Page 86 of This Is Who I Am

“Hello, ladies.” Bobby sags into a chair. “What are we talking about?”

“Your woman crush on Estelle.” Hunter blows his husband a kiss.

“I’m so happy she came back.” Bobby finds my gaze. “Thank you, Cassie.”

I blow him a kiss as well because there’s no telling what would have happened if Bobby hadn’t coaxed Estelle to Suzy’s party, although I’d like to believe she would have come back regardless. Because we belong together.

CHAPTER42

ESTELLE

THREE MONTHS LATER

I got exactly what I wanted. How, I still don’t know, but I’m celebrating my fiftieth birthday with Cass, and our friends, in Clearwater Bay.

It’s not a huge bacchanal like Suzy had for her fiftieth, but it’s more than I could ever have dreamed of. Cass has made us a delicious dinner at our home. A few of my friends from Berkeley have made the trip and every single one of them has complimented me on how relaxed and wholesome I look.

“You’re positively glowing,” my former colleague Diane says, wine glass in hand. “Whatever they’re putting in the water here, I need to bottle it and take it back to Berkeley.”

“It’s not the water,” I say, feeling Cass’s eyes on me from across the room. “It’s the company.”

“And the surfing,” Sadie chimes in, raising her glass. “Our student has become the master.”

“Hardly,” I laugh. “I still wipeout at least once per session.”

“But you get back up,” Devon adds. “That’s what counts.”

Surfing life completely agrees with me, although with winter approaching, I spend much more time indoors with Cass and Gussie.

Despite some inevitable snafus, Bobby and I are having a great time renovating my father’s house. His taste in interior design is much more moderate than his taste in clothes and we always manage to meet somewhere in the middle of the bling and color he likes and the more demure tones—or as Bobby tends to call it: more beige-boring-beige—I prefer.

Working with him, taking everything one step at a time, slowly dismantling the house I grew up in, has been an extra blessing, on top of what being with Cass and surfing have done for me.

For all his grandstanding, Bobby likes to really think things through. We’ve tentatively started talking about going into business together, flipping houses, but we’ll see. I had no idea this is where life would take me after my father died and I have no idea where it will take me next.

I do know that, if she’ll have me—and I think she will—I want to stay with Cass. Beautiful, warm-hearted Cass. She has her good days and her bad days, but don’t we all? The other night, during a night sweat, she yelled she was going to sleep in the walk-in freezer at the restaurant. I barely managed to talk her out of it.

My own periods have become increasingly irregular, but, to Cass’s frustration, although I know she’s secretly happy for me, I don’t seem to suffer much from perimenopause. According to Suzy, I’m one of only a very lucky few—not an experience I’m used to in my life. Although I got more than lucky with Cass.

Whenever the opportunity arises, I take my seat at the table by the window at Savor, like I did when I first arrived here, and Cass woos me with her exquisite food all over again. It’s one of the small-but-big pleasures of my life these days—so, yes, how lucky am I?

I glance around the table, filled with my friends, Cass beside me, and I do—in every fiber of my being—feel like I’m enough. I’m plenty for everyone here. For Sadie and Devon who are my teachers on the waves but, much more than that, who have become friends I can always confide in. For Suzy, who is such a great friend to Cass, she has, by some sort of special osmosis, also become mine. For Hunter and Bobby, the most hilarious gays in all of Northern California, who crack me up on a daily basis.

“To my gorgeous bestie Estelle!” Bobby raises his glass, his voice as loud as his bright yellow shirt. “Who proved, as the gifted mathematician she is, once and for all, that lesbian plus lesbian equals U-Haul!”

Everyone laughs, including me.

“We didn’t move in that quickly,” I protest, feeling my cheeks warm—because we kind of did.

Most of all, I’m enough for Cass. I know because she tells me every day. And, maybe, for the first time in my life, I’m enough for me. For years, I managed to convince my logical mind, with carefully constructed reasoning, that I was. But the mind alone isn’t enough. My heart took its time, but it caught up eventually—because of Cass. Because of how she sees me, accepts me, and loves me exactly as I am.

My gaze wanders to the sideboard where the notebook with the problem my father left me gathers dust. I haven’t picked it up in weeks because I’ve finally accepted that Richard Raymond played one last prank on me. I’ll never know whether it was deliberate or not, but I can choose to believe my father set me an unsolvable problem to delight me and, perhaps, teach me one final lesson before he passed. That most things in life are not neat like a perfectly solvable math problem. That solutions are sometimes hard to come by, and that’s okay. Not every problem needs to be solved. The world keeps on turning. Life keeps on going.

Tonight, my life includes a second slice of birthday cake, Bobby demanding a Madonna playlist, and Cass reaching for my hand under the table, like she always does when we sit next to each other.

And—this is a lesson I learned all by myself—it’s all so much more fun with a wonderful woman by my side.

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