At the Water's Edge (14 page)

I take a sip of whiskey, and another.
Thalia.
So out of my league I just had to have her, if only to prove to myself that, in the end, it could never work. Prove that kind of love was not for me.

“When I met Thalia, I basically lost my mind. Physically, she could not have resembled ‘my type’ more. Sometimes, despite how ugly it ended between us, when I think of Thalia, I still feel it. There was something about her smile that floored me. Something about the way she focused her attention on me when I talked that made me feel as if I were the world’s most fascinating speaker. I met her and I had to give it a try. We met at her art exhibition and, somehow, we clicked. Something fell into place. Love at first sight and all of that. Within a month we were practically living together. All the lesbian stereotype boxes checked.” I exhale a nervous giggle. “It was like the beginning of any new relationship. Intense. Delirious. I was careful to reveal my true self very slowly. Although I think I only started driving her totally crazy around the sixth month.” I glance at Kay: eyes focused, sunk into pensive listener mode. Why am I telling her this? Will it make a difference?

“Thalia didn’t have it all figured out either, but at least she didn’t have my temper. I know I hide it well, but I have an extremely short fuse. When my brain crashes, just like a computer’s hard drive can, everything goes black, and I lash out. I lose all perspective because, in my mind, it’s all turning to shit so fast, I can’t keep up. Much like a spoiled toddler who doesn’t get her way. No more big picture. Just vile, ugly words pouring from my mouth.”

It’s the built-up anger inside of you trying to find a way out
, Dr. Hakim said the first time I tried to tell him about that.

“I don’t know if it’s because snide remarks, unfair criticism, and sudden outbursts of anger were
de rigueur
when I was growing up, or if it’s just another fabulous personality trait I inherited from my mother… Perhaps a bit of both.” I can’t look at Kay anymore. “But I do know it’s the root of most of my problems. A poisonous temper will destroy the best of relationships, and it doesn’t exactly help with my self-image either. Always having to pick up the pieces, apologizing for things I said in the heat of the moment, facing myself in the mirror after another senseless fit of rage. Because, in the end, it’s hardly ever about the other person. It only happens because, most days, I hate myself so much.” The tears come again. “A bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy, actually.” I find a stray napkin on the table and dab it against my eyes.

“I never told anyone about this, only my doctor.” In that respect, Kay could not be more different from Thalia. “I’ve been working on it with him. Learning to recognize the signs, to start with. Trying to eliminate the origin of the rage and feelings of hatred. Reprogram my behavior, basically.”

“The real reason why you came back.” Kay’s voice sounds more hesitant than I’ve ever heard it. Not even someone with her patience and inherent wisdom can easily process what I just said. She’s also not my therapist. A few hours ago we were making out like frisky teenagers, now, every notion of romance has fled.

I nod, certain I have blown my chances with her as well. I said too much. Revealed too much of my darkness. This is not chatter for a first date. “You don’t have to stay,” I whisper. “I understand.”

“What kind of friend would that make me?”

Friend?
A mere half hour ago she referred to herself as a potential girlfriend.

“Maybe it’s best if you go, either way.” Somehow, I manage to squeeze the words out of my throat, despite a big red warning sign flashing in my brain. This is why Dr. Hakim and I both agreed I shouldn’t get involved with someone at this time. It was always going to be too messy, too confusing, too destructive—and too distracting.

“Ella?” There’s hurt in Kay’s voice now. “Don’t do this. Break the pattern. Recognize the signs.” I hear a sniffling sound coming from Kay’s end of the table, but I still can’t look at her.

“Why would you want me, Kay? There’s nothing here.” Frustrated, I tap my chest. “Only gloom and loss and disappointment.”

“Do you really think I’m going to let you do this after what you’ve just told me?”

“Fine.” I glare at her from under my lashes, taken aback by the sheen of tears on her cheeks, but, obviously, not taken aback enough. “Be my
friend
. I suppose life can get quite boring here at West Waters. How about I’ll be
your
distraction this Indian summer?”

“You can hold yourself in as low a regard as you damn well wish, Ella. Drown in your sea of negativity all you want. But I know why you came here and it wasn’t to insult me.” She shakes her head. “I refuse to be insulted by you, by what is clearly a result of your vulnerability.”

