Chapter 2: Making some new friends
I gave up my Friday night shift bar tending so that I could leave early. That's one of the best nights of the week so there were plenty of people eager to take it from me. And I knew I was giving up several hundred dollars in tips for the night. But as much as I needed the money to pay off my dobro, I needed to see Allie again even more.
Allie and I hadn't talked about any plans for the weekend, so I had packed a variety of outfits. I was running through my head about anything else I would need to bring, but wasn't too concerned; it was just two days. I decided to leave my laptop at home, the last thing I intended to spend my weekend with Allie doing was looking at a screen. But I did check my email first, before leaving.
And after deleting all the spam, ads, and other useless notifications about stupid shit, I saw one from Alex. She was the one I'd met with her fiance, they were at the World Championship last LDTS in Lexington. She let me know that she and Tammy had done what we discussed. They had organized a group for their District Group (to the extent that setting up a website for it is organizing one), and wanted to talk about next steps. Alex would be the DG organizer and Tammy wanted to compete this year. She asked whether we could have a call some time to talk more about it.
I was excited, I always love to see more people get involved in the game. And I felt like they would be serious competitors too. We have very few who really can compete at the level of me and Allie. I think that 9
th
grader from last year - what was him name, Ryder? maybe - he was going to be good soon. He had done really well last year. I had a feeling that Tammy was going to take this seriously, maybe even give Allie a run for her money. I sent Alex a reply, saying I'd love to talk with them about it, and copied Meri so she could get them added to the roster.
I was in such a hurry driving over to see Allie that I'm sure I would have gotten multiple speeding tickets, if the traffic hadn't been dense enough to hold me back. It was moving at a good rate though, so as impatient as I was, I just stuck with the same speed as everyone else. I couldn't wait to tell Allie about the email from Alex, maybe she would want to call them with me over the weekend.
I surprised myself by how excited I was to be going to see Allie, and I was still trying to wrap my head around her being my girlfriend. I had been telling myself for so long that I hated her, it didn't seem possible. Molly and I had been together for over 3 years and I couldn't remember a time I'd been actually giddy to be with her. Contrary to my sister's opinion, Molly wasn't a bitch at all. We'd had a lot of good times together, we just never seemed to be able to connect on an emotional level. Deep down I knew it's because I'm ace, I just couldn't satisfy that need of hers. I wondered if the same thing is going to happen now with Allie.
When I finally arrived and she she ushered me in I saw that Allie's apartment was small, but perfectly adequate. She didn't have much in the way of decorations, everything was functional. If it didn't have a specific purpose, it seemed like Allie wouldn't have it. That seemed so typical of what I knew about her.
She had a lot of books though, and I mean
a lot.
I was kind of envious; OK, a lot envious. I didn't have the money to buy so many books. And until a few months ago I would have had nowhere to put them. I'd had to content myself with spending a lot of time at the library, which I didn't mind at all. But now that I'd bought my grandmothers house maybe I could start acquiring a collection.
"Allie, wow, that's a lot of books. How many of them have you actually read?"
"Almost none of these. These are the ones I'm planning to read this year. All my other ones are at my parent's house because I don't have enough room here. I'll show them to you tomorrow, if you want."
I started to be surprised at first when she said she hadn't read these, but after her explanation it made perfect sense.
Figures, that is exactly something she would do,
I thought in my head. Obviously she would not have books on the shelf that she had already read, that would be superfluous.
"So I'm meeting your parents tomorrow then?" I wasn't sure if I was nervous about that or excited. We'd been dating not even one week yet, but then again, she had met my parents after less than one day. We hadn't planned that though, so it was different, I told myself.
"Yes, we're having breakfast with them, at 8:30. So we have two hours first for coffee together before we go meet them."
I didn't think coffee together in the morning was such a big deal to me (even though I've talked about it a dozen times already in this story), but hearing that Allie specifically planned that into our morning for me was overwhelming.
