Sea Glass Inn (16 page)

“I haven’t bothered decorating down here,” Mel said as Pam walked by her into the sparsely furnished room. She had bought new bedding and a couple of throw rugs and blankets, but she didn’t have the time or money to sink into her private rooms. “There’s no place to sit…”

Except on the bed
. Mel didn’t say it out loud.

Pam sat on the shag rug in front of Mel’s bookcase. “This is fine,” she said. She set out the tequila bottle, a couple of shot glasses, and a salt shaker. “I like the color scheme you’ve chosen. Very early Italian Renaissance.”

Mel joined Pam on the purple rug, tugging on the robe as she tried to cover as much of her thighs as she could. She had bought it the day after Pam had agreed to sleep in the downstairs room while the wedding party was at the inn, just in case they ran into each other in the hall. Only because it looked so perfect on the hanger. Sexy, but mature. Exactly the type of robe a confident, self-assured woman would wear. But now she suspected Pam would see right through the fabric to the awkward, long-dormant part of Mel with no idea how to begin a seduction scene. She looked around the room, anywhere but at Pam. She had chosen the colors because she liked the way the shades of red, blue, mauve, and gold blended together. She had picked the dark-red robe because it blended with the bedroom’s color palette.

“I was trying for light, bright, and airy upstairs. I wanted something warmer and richer down here. What are those?”

Pam held up a baggie. “I found limes in your fridge. Can’t have tequila shots without limes.”

“They’re key limes. I was going to make a pie.”

“The tequila won’t know the difference,” Pam said with a shrug.

She poured two shots and handed one to Mel with a lime wedge.

“I haven’t done this since college,” Mel said. She followed Pam’s lead and licked the inside of her wrist before shaking some salt on it.

She tossed a few grains over her left shoulder. She might not make it through the rest of the night without looking inexperienced, but tequila shots she could do. “As I recall, these lead directly to impaired judgment.”

“That’s the plan,” Pam said. She winked and raised her glass.

“To you. For a successful opening weekend.”

Mel downed her shot, trying to keep from making a face at the unaccustomed taste. The salt and lime didn’t help much. She imagined a much sweeter taste on her tongue as she watched Pam drink her tequila. Pam’s short hair was windblown from sitting outside, and Mel wanted to run her fingers through it. To lean close and smell the ocean breeze on Pam’s skin. Taste the salt air where it had touched her cheek, her neck.

Pam winced when she bit into her lime. “Ugh, they’re bitter,” she said.

“That’s why the pie recipe calls for two cans of condensed milk.”

Mel tossed her rind in a nearby wastebasket. She needed something to do with her hands since she was still too nervous to initiate any physical contact. Even sitting across from Pam, she felt an energy, an intimate closeness. As if the unspoken certainty of where the night would lead was something palpable. Pam handed her another lime wedge and refilled her glass.

“Truth or dare?” Pam said as she poured herself a shot.

Mel laughed. Her imagined trysts with Pam had sometimes started with deep conversations, sometimes with no words at all but just a headlong rush into a passionate kiss. Usually the latter. But they’d never started with silly games. She felt a little of her tension ease as she played along. “You’re trotting out all the old favorites tonight. What’s next, Candy Land?”

“Post office. But we’ll get to that later.”

Mel hesitated. She was too nervous to do more than sit across the rug from Pam and anticipate the night she had imagined so many times since their first meeting in August. She hadn’t yet mustered the courage to touch Pam’s hair, or her arm, or her calf as it rested only inches from her own. Whatever the dare might be, she wasn’t quite ready for it. “Truth,” she said, choosing what seemed like the safer of the two.

Pam took her shot first. She felt a slight softening of lines and edges, and the lime didn’t taste quite as bitter this time. She had just come up with the idea of hiding her serious questions within a childhood game. The amused smile on Mel’s face indicated she had made the right decision. Keep the mood light, but still get the information she needed. Keep the evening playful and not serious, and she and Mel would both get what they wanted without being trapped by any expectations or obligations. It was all a game.

“Have you ever had sex with a woman?”