The force with which she delivers her argument takes the steam out of my trip into familiar dark, all-obliterating territory. I bite back the next venomous words that sit at the ready at the tip of my tongue.

“I also refuse to believe you only have bad sides. Would I be sitting here if I didn’t see the beauty in you? The kindness you’re so desperate to hide? The only thing that stands between this version of yourself you created in your head and the real, accomplished, smart, sensible, gorgeous woman that you are, is you, Ella. I won’t pretend to know what goes on in that tortured mind of yours, and I won’t sit here and proclaim it’s easy, but the truth is that it’s only as hard as you make it on yourself. And you’re making it very hard on yourself.”

“I can’t even roast a chicken properly.” I don’t mean it as a joke. In the state I’m in, everything is deadly serious, even something as silly and unimportant as the chicken.

“Only because I distracted you.” To my relief, Kay doesn’t laugh. Instead, she continues, “I guess the greatest thing you can achieve in life is to be completely at ease with yourself. To accept yourself for who you are, faults and all. I also believe that very few people ever reach that level of supreme enlightenment. The thing is, you don’t have to be perfect. It’s not a requirement for happiness.”

“You seem to be doing a pretty great job.”

Kay gives a loud huff. “What? Because I hang around here all day hoping to catch a glimpse of you?” She shoots me a crooked smile. “That’s only because I’m smitten.”

The warm glow from earlier descends on me again. I refrain from making a self-deprecating comment. Instead, I scan Kay’s face. Her almond-shaped eyes. Her nut-brown skin. Her lips. As much as I want to kiss them again, I’m too exhausted to even make it out of my chair, my body a limp mass of flesh and bones.

“This was not how it was supposed to go.”

“Or maybe it was.” Kay pours us both a bit more whiskey. “Either way, we have all the time in the world.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

I wake up with Kay’s arm around me. My brain is fuzzy from the crying and the whiskey, but alert enough to remember that nothing happened, only a replay from the night before. I check the alarm clock. It’s 4.30 in the morning and, outside, the first light hasn’t broken through yet. Kay purrs softly behind me, her breath hot on the skin of my neck. Deep inside me, the throbbing ignites. It doesn’t help that her breasts poke against my back and that, when I glance down, I catch a glimpse of her strong, long fingers.

Slowly, I try to slide onto my back, attempting not to disturb her too much, but once I’ve managed to roll over, her hand rests dangerously close to my breast. Despite wearing a t-shirt, my nipple instantly reaches upward and any chance of more sleep leaves the room.

Kay stirs in her sleep, her breath on my cheek now, her chin resting on my shoulder. Physically, we could be closer, I guess, but not by much. It’s in my heart I feel closest to her, anyway. She stayed. She listened to me and decided not to leave.

In the circles I moved in in Boston—brainy university couples, glitzy art crowds, gay men in designer clothes and no one boasting less than a master’s degree—I never came across someone like Kay, and if I had, I most likely wouldn’t have given her the time of day. I always went for the likes of Thalia, well-dressed, well-off and no qualms about showing it. Mouthy, well-spoken women who wouldn’t dream of jumping into a lake naked. Women who had their heads too far up their own asses to give a much needed conversation an extra five minutes, or who reacted to one of my outbursts with stone-cold silence—the kind I knew so well from being raised by my mother.

Of course, it wasn’t Thalia’s fault that I could never live up to what the combination of my dreamy blue eyes, high cheekbones and job title promised. Thalia’s words, not mine.

With Thalia, the
coup de foudre
was purely physical. Hormones racing through my blood, clouding my judgment. Of all the antidepressants I ever ingested, not one ever beat the rush of falling in love.

It takes almost more willpower than I have to not trace a finger over Kay’s hand, to not cup her hand with my palm and press it against my breast. But with her, it’s different. The entire approach is opposite to what I’m used to. Falling in love and busting it up. Curing heartbreak by going out into the night in search of a fresh dopamine shot, when I’d much rather stay in to read a book. The endless cycle of work, chase, thrill, something-close-enough-to-love-to-tide-me-over, break-up, more work. As long as I didn’t have to stop to think about what I was doing with my life—and why.

But every cycle broke me a little more until, after Thalia, I looked in the mirror and knew I couldn’t go out there anymore. Not because I was certain I had lost the love of my life—as I had been so many times before—but because it was obvious that I hadn’t. So what was I crying for?

