Page 26 of Maybe Some Other Time

One with her children. With Sandy for midweek afternoon delights.

Sandy…

Thelma’s attempts to hold back her tears of frustration and love lost did not quite work.

While she didn’t shed the sobs that threatened to destroy her in public, her body still hiccupped, and her right hand smacked against her face to hide the scrunching nose and wibbling lips that she swore she would hide from Gretchen.

“Ah…” That same woman swung around, looking for anyone who might be watching them. When it was clear that no one was sweeping in to save them from themselves, she turned back to Thelma, saying, “I’m sorry.”

Thelma swung her hands down to her sides and sniffed so hard that she felt her snot roll around her brain. She refused to rub her nose, though. That was unladylike in the present company.

“I just don’t know what to do,” she muttered. “And now I’ve definitely embarrassed myself in front of you. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to dump all of that on you.”

“Nah. It’s cool.” Gretchen’s attempt to play off how awkward this was did not go unnoticed, but Thelma was in no space to pay what it was due. “I know what it’s like to feel how you do. My parents… well, they didn’t take too well to my being gay.”

“You mean a homo—”

“Yeah, yeah, a big homo. That one.”

Thelma swallowed her sadness, nodding. “My parents never knew. Nobody knew. I would have… I would have died for them to find out… just…” She hiccupped again.

“Unfathomable.” Her brain went blank trying to imagine what it would have been like to be caught with someone like Sandy.

Even if it was Bill… even if he was willing to forget it or at least talk about it…

No. Impossible. Every particle in Thelma’s body refused to acknowledge it.

“Feels good to finally say it out loud, I guess.”

“Wait, you mean I’m the first one you’ve willingly outed yourself to?”

Thelma shrugged. “Is that so strange?”

“No, just… wow. Kind of honored.” Gretchen unexpectedly opened her arms. “Do you want a hug?”

A little gasp once again knocked Thelma off balance. “A hug would be lovely.”

Gretchen took one step toward her, but Thelma did not bridge the gap between them.

She was too tentative, too wrapped up in her own head to know how to hug someone who just saw her as her.

Gretchen didn’t know anything about Thelma’s truth.

She would never believe it. Gretchen was a grounded woman who believed in what was in front of her.

Me. I’m in front of her.

Did that mean Gretchen believed in Thelma? In what she was going through?

Thelma relaxed her arms and took a tiny step forward. She almost shrieked in surprise when Gretchen hugged her with such strength that Thelma was liable to fall to the pavement if she was immediately released.

The seconds froze into one long moment that Thelma couldn’t count.

She slowly wrapped her arms around Gretchen’s middle, savoring the natural warmth and softness of someone else’s body.

I can hear her heartbeat. Above the traffic.

Above the pigeons. Above even the noise in her own head that hadn’t shut up in a good long while.

But it was Gretchen’s arms around her that were most idyllic.

Thelma closed her eyes and leaned her cheek against a sloping shoulder that curved into a firm bicep.

There it is. The earthy scent of another’s body.

Thelma didn’t care about sweat, nor was she put out by hot breath hitting the back of her neck.

It had been so long since she experienced an embrace like this.

Empathy and friendly, helpful love poured into her as she realized there was someone in the future who could get to know the messed-up Thelma and embrace her.

It was the purest hug of her life.

She could have stayed there for the rest of the day, immortalized as a statue and left to serve as a memorial to the fallen time travelers who had never felt such wholesome kindness again.

Because when Thelma held Gretchen close, she forgot about the loud, fast cars, the devices attached to people’s hands, and the plasticky clothing that rubbed her skin raw out there in the heat.

There were only the two of them, and whatever God still watched over her.

“ Let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing…”

“Whoa…” Gretchen’s feet slightly tilted as Thelma pushed herself deeper into the other woman’s hold. “That’s quite the grip you’ve got.”

“Sorry.” Thelma’s voice was muffled as she spoke into Gretchen’s shoulder. “It just feels good to hold somebody.”

“Yeah… I know what you mean.”

When Thelma feared she might wear out her welcome, she pulled away, allowing her fingertips to linger on Gretchen’s T-shirt. Their eyes briefly met, but Thelma’s bag smacking against her was all it took for her to resume life as it had been before they hugged.

“Thanks for hearing me out,” Thelma said. “I’ve been a right mess ever since I got here. I guess you could say it wasn’t my choice. I’m very grateful for Robbie taking me in, but…”

Gretchen held up her hand. “I get it. And no problem. We all need someone, sometimes.”

“I better head back,” Thelma said with a small smile. “Before he notices I’m missing.”

She took a dramatic step back toward the library, her skirt swishing around her legs. Gretchen’s voice suddenly smacked her in the back of the head.

“What are you doing this weekend?”

Thelma stopped, but did not push her head completely over her shoulder to look back. She held her bag to her chest like a schoolgirl on her way home. “No plans. Why?”

“Let me get you out of that house, huh?”

Thelma suppressed the grin attempting to kill her. “All right. It’s a date.”

“Now, I didn’t say…” Gretchen was more flustered than any of the boys who attempted to talk to Thelma on her way home from school. It’s adorable. Especially the red on her face that almost matched the color of her shirt. “Nah. You’re right. It’s a date.”

This time, Thelma let her see the full brunt of her smile.

“I look forward to it.”

She hurried back to the library. When she found Sandy’s book right where she left it, she looked at the picture of her old lover on the back cover, wondering what it would have been like to grow old alongside her.

“So, what do you think?” Thelma held the book up before her, thumb lightly rubbing Sandy’s laminated face. “Is she cute? Do you approve?”

She was giggling before she could anticipate an answer from a photograph.

Because Thelma was a teenager again, making her way home from her after-school poetry club, where she was exposed to Sappho for the first time.

Hidden in the back of a Classics poetry book.

Most of the other girls had no idea what they were reading, but Thelma had a good idea.

It was one of the first things to truly spark that part of her heart.

Someone had stopped her on the way home. It was a classmate, Esther, who lived two streets away from the Ericksons.

“I really love your blouse today, Thelma,” the popular girl who was dating the class president said. “It accentuates your figure nicely.”

Ten years of aging and seventy years on Earth later, Thelma was still giggling. Compliments from other girls did her in harder than a single kind word from a boy.