure you're okay with it?"

"Told you, I don't do jealousy. But, look, if you want to make it up to me, I'll settle for the same thing I was going to ask for if I hadn't fucked up...you know...staying on the wagon."

"I wish you wouldn't beat yourself up about that. Everybody gets to fuck up now and then. Give yourself some credit for all the days when you didn't. But okay, I'm curious to know what you were going to ask for."

"I guess you'll find out when you get back."

"Deal."

* * * * *

I phoned Anjali the next day. After recent experiences, I still had qualms about committing certain things to email, and besides I knew if I tried to write an email I'd get stalled trying to find the perfect words. Better to get the words out. Heart in my stomach, I told her what Lucy had suggested, finishing with, "but only if that's something you'd want to do."

"Hmm," said Anjali. "I need to think about that. Can I let you know?"

"Sure," I said weakly, and then, "well, I'd better go and leave you with it."

I was braced for the worst. One of those long silences that stretches out for weeks while I try to guess whether they've forgotten, or if they've already decided no and are just waiting for me to lose interest so they don't have to say it.