By Amanda Steel
I wondered what I was doing there as I watched Adrian dancing with some guy he’d just met. He had told me I should go to a nightclub at least once in my life, because life was too short and I could die tomorrow. I was only 23. As much as I wanted to die right there and then, I knew I probably wouldn’t for a long time.
I couldn’t dance.
As if reading my thoughts and taking them as a challenge, a pretty blonde woman who seemed to be around my age caught my eye from across the room. She smiled, and I wondered if I knew her. Or maybe this was one of those embarrassing situations where if I smiled back, it would turn out that she was smiling at someone behind me.
I turned to look as discreetly as I could, but behind me, there were only more people dancing, drinking, or both.
Nobody else had noticed her.
When I turned back, she was walking toward me.
“You’re not dancing,” she pointed out.
I stopped myself from remarking on her observation skills.
“No, I can’t dance. I’m just here with my friend over there.” I pointed to Adrian, who was whispering something to his new friend.
“Neither can he,” she said.
We both laughed. Adrian might have been a good friend most of the time, when he wasn’t talking me into going to places that I didn’t want to be, but his dancing skills were non-existent.
“You have a nice smile,” she told me, then introduced herself as Sarah.
“I’m Amanda,” I said, wondering what I was meant to say next. I wasn’t great with new people. That’s probably why Adrian kept talking me into things, hoping that someday, I’d suddenly be “cured” and would no longer be the shy, awkward friend who wasn’t out having fun all the time.
Sarah took my hand before I had time to argue, then led me onto the dance floor.
“Just follow my lead,” she said.
It seemed easier with her there, and I just moved in the same way she did.
We didn’t talk until the song had finished, then she offered to buy me a drink, and we found a slightly quieter corner and managed to have a half-shouted conversation over the music.
Sarah told me she was from Leeds and had lived there her whole life. As I’d grown up in Bradford, I knew some of the places she talked about. I had moved to Manchester not long before, but was visiting Adrian for the weekend. He was probably the only friend from school I kept in touch with. We were two of the most bullied children at the school I attended for almost a year.
Sarah openly talked about her last girlfriend and how things had ended six months earlier. I told her about the only relationship I’d had up until that point, which was with a guy in Nottingham who abused me physically and emotionally, often threatening to kill himself if I left. I’d felt responsible for keeping him alive, which sounded ridiculous to me even as I said it.
Sarah didn’t mince her words and told me that was nonsense, only using much stronger language than that.
I didn’t question why I was being so open with her. We’d only just met, but she was so easy to talk to. It didn’t feel like I needed to be anyone but myself.
After years of trying to fit in and feeling like I didn’t belong in most circles, she listened and made me feel accepted.
When the last song came on, Adrian came over and jokingly said, “Get back on the dance floor, you two lovebirds.”
Three hours had passed so quickly, and I felt flustered at his words and disappointed that the night was almost over.
I wasn’t a lesbian though, and despite a few one-off experiences that I could explain away at the time, I had always been interested in men.
Yet, when Sarah leaned in and kissed me, I didn’t pull away. I moved closer and let it happen, getting caught up in the moment, until Adrian’s laughter made me remember where I was.
“I said, I’m going back to Stuart’s place, but I can get the taxi to drop you off at mine on the way.”
As it was late and the buses had stopped for the night, I agreed, and said goodbye to Sarah.
She took hold of my hand, and I thought she might kiss me again, as I struggled to understand the disappointment in the pit of my stomach when she didn’t.
But she put a piece of paper in my hand, which I realised had her telephone number written on it. I took it and thanked her, then left with Adrian and Stuart.
All the way back to Adrian’s flat, I couldn’t stop thinking about that kiss. I barely even noticed the two of them making out in the seats behind me.
The next morning, I went back to Manchester, with my head full of questions. I wanted to call Sarah, but I wondered if she would even remember me.
My self-doubt told me that if she kissed me so easily like that, then maybe it meant nothing to her. That she kissed random women in clubs all the time. And what did it even mean anyway?
I was straight… Except for that time when a girl I was friends with at school kissed me, but never spoke to me again after and I pushed it to the back of my mind. Or the job I had where I found myself thinking a lot about a woman I worked with…
So, maybe I was bisexual, I relented.
Still, would Sarah be happy to hear from me if I called?
I kept hold of her number, but I couldn’t bring myself to call.
Then a week later, I was waiting in the laundrette, and I took out my phone, not brave enough to call, but I sent a text.
It just read: It’s Amanda from last week. Do you remember me?
Her message came back within a few minutes, saying of course she did, and that she thought I had “lost” (in quotes) her number.
I found myself typing that I didn’t know if she would want to keep in touch.
Her response was that she wouldn’t have given me her number if she didn’t want to hear from me, as if it really was that simple. And she asked me if I thought she went around kissing women in clubs all the time.
Luckily, the laundrette was empty, because that made me laugh. That’s exactly what I had wondered.
We spent the next hour texting until my phone credit ran out, as we didn’t have unlimited text bundles back then.
A week later, on Valentine’s Day, she tried to surprise me by turning up at my flat to spend the day together, but realised on the way that she didn’t have my address, so had to call me and ask.
It became my best memory of Valentine’s Day. We had breakfast, walked along the canal, before I stopped to kiss her, then we just sat and talked for hours, discussing everything we hadn’t had time to in the club.
It would be decades later before I eventually realised I was bisexual, despite the six-month relationship Sarah and I went on to have. Unfortunately, that was cut short when she died, but she will always be my first love and have a special place in my heart.
Amanda Steel lives in Manchester, U.K., and is the author of the forthcoming poetry chapbook,Before and After the Storm, which explores the relationship mentioned in her essay, sharing her experiences of love and loss.