Beginnings - SF2 (47 page)

"I guess that depends on how you plan on doing that," was the dry reply.

"Just a little dancing is all," she replied innocently.

"Be my guest," Jamie said with a flourish.

"Do I get a vote?" Ryan asked

"Nope," Jamie and Karen replied simultaneously.

Karen took her hand and led her over to the largest boom box. They started to jump around energetically, bleeding off energy. Jamie watched with fascination thinking,
I don't know what's better, dancing with her or watching her dance.

After they were back on their bikes, Jamie said, "You know, it was fun watching you dance. You and Karen really look cute together."

Ryan cocked her head at her as she replied, "It didn't bother you to see me with her, did it?"

"Not at all. I meant what I said. It was cute." After a beat she added, "Why didn't you want to date her seriously? She really looks like your type, now that I've been around her."

"She's too much my type," she admitted wryly. "We would've driven each other crazy. She has more energy than I do in some areas, and she had even less interest than I did in settling down with one person. She slept with someone else on the ride!" she said indignantly.

"Why did that bother you?" Jamie asked, really curious.

"Because we were having sex every night! I'm not used to people looking elsewhere while I'm actively bedding them," she said with a twinkle. "And it was in our tent! I had to go sit on a picnic bench, and wait for them to finish so I could go to bed. Then, to add insult to injury, she still wanted to do it with me later that night!"

"And you, of course, said no, right?" Jamie asked innocently, as she batted her big green eyes.

"Well, she obviously wasn't satisfied, so I had to show her what she had missed," Ryan explained with a wry chuckle.

"It doesn't bother you to talk about your old flames, does it?" Jamie asked.

"No. Does it bother you to hear about them?"

"No, it doesn't," she said reflectively. "I like thinking about what a player you used to be. And I stress the 'used to be' part of that statement," she warned.

"My membership in that group has been voluntarily and irrevocably terminated," she replied, in complete agreement.

The next 12 miles were torturously slow ones. The wind had freshened and blew in their faces the entire time. It seemed as though they had done the entire ride in one day rather than six, and the remaining miles loomed ahead of them like an unbreachable wall. Ryan rode directly in front of Jamie, trying to be a foil, but it really did not help much. Several times during the worst of it, Jamie rued her decision to take on this adventure, but after a few minutes of grousing she would look up ahead and see her determined partner, grinding away, and her mood would improve immediately. They rested much longer than normal at the last pit stop, dropping to the ground under the shade of a small tree after they had consumed two bottles of sports drink. Neither spoke for the entire time they lay there, and after a good half-hour's rest, Ryan stood and extended her hand, pulling Jamie to her feet. They headed out for the last ten miles of the day with grimly determined faces.

They arrived at Buenaventura State Beach significantly later than normal. Both felt more tired than sweaty, so they skipped their evening shower and took a quick nap. The nap was actually more like a quick coma than anything else, since neither heard their boisterous neighbors setting up camp, singing Barbra Streisand tunes at full volume.

Almost as soon as they left the tent, Jamie could sense that the mood over the camp had a different feeling than every other night. They stood in the longish line observing the assembled riders; after a few minutes Jamie tilted her head up and said, "I've been trying to think of what this reminds me of. I think I've got it."

"What's that, Hon?"

"It feels like the last days of high school," she decided. "You know, you're all aware that it's almost over, and you know that even though you claim you'll stay close, it will be the last time you will see some of your acquaintances."

"Yeah, I guess it does," she agreed halfheartedly.

"It's not like that for you?"

"I didn't have any friends by the time I graduated from high school," she said flatly. "And the thought of never seeing most of my classmates again was pure bliss."

Turning in her direction, Jamie placed her hands flat against Ryan's chest. The look on her face was one of sheer incredulity. "Ryan, everyone loves you!" she insisted. "I know you had troubles, but surely…"

"No. No one," she declared, her face impassive, but her eyes reflecting the lingering hurt.