"Oh Allie!" I rushed to her and threw my arms around her and gave her the biggest, sloppiest kiss ever. "That will be so perfect, thank you!"
When we finally came up for air she was grinning at me.
"You're so easy Jenny, all I have to do is make you coffee and you will eat my pussy," she repeated her words from Sunday morning.
"I'll do it right now if you want me to Allie."
I was learning something about myself: the most important thing about a relationship for me was having my partner do something specifically for me. And it didn't have to be anything big either. Allie would have made herself coffee in the morning anyway so it was nothing special, but she made it special by turning it into two hours we would spend together instead of just getting a dose of caffeine. Molly had never done anything specifically for me, she had just brought me along with whatever she was doing for herself. I thought about what my sister had told me on Monday; then I remembered my mom saying she thought Allie would be good for me. I almost hoped that Allie would ask me to get on my knees and eat her out right there - I totally would have done it.
"I would like you to, if you want to do it later. But you're probably hungry, don't you want to eat first?"
I started to make the predictable lesbian reply to that but Allie saw it coming.
"Not me, Jenny, dinner. Should we have dinner first? We can decide what to do after dinner while we are... having dinner."
She already had dinner ready and waiting for me. And I could see she had put a lot of effort into it (did I mention that Molly rarely even helped me cook?), there was barbequed pulled pork, coleslaw, a bean dish of some sort I didn't recognize, green beans in some kind of sauce/ glaze. This girl was going to get me fat if she was going to make a habit of feeding me like this. And I wondered how she stayed so skinny.
We talked easily through dinner. The food was excellent and I asked her about all her recipes. She explained the way she made each of the dishes and promised to teach me. The bean dish was her own invention, but it was really just a very carefully balanced and prepared mix of standard ingredients. I was not surprised to learn that she kept notes while she was cooking and then again made careful notes of the results, so that she could slightly revise and improve each dish. I also noted that she did not touch the pulled pork, she had made that specifically for me only.
"Allie, about being a vegetarian, do you just not like meat or is there, like a philosophical reason?"
"Right, it's more of a philosophical reason. I like the taste of meat well enough, but I don't like the way that livestock is treated; I don't like the outsized impact that animal production has on the environment. I don't want to encourage that behavior. And I think that with a little imagination, I can make things without meat that taste every bit as good."
"I absolutely agree with you about that. This bean dish is at least as good as the pulled pork, and your BBQ is among the best I've ever had. I'm not going to let this pork go to waste, believe me, but you don't have to make if for me. Honestly, I never really thought about all the problems with animal agriculture, but now that you pointed it out I agree with you about that too. Not saying I'll never eat meat again, but I don't want to encourage it either."
I helped her clear up, and I really enjoyed being in her kitchen with her. I washed dishes while she gathered up the leftovers and put everything away. Nothing seemed like a chore when we were doing it together.
"Oh Allie, guess what? I got an email from Alex, she and Tammy are starting a group up by Pittsburgh."
"Who are they?"
"They are the couple we met at the World Championship last year, remember? They are both engineers, I did an interview with them for the article I wrote."
"Are you sure I met them? I'm pretty sure the only person I met there is you, and only because you made me go to that meeting that I didn't want to go to."
"What are you talking about, you and I met way before that? But I'm hoping to have a zoom call with them, hopefully this weekend. I'm sure you'll recognize them."
"Well I guess you and I did sort of meet before that, you were at the same competitions, but I don't call that really meeting." She paused for a moment, "Jenny you're going to think this is weird, but I can't recognize people's faces very well. Like I have to really know them to recognize them. When you told your mom on Sunday that the first time we met was three years ago, I was surprised. I mean, I remember being there, and talking to someone about joining, but I had no idea that had been you. Well and then....."
"And then, what?" it seemed like she was debating whether to continue.
"There was another woman there too, probably with who probably had been you. And she was kind of a bitch. You know I'm not good at reading people, but it was obvious even to me that she was pretty selfish and inconsiderate. So I kinda didn't like either of you."
