Midnight Rain: a Those Who Wait story

by Haley Cass

“Close race,” she said, and her voice sounded a little hoarser to her ears than it should have been. “Did you vote for me?” Charlotte asked, and her voice was a little quieter than it should have been. There was a playful tone there, but there was also an underlying serious one. Sutton’s heart beat a little faster at the truth of her answer, and despite the voice in the back of her head telling her to move away, she instead turned to look at Charlotte, who was already staring intently at her, waiting for her response. She looked, honestly, like Sutton’s answer meant a lot. “Of course I did,” she whispered, though those words shouldn’t have been a whisper. They shouldn’t have been a confession or a secret or anything of the sort, but they felt sacred, still.

“What is it you want me to say? Do you want me to say that it’s Sutton for me, it’s only ever been Sutton, and I can’t imagine how it ever won’t be? Do you want me to say that I’ve spent the last thirteen years with this wanting inside, with this wondering what could have been if only I’d made a different decision? That every time we text, I feel both elated and insane, because how have those feelings not gone away? Fine, there, I said it.”

She heard it as Charlotte murmured, “I know we’re being friends, I know that.” Dark eyes slid so slowly over Sutton’s throat, watching the way she could feel herself swallowing heavily, likely noting the way her heart hammered unstoppably at her pulse point. She knew it because she knew Charlotte was just as acutely aware of what Sutton looked like when she wanted. After all, it had been Charlotte who’d shown Sutton what it was like to really want in the first place. “And I know that means I shouldn’t say this…” She lifted her gaze to Sutton’s. “But I don’t think we were meant to be only friends, Sutton,” Charlotte declared, and Sutton’s mind went reeling with the statement. “I wasn’t put on this earth to be your friend.”

“We were simply not made to be just friends, Sutton Spencer,” Charlotte finished as she dropped her hand.

“You were the one who stopped us back then,” she pointed out. Her heart pounded in her chest as she stepped even closer to Charlotte. She kept the hold she had, firm but not gripping, on Charlotte’s wrist, keeping her there. But Charlotte wasn’t pulling back. Instead, she leaned against the counter and nodded. “I know.” “You were the one who wanted to be only friends back then,” she reiterated. “I know,” Charlotte confirmed, her voice soft, and this time, Sutton’s eyes followed the column of Charlotte’s throat as she swallowed hard. Sutton didn’t even think as she stepped up even closer, boxing Charlotte in against her counter. She stared down at her, unable to even properly place the feelings raging through her if she tried. “I didn’t want to stop sleeping together. I only ever wanted you,” she confessed, not even able to find a shred of her youth’s embarrassment at the words. “You drove me crazy, and I thought about you constantly. About the way you made my body feel. About how much I wanted to touch you. You can’t say you don’t believe we were meant to be just friends when you were the one who ended that.” Charlotte angled her chin up at Sutton, melting against the counter, against Sutton’s body. She could feel the press of Charlotte’s chest against hers, how fast her heart was beating. Or maybe that was Sutton’s own heart. She didn’t know. She just knew that… she wanted. She wanted clarity, she wanted to be able to see this – them – clearly, and she desperately, deeply...

And yes. She agreed that they were not physiologically ever meant to be just friends. Whatever that could possibly mean, however that sort of chemistry worked.

“But I do have one regret, Sutton. The only thing I look back on with regret is whether I should have come out sooner. If I should have given myself the opportunity to pursue a real relationship sooner.” “No.” Sutton shook her head, closing her eyes tightly. “No.” Even in the last month, even amid the resurgence of their sex life, they had never revisited the past. The past was the past, and Sutton liked it exactly where it was. They didn’t discuss Charlotte breaking Sutton’s heart. They didn’t discuss everything that had been said and unsaid back then. It was for the best. “Yes,” Charlotte insisted, ignoring their unspoken rule. “Because I’ve only been in love once. And it’s the reason I’ve never been able to meaningfully date, even after coming out.”

“You are. You are, though, because I was in love with you, Charlotte Thompson!” The words exploded from Sutton, from somewhere so deep inside of her, somewhere that had been bottled up and pushed down long ago. “I was so, so in love with you, and I was fine with you not coming out. I was fine with us not labelling what we were to one another. I was completely fine with that, and you still ended it.” That was Sutton’s painful truth. That she would have continued to live, for an indeterminate amount of time, by Charlotte’s career. And even then, it hadn’t been enough. The hard, shattering truth that she’d had to accept in order to move on so long ago was that if Charlotte had truly loved her, it would have been enough. “And I deluded myself into thinking that you might have felt the same way, until I had to eventually accept that you didn’t. Because if you had felt what I felt, you wouldn’t have been able to walk away.”