“Penny for your thoughts.” Kay’s fingers dig into the flesh just under my breast.

“Hey.” She could give a million dollars for my thoughts, it would be in vain because my brain stopped working the instant her fingers pressed down. “Didn’t mean to wake you.” I try to keep my body as still as possible.

“What time is it?”

“Around five, I think.” Kay’s hand balls into a fist, grabbing onto the fabric of my t-shirt. The first soft light of dawn makes its way underneath the curtains.

“Sleep like a log again?” Her voice is still warm with sleepiness.

“Not this time.” I clear my throat. “I think that, this time around, I was the one who couldn’t keep certain images out of my head.”

Kay’s early morning chuckle is much sweeter than her middle-of-the-day belly roar. “Is that so?” She relaxes her fingers and fans them out, the tip of her thumb touching the underside of my breast. “Can you describe the images to me? Maybe I can help.” Despite the early hour, an urgency has already started creeping into her voice.

I shake my head, my cheek bumping into her nose. “But I
can
show you.” At last, I grab her hand, hold her fingers hard against my skin.

Kay doesn’t need much encouragement and, just like I thought she always would, she takes control. Her hand, still covered with mine, sneaks upward and cups my breast. Through the fabric of my t-shirt, my nipple pokes hard against her palm, straining, wanting more.

Kay pushes herself up on her other arm and looks down at me. No words are needed. I suspect my eyes are blazing with desire, screaming that I’m ready, that I want her. Now.

While her fingers massage my breast—nothing tentative about the motion anymore—Kay leans down and kisses me. Our mouths are closed at first, but only for a few seconds. Soon, her tongue darts between my lips and the kiss deepens while two of Kay’s fingers close around my nipple. My body stiffens at her pinch, and our lips lose touch. When I open my eyes and look into Kay’s face, I see nothing but lust and understanding and, perhaps, acceptance. Kay sees me with different eyes, through a lens that, maybe, no one has ever seen me through before and, most astonishingly, she’s still here. And although I didn’t come back to Northville for this, in this moment, it feels like everything I’ve ever wanted, for all the right reasons, is compressed into that glance.

It’s as if something has gone off in Kay’s brain. Still controlled, but with much more purpose, her hand slides down my t-shirt and, in a flash, underneath. Her fingers on my skin produce an entirely different sensation, leaving me panting into her mouth as her lips crash down onto mine again.

While this is also about release, about undoing the tension that’s been building between us for days, the main qualifier is intimacy. Because that too has been growing. As mindless as that first moment of surrender may be, that instant I give myself up to her, offer myself into her beautiful, strong hands, I’m there all the way. All of me shows up when Kay’s fingers close around my nipple without any barriers for the first time. My heart and my soul are in the next kiss we share.

My t-shirt has ridden up, but only exposes my belly. I want to feel more of her. Awkwardly, I start hoisting up her t-shirt, but half of her body is in the way.

“Hold on.” Kay pushes herself away from me for an instant and yanks her t-shirt over her head. Although I’ve seen her naked before—in a hurry in the dark—this time could not be more different. My eyes are glued to her breasts, the darkness of her tiny nipples, the sheen of her skin in the brightening morning light. I push myself up so I can lay my hands on her chest. Kay kneels next to me and I mirror her image, only briefly refraining from touching her so she can remove my t-shirt. We sit opposite each other, naked from the waist up, and the fire that rages in my stomach is nothing compared to the wild thumping between my legs.

I guess, for the sake of romance, and perhaps memory, this should go slowly: deliberate movements stealing over our skin, finding the right spots. Not this frenzy, as Kay said last night. But my fingers itch with the desire for frantic groping and my body is ready for abandon, for mindlessness, for giving myself up to her completely in a tangle of flesh, skin, hair, and limbs.

I dreamed of Kay entering me slowly while she gazed into my eyes, but it’s not how I want her now. It’s as though I step out of myself, out of this body and, especially, this mind that has constrained me for so long. I lunge for her. Like a tiger, I throw myself on top of her. Our breasts collide and Kay topples over onto her back. I’m not too far gone to check if this is what she wants, but when our eyes meet, there’s no room for doubt. This is not the same Kay who came for me last night, who pressed me against the door of the fridge with all her might, only to pull back when the kiss got too intense.