Sarah snorted lightly. “I don’t think that’s going to be a problem. It’s taken us two and a half years to get here, and I suspect Eli will kill me if we don’t sign the damn piece of paper by the time it’s over.”
Bridget scrunched her nose up and filled another bag. She wasn’t sure where to interject or what to even say. She let the two of them talk for a while, but when Kara stopped and reached over to still Sarah’s hand, Bridget realized Sarah was shaking.
“What’s wrong?” Bridget asked, her eyes wide as she waited for the bomb to drop.
Sarah shook her head, took in a slow breath and let it out equally as slow. When she looked up and made eye contact with Kara, she seemed to have herself under control again.
“What was that?” Bridget questioned, bringing the attention in the room back to her.
Sarah shrugged. “I have anxiety, and with all these people coming and so much going on, it’s been getting the best of me lately. Eli and I have made it work two and a half years with the long distance and lots of time apart, but I do wonder sometimes just how long we can make it.”
“As long as you both want,” Kara interjected.
Bridget pursed her lips. Anxiety. She’d heard the term before, so it wasn’t anything new, but seeing someone work through a moment like that so quickly was. Cocking her head to the side, Bridget busied her hands with another bag, mulling through the thought. Conversation got away from them again, but she couldn’t let it go.
“What does anxiety look like? For you, I mean.”
“Oh. Well.” Sarah set down the bag she’d been working on. “Mostly I think of the worst-case scenario all the time. Doesn’t matter if something good is happening or not. It’s really hard to stay focused on the good and not let the negative in. In fact, sometimes it gets so bad that it affects me physically.”
“What do you mean?” Bridget settled and looked Sarah straight in the eye, absorbing as much of the information as possible.
Sarah glanced at Kara. “I get really bad stomach pains, and sometimes I’m so tense that Eli swears my shoulders are rock hard.”
Bridget smiled lightly in response to Sarah’s smile, but at the same time, she remembered Eli telling her the same thing. Every word Sarah said twisted something inside her, calling her, as if this was what she had been struggling with for so long. “How do you deal with it?”
“Different ways. Deep breathing exercises, distraction, obsession.” She laughed at the last one. “Music for instance.”
“Makes sense, I guess.”
“Some days. Every day is different but the same. Sometimes I just have to focus on the good. Eli is really amazing at bringing that out for me.”
“Yeah, she is,” Kara chimed in. “I’ve seen Sarah’s anxiety lessen in the few years she’s known Eli. It’s been amazing.”
Sarah’s look softened. Kara raised an eyebrow at her in response, and Bridget felt as though she was missing some silent communication.
“My girlfriend, Alicia, had some issues with anxiety. She’d actually be pretty pissed if she knew I moved back here, but she’d have to get over it.” Kara frowned as she tied the next bag up.
“Why doesn’t she know you moved?” Bridget started a new bag.
Kara sighed. “Alicia died in a motorcycle accident, shortly after I found out I was pregnant. I moved here because this is where she was from, and since we weren’t married, I had zero say in what happened after she died. Her parents dragged her back here and buried her here and pretended I didn’t exist.”
“Oh my God, that’s awful.”
Nodding, Kara tied the next bag a bit harder. “They have since acknowledged our daughter, although they don’t really want much to do with her.”
“Why? She’s the last legacy of their daughter.”
“She is, except they didn’t have a daughter. They had a son. So to them I am a memory of the child they lost, the reason they lost her, and my daughter is the product of something they could never approve of.”
“I’m so sorry, Kara.” Bridget’s heart broke at the thought.
Then she remembered her own parents, thinking they would react in much the same way when she came out. They wouldn’t accept her. She knew that as a fact. She had very little hope of it every happening. Yet she still wanted to do it. It wasn’t to prove a point—it wasn’t to make them like her more or understand her. They would never be able to do that.
She wanted to come out to them for herself. She wanted them to know who the real Bridget was, the real woman they had raised. She didn’t want to hide anymore. No matter if they didn’t like her or care for who she was, she wanted to be herself. She wanted to be able to walk down the street with Jerica and hold her hand. She wanted to be able to get married, in public, and have her friends and whatever family would accept her come to the wedding to celebrate her and make their own damn party favors.
Raising her gaze, Bridget looked Kara right in the eye. “How did Alicia deal with her parents?”
“She didn’t. She moved away and cut them out of her life. They came and collected her because they had to. They acknowledged our daughter because I’m not going to hide who she is, and I want her to know who her other mother is, the one who wanted her and loved her even though she’d only just found out about her.”