Tess squeezes her hand as the plane lands. "High school romances never last," she says to Kat. "It'll be okay." Kat smiles wanly at her, squeezes back, and stares out the window. Her meaningless high school romance was with Joey -- Patrick was supposed to be... something else. Not just some "high school romance" written off as a footnote in her biography.

Bianca and Cameron pick them up, and Kat chickens out --

"This is my friend Tess," she says, and Tess solemmly shakes Bianca's hand, and then Cameron's, and Kat knows she's going to pay for that later, with a long discussion about shame and identity.

"It's so nice to meet you, I'm so glad Kat is making friends, did she tell you about how she totally used to be so popular? It's..." Blah blah blah, Bianca chatters away. Like, whatever.

Kat and Tess sit in the back of Cameron's old dumpy car that has no style like Kat's old dumpy car does, and Bianca chatters the whole way home. She's a junior, studying for the SAT, picking colleges to target. She's going to end up at UW, a Husky like dad, and she's going to be a cheerleader, maybe. Break up with Cameron. Kat watches them, speculating. She bets they've slept together. They were inseparable over the summer, just like Kat and Patrick. But then Patrick went to community college, and Kat went to Sarah Lawrence, which she certainly wasn't going to give up for some boy. Her life isn't a Molly Ringwald movie from 1986, anyway, life doesn't work like that.

Thanksgiving is going to suck.

**

Tess is in the spare bedroom, the one mom decorated before she left. Kat comes in after everyone's in bed, sits on the side of the big double bed. Tess is reading -- Joan Didion. Kat has the same book for the non-fiction essay class, and they've had a million talks already about how Joan Didion betrayed the liberal feminist movement in the sixties by getting married and having a baby right off, and writing essays about it as though her life was hard. Tess thinks Richard Rodriguez is overrated, because even though he writes about the oppression of Mexicans and some other stuff that Kat can't bring herself to be interested in, he's still a man, and he's still infringing on Tess's safe space.

Kat watches Tess read. Tess twirls one of her light brown curls around her left index finger, and chews on her bottom lip, and breathes through her nose, and her nostrils flare. Kat always thinks flared nostrils are funny -- she can't help it. But she's learned, in just a few weeks, not to ever smile at Tess's flared nostrils, because women shouldn't laugh at each other. They should support each other.

When Tess finally looks up, Kat puts her hand on Tess's leg. "I'm sorry," she says.

"What's the point of me being here if you aren't going to tell anyone about us? I should have known better." Tess closes the book and shakes her head. "You kept saying that you were different, that you just hadn't been given the opportunity to break out of the patriarchal high school cycle of forced sexual faux-identity --"

"Tess, you don't understand!" Kat is horrified to hear her voice wobble, but keeps going. "This is complicated. I had a boyfriend. I had a life here -- a heterosexual life -- and that's what people are used to from me. And to just change --"

"Didn't you tell me once that you stopped doing things just because people expected you to do them? And I told you that if you did things just because people were expecting you to do the opposite, that was just as bad." Tess shakes her head. "Whatever, Kat. Like I said, I should have known better."

Kat bites her tongue and doesn't say anything that she's thinking -- Tess can fuck off, she doesn't know what Kat feels, doesn't know how hard it is for Kat to overcome all the years she spent thinking she was heterosexual. Or not, not really, but at least being heterosexual in practice.

**

"Tess is nice," says her father.

She glares at him.

"She seems like a girl with a good head on her shoulders," says her father.

She glares at him.

"I like her a lot more than I like that Patrick kid," says her father.

She looks at the floor.

**

Patrick keeps calling. Kat has Bianca take messages, and Kat hides them from Tess. She's only in town until Sunday; if she can hold out until then, she doesn't have to tell Patrick what's going on. She can just...

Hide.

Which is what Tess is expecting her to do anyway.

The next time Patrick calls, Kat takes the phone from Bianca and talks to him, sitting on the porch where they had their first fight, and also where they had their second fight, and also where Kat gave her first blow job, the night her father was delivering triplets to a forty-six year old woman who actually asked for an epidural instead of a c-section.

It's not that Kat can't remember how good it was. Especially when her father wasn't around. It's just that... it's better with Tess. She and Tess understand each other in a way that Patrick never could understand her. Because they're both women and they both have the bond of common experience, and they both know what it's like to be forced into the role of something they're not.

Which Kat has totally shrugged off -- she hasn't been forced into anything since soph year.

Really.

**

Patrick is still beautiful. He still has those heartbreaking eyes.

"Hello, gorgeous," he says, and leans down to kiss her. She turns her face away, presents him with her cheek. He's confused, and she knows it, and it hurts, but --

Tess comes out.

"So you're the boyfriend," she says shortly.

Sometimes Kat doesn't understand why Tess is with her -- there's so much about her that Tess hates. The fact that a boy -- a man, Patrick is such a man now -- has touched her is one of those things.

"I'm the boyfriend," says Patrick, and winks at Tess. "Who are you?"

"I'm the girlfriend," says Tess, still short. She turns on her heel and goes back inside, and Patrick looks down at Kat.

"Is that my birthday present then?" he asks, but Kat can see it, he's working it out, his eyes are getting dark and his lips tight.

"No," she says, almost whispers.

"Thought not," he replies, and he's angry, he's so angry, and she understands --

"I know you're angry," she starts. "But --"

"But nothing! What is this, Kat, huh? I wait and wait, and you're here with this -- harpy -- and --"

"She's not a harpy! I love her! She's wonderful to me!"

"I was wonderful to you!" cries Patrick, and flings his arms out. "What do you want from me, huh, Kat? I gave you everything -- you wanted space, I gave you space. You wanted me to cut my hair, I cut my hair. I stopped smoking! I --"

"Oh, don't even take the high ground," she snaps. "Joey Donner paid you to go out with me! You stopped smoking because it was part of your job!"

"Aren't you over that yet? I bought you a guitar!"

"Oh, that makes it better?"

"It's been months! Are you really still on this?" Patrick shakes his head. "Okay, Kat. Whatever. You're clearly losing it. What did they do to you at that school you love so much, huh?"

"They helped me see what's really going on in the world!"

"You knew what's really going on in the world." He stops for a moment and takes a deep breath, and she'd say something, anything, but her mind is blank. "Whatever, Kat. Whatever. You're obviously not the girl I fell in love with."

"You weren't in love, don't be ridiculous," she says, but she's kind of stunned, she's kind of dying, she's kind of speechless.

"Don't tell me about my own feelings," Patrick growls, and then he's walking away, walking away, and she knows he's not coming back, not this time.

**

Tess tells her she's better off, and Bianca gives her disapproving looks, and her father is thrilled, since this means she'll never be impregnated.

Kat waits until she and Tess are back in the dorms before she breaks it off.

"You can't give me what I need," she tells Tess, as sincerely as she can. Because Tess can't give her what she needs.

"Oh yeah? Dick?" sneers Tess, and Kat doesn't even care.

"Your expectations oppress my personality," Kat replies.

**

When she goes home for Christmas, she doesn't call Patrick or anything, but she spends some time in the bookstore and the music store. It's not like she's trying to see him, but maybe he'll show up so she can apologize.

But he never does, and Cameron tells her on Christmas Day that he heard from Michael that Patrick is in Paris, dating a Spice Girl and going to cooking school, so Kat figures that means he either went back to Australia, or to Milwaukee again. Or maybe he's just avoiding her.