Mel coughed as she swallowed her tequila. “You don’t mess around, do you?” she asked when she could speak again. “Yes, I have. I had girlfriends in high school and college. But I was attracted to some guys, too, so I thought I was bi. I figured I could just switch it off and pick the more conventional option.” Mel shrugged. She paused, trying to find a way to explain her decisions to Pam. A way to justify them to herself, since she’d never fully understood how she had missed something so significant. She had berated herself for years for being too blind, too unaware to figure out her own sexuality. But tonight, sitting across the rug from Pam—anticipating the night ahead before they’d kissed or even touched—she suddenly understood why.

If one of those girlfriends had been Pam? No way would Mel have gotten married. No way would she have had any doubt about who she was. She’d never been attracted to anyone the way she was to Pam.

“You have to understand, I come from a big conservative family,”

Mel said, stumbling over familiar excuses as her mind reeled with a new understanding. She needed to explain her past in a way Pam might find plausible because she didn’t want to share her epiphany. If Mel spoke her thoughts out loud, Pam might worry about Mel getting too attached. But this insight wasn’t about Pam, not really. Yes, Pam was the one drawing these feelings out of Mel, but this was about Mel herself. And the relief of finally being able to understand and forgive herself for the choices she’d made. For the time she had taken to get to this place.

“Five kids and fifteen grandkids,” she continued. “I broke with tradition by only having Danny, and I hear about it every time I’m around my parents. One of my sisters dated women in college, too. I talked to her about it, right after Richard proposed, because I was having so many doubts. She told me how happy she was she’d made the choice to get married and how much happier I’d be with him than with a woman. Looking back, I think she might have had regrets of her own.”

“And she was hoping to convince herself she had done the right thing?”

“Maybe,” Mel said before she downed the shot Pam had poured for her. The sudden and quiet acceptance of her past was the real reason she felt so much more at ease, although the alcohol—how many shots now?—was helping her relax. She should have been keeping her lime peels to keep track, instead of throwing them away. She crawled over and peered in the garbage. “Three,” she said as she sat down on the rug again. “What was I saying? Oh, yes. It took me a couple years to figure out I had made a big mistake. By then I had Danny, so I tried to make things work. Marriage counselors, weekends away, you name it. And then I had a conference with Danny’s second-grade teacher. She was lovely.”

Pam almost lost track of Mel’s story as she watched her crawl on her hands and knees over to the garbage can, the curve of her ass just visible below the robe’s hem. Her long thighs, tight and firm, begged Pam to grip them and pull Mel against her. But an unexpected and biting jealousy drew her attention back to what Mel was saying. A lovely teacher. One who made Mel aware of an undeniable attraction to women. One who had taken Mel right there on her desk during their conference? Pam had wanted to make sure Mel wasn’t completely inexperienced, that she wouldn’t overreact to their night together and think the physical satisfaction meant more than it should. She had her wish. She wasn’t Mel’s first. So why did the information make her want to go smash the lovely teacher’s car windows?

“You had an affair?” Pam prompted. She tried to keep jealousy out of her voice, not wanting Mel to misinterpret it as judgment. She had a feeling Mel had explained why she had married, why she had stayed married, to herself and others far too many times. Pam didn’t care what road Mel had taken to get here, to this room on this night.

She was here, and nothing else mattered.

“No. But I told Richard about my feelings for her. We were comfortable together by then, so we decided to stay together for Danny. No dating outside the marriage. No pressure within it. I trusted him and gave up so many years, so much of what I wanted for myself. Never again.”

Pam swallowed. With relief. With renewed arousal as Mel stretched her legs out, so close to Pam’s. So smooth and bare and close. Mel had drawn inward while she talked, pulling her knees to her chest, but now she seemed to relax. Pam mirrored her more open body language, ready to leave the past behind and get back to the promise of the night ahead.

“Your turn,” she said.
Dare me. Dare me to kiss you because I
need to. Soon.

“Truth,” Mel said instead. “Now you have to answer a question, too.”

“I don’t get to choose dare?” Pam asked. Mel shook her head.

Pam wanted to move forward, shrug off