Charlotte jumped from her perch in her chair, unable to contain the energy inside of her. “You weren’t the only person who was shattered when things ended between us, Sutton.” Though Sutton tried to deny it, the painful edge to her voice was unmistakable. Charlotte stood directly in front of her before dropping to her knees, her hands falling on Sutton’s thighs, her grip warm and desperate. “I wasn’t okay with not labelling what we did back then any longer.” Her hold tightened, as if Sutton’s heart-pounding attention could stray from her for even a single moment. “Because I was so deeply in love with you, I couldn’t see straight anymore. I wasn’t seeing anything correctly, not even my career. And that terrified me. So I ended it. And I was wrong.”

“Yes,” Charlotte insisted, clearly not needing Sutton to speak her mind when she could read her thoughts. “And I’ve hated myself for it so often over the years because you moved on, darling, but I never did.”

“I was wrong to walk away from you then. To walk away from us. From everything we could have been together, everything we could have built. And I’ve never felt it, this thing we have, with anyone else, no matter how much time passes.”

“So if it means having you, then I won’t run for president.”

“I love Sutton,” she confessed, and the words felt so—so nice to say. Freeing. Validating. It made her laugh, strangely, wildly, as she carded a hand through her hair. “I do. I love her, and I want to be with her in the very real, undeniable, not-discreet relationship kind of way. But… what does my life look like without my career? Who am I without it?”

“I just think that, in the grand scheme of things, that aimlessness and devastation is worse than the uncertainty. “You’re gifted with a dedication and ambition and intelligence that so many people would die for,” she stated, a passion blazing through her words. A passion so strong, frankly, it was surprising to Charlotte to hear from her typically very controlled assistant. “But you also seem to have found yourself in love with someone who knows all of you and loves all of you. Who couldn’t help but fall back into feelings with you even after you broke her heart. Whom you’ve spent more than a decade never getting over. So, to be entirely honest, who cares? Who cares what you’ll do after this?” She gestured at Charlotte’s work laptop on the table. “You are brilliant and ambitious and dedicated; you don’t have to do this one career—this one-in-a-billion career—to utilize that. You will figure it out.”

“All I mean is… it doesn’t actually seem as difficult of a choice as you’re making it. Sutton is understandably scared. It’s scary to trust people that hurt you so badly. But if she is what you want, then it’s time to stray from the course and put your ambition and dedication into making her see what you’ve let me see today.”

“What I don’t know is if I can live my entire life without you and be happy without you. I told you on New Year’s that I made a mistake in giving you up last time, and I can admit that. But I know who I am, and I learn from my mistakes. I spent over ten years wondering what life could have been like if I’d been brave and chosen you before. I will not spend the rest of my life wondering what we could have been if I’d been brave this time.” The utter shock on Sutton’s face was palpable. It felt very in line with the way Charlotte could feel her heart pounding, her blood rushing in her ears. “My life is—and always has been—the result of my choices. Let me choose you, Sutton.”

“I’m not leaving, Sutton,” Charlotte stated with such assurance that Sutton knew that Charlotte hadn’t even contemplated it. “I don’t want the chance to walk out the door. If anything, I want you to lock the door behind me while I’m in here next to you.”

“Seeing you again felt like some sort of sign from the universe. A phenomenon that I do not even believe in.”

“My grandmother was right, as she so often was. Being with you had been the happiest I’d ever been in my life. So when we ran into one another again, I couldn’t let you go. I didn’t know how we could possibly get where we are right now, but I knew that, well, you really are a light in my life, darling. That’s how I feel about you. And why I’m so sure about pursuing this, despite⁠—” She was cut off as Sutton surged forward, pressing her lips against Charlotte’s.

“I don’t think that’s the most important thing to focus on, though. I know why you do, but I think the most important thing for you to know is that I’ve never stopped being in love with Sutton. Out of all of the regrets I might have in my life, missing all of that time with Sutton because I didn’t know how to get out of my own way will be the worst moment I have to live with. But I learn from my mistakes, and I’m not going to make the same ones again.”

“Good things really do come to those who wait.”

Ayyy we love when someone slides in the title of the book lol