Listen ...Loving Her

LOVING HER: Short Stories of Love and Life Between Women
by L.E. Harvey
Available in Print and All Ebook Formats

She lay on the futon, wrapped up in her blue chenille blanket, not moving. Her ‘80’s ballads CD played “Every rose has its thorn.” She couldn’t even count how many times she heard it today. She didn’t care. It was a dreary, cold, rainy night. She wanted to move, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t do anything. Her bruises, wounds and injuries were tremendous. No words could describe her pain and misery; no actions could take that pain and misery away.

They met at a pizza parlor, when the cute little blonde walked hurriedly by trying to attend to all her tables. It was Philadelphia, a college city, on a Friday night. Of course, it was jammed. A male college student behind the counter handed Linda her the two pies too soon. She wanted to see the blonde again, but she had disappeared into the sea of faces.

Linda handed the young guy the money, took her pies and went outside. Amazingly enough, as she walked out the backdoor, there was the little blonde cutie smoking. She didn’t reach five feet tall. Her shiny, sun colored hair was pulled back into a short pony tail. Her dark blue eyes reflected the stars in the night sky. Both girls paused a moment and smiled sheepishly at each other.

“Hi,” Linda said. Linda’s voice was deep and raspy. Not very feminine, but it was somehow very attractive to Katie.

“Hi, I’m Katie,” the little blonde spoke. Her voice was as cute and bubbly as her face.

“I’m Linda,” Linda replied. She was fishing for something, anything clever to say, but nothing came to her. ”Busy night, huh?” It was pathetic, but at least it started a conversation.

“Yeah,” Katie replied. “Fridays always are. Hopefully I won’t have to put up with this for much longer, though.”

“Oh? How come?”

“I’m a third year vet student at U Penn. Next year is all my clinical rotations and being on-call, so I can’t work here much longer. Thank God!” Katie chuckled.

Linda smiled. “Good for you. I hope – ”

The young guy from behind the counter came out and told Katie she was needed inside.

“I guess I gotta go,” Katie said hesitantly.

"Wait,” Linda begged. Quickly, she grabbed a pen out of her pocket and leaned on the pizza boxes and wrote her number on a napkin. “Here’s my number. If you ever get a free moment and want to – Uhh..Ummm – hang out, just – uhhh – call me – if you want to.” She thought she must have sounded like a babbling idiot, and she didn’t know if Katie understood her level of interest, but Linda prayed she did.

Katie’s face lit up brighter than the moon that hung over her head. “Thanks!” She took the napkin, folded it, put in her pocket, and disappeared quickly.

Two weeks later, Katie and Linda were on their first date, walking through University City District after a very filling dinner at the restaurant of the Culinary School at Walnut Hill College. The conversation had been flowing smoothly all night. It was getting late, but neither girl knew it, they were enjoying themselves too much. As they walked in the crisp October night air, Katie’s watch beeped, signaling that it was midnight.

“I should get back. I have class early in the morning.”

“Ok,” Linda said softly.

As they headed back to Katie’s dorm, Katie mustered up the guts and took Linda’s hand.

Now, silently, they walked hand in hand.