"But how…"

"Not now, Jamie," she said firmly. "This night is hard enough for me without dredging that stuff up."

For the hundredth time, Jamie mentally rebuked herself for her unerring ability to find topics that greatly upset her partner.
Quit prying into her past so much!
she chided herself.
She tells you plenty, but she only does it when she's ready. Leave the poor thing alone!

Trying one of the two things that always seemed to brighten Ryan's mood, she peeked down the table and commented. "Mmm, brownies for dessert."

"Where?" Ryan asked sharply.

"Right over there," she pointed, indicating a large platter nearly filled with the treats. "I'm not really in the mood for chocolate tonight," she said with a casual dismissal. "You can have mine."

A sweet smile and a little squeeze of her hand greeted her offer. "It's okay, Hon. I'm not mad at you for asking about my life. You don't have to give me cookie reparations."

"Would you like my brownie?" Jamie asked with her own smile.

"Mmm, let's just say this for the record. When I turn down a brownie, it's time to take me to the emergency room."

"It makes me happy to make you happy, Sweetie. So do us both a favor, and accept my peace offering, okay?"

"Hrumph! The lengths I have to go to please you!" she muttered, trying to hide a grin.

"St. Ryan of Mayo," Jamie decreed. "It's got a ring to it."

"Mmm, I think I prefer St. Ryan of Killala," she decided. "The town could use the tourist business my shrine would bring in."

"Yet another saintly act," Jamie insisted. "Always thinking of others."

After they received their food, they were searching around for a place to sit when a voice called out, "Hey, 'O' ".

Ryan looked around and identified the speaker, then turned to Jamie to ask, "Mind if we sit with the wild girls?"

"Ahh, no, I think I've shown that I have a soft spot for wild girls," she grinned.

They walked over to a table of six women. Jamie guessed they were a little older--in their late 20's to early 30's-- and they clearly knew Ryan well. She went from woman to woman, kissing each on the lips, before she began to introduce her partner. "Jamie, this motley crew is a small part of The Lavender Menace, one of the teams I trained with a couple of years ago. Everybody, this is Jamie Evans, my…" she cast a devilish grin at her partner before decreeing, "fiancée."

"What?" the women responded, almost in unison.

"Yep. We're tying the knot on Monday," she related. Ryan caught the shocked look on Jamie's face, but she just beamed a smile at her and gave her shoulder a little squeeze.

The assembled women spent quite a while dragging the whole story out of Ryan. Jamie sat at her side, responding to direct questions, but finding herself very happy just to watch her partner interact with the group. She recognized at least one of them from the off-road ride Ryan had taken her to up on Mt. Tam, and as she regarded each of them, she had to admit that they were the most stereotypical looking lesbians that she had seen Ryan with. They all had very short hair, much shorter than her own, and two of them had hair of a color rarely found in nature. Their casual poses allowed her to detect that at least three of them didn't shave their legs, and all of them had some type of body ornament, either tattoos or a visible piercing.

Even though she hadn't met a lot of Ryan's friends, she decided that, based on looks, her partner would not have a lot in common with these women, but there was some deep bond that reflected her connection to them. She was a little more boisterous and a lot more full of herself—boasting about her conditioning, and her preparedness for the ride--but it was all done with such a teasing, playful sense that it was very well received. It took a minute for the realization to dawn on Jamie, but she finally recalled what it reminded her of.
It's like any group of jocks
, she mused.
They build themselves up and tear each other down, but it's done with an affectionate teasing that's really cute
, she decided.
Yet another side of the enigmatic Ms. O'Flaherty
, she thought affectionately as she watched her perform.

"So, Ryan," a woman named Cathy said. "I hear Tiffany's been looking for you. Hey!" she cried when her neighbor poked her in the ribs. "O's cool with it, aren't you?"

"Yeah, it's fine," she agreed with a bemused chuckle as she slung an arm around her partner. "Jamie already told her to take a hike."

"Good for you, Jamie," a woman named Brenda opined. "She's trash!"

"Oh, she's not that bad," Ryan said, always trying to give people the benefit of the doubt.

Six pairs of eyes rolled at that comment. The women struggled to their feet, patting Ryan and Jamie on the back as they passed. "We'll see you two over at the stage," Brenda said. "We want to catch all the announcements about tomorrow."

"Okay, see ya," Ryan said as they departed.

"Tying the knot?" the amused voice at her side softly wafted up to Ryan's ear.

"Yep. That's exactly how I think of it," Ryan said confidently.

Jamie snuggled close and snuck her arm around her partner's waist. "Why haven't you told me that?" she asked. "I mean, I know we've both been looking forward to next week, but I didn't know…"

"You didn't know how much it means to me emotionally?" Ryan asked as she turned to look at her.

"No, no…I guess I do know that," Jamie mused. "I'm not sure what I mean. Maybe it just surprised me to hear you talk about it in those terms."

"Just because we've not planned a formal ceremony doesn't mean that it's any less meaningful for me, Jamie," Ryan insisted as she grasped her hands. "This is our honeymoon, Honey. I'll admit that I didn't spend much time thinking about my wedding day when I was young, but the commitment still means a lot to me. You've held my heart for a very long time. But on Monday I'm giving you my body also. This means more to me than I can say."

Once again her partner's ability to take her breath away had Jamie struggling to calm her heart. She found herself unable to answer at the moment, her words uncharacteristically abandoning her. So she turned her head and leaned heavily against Ryan, letting the emotion pass between them for a long time.

She jerked into an upright position, however, when Tiffany passed right in front of them, chortling with some comrades as she did so.

Jamie smoothed her hair into place and passed her brownie over to her partner along with a kiss on the cheek. "I think it's so sweet that you don't trash people," she said, very pleased that Ryan had not even commented on the woman's presence.

"Oh, I do," Ryan laughed. "I can be positively wicked. They just have to hit a hot button. Tiffany didn't ever do that."

"Do you have any idea why she's so angry with you?"

"Yeah, a pretty good idea," Ryan mused, as she nibbled on her gooey brownie. "Part of it is that's just her personality. She's very confrontational—always ready to pick a fight. She works at San Francisco General now, with a lot of the people we met the other night, and she's never been well liked there. I met her on one of the bike rides up in Marin. She wasn't at the hospital when I trained that group."

"So she hangs out with the women we met tonight?" Jamie asked, trying to fit the snotty woman into the friendly, relaxed group that she had just been introduced to.

"Kinda. She doesn't really fit in with this crowd, but she was in the group when I volunteered to train them for the ride."

"You trained the whole group?"

"Yeah. Nothing like I did with you, though. I just helped them with the actual riding part. Many of them were mountain bikers, and they were unfamiliar with road bikes and how to get ready to do a long trek like this. We used to go on long rides on Saturday and Sunday, and then get dinner together. Tiffany knew how I was—without a doubt," she insisted. "Everybody knew that I was sleeping with Alisa. Remember her?"

"Yeah," Jamie smirked, the image of the lovely Latina kissing Ryan after the off-road ride on Mt. Tam still burned into her brain.

"Right. Anyway, Tiffany knew that, but she still tried to get me to go to her apartment after almost every dinner. I went a few times—really—just a few times," she insisted. "I was still seeing Alisa, and she knew that, and everything seemed fine. When we got our registration packets for the Ride she asked if we could bunk together. That seemed fine with me; I actually didn't care who I slept with. Well..." she blushed a little and added, "You know what I mean. But she obviously thought it meant something. The night before the ride ended she told me that she wanted to be exclusive with me. I didn't feel the same way at all, and I tried to explain that in a gentle way, but she was furious! I actually thought she was going to hit me! I went to watch the entertainment, hoping she'd cool down, but when I got back to the tent all my stuff was lying in a heap outside the flap. Luckily, they let me sleep in the medical trailer, or I would have had to sleep on a picnic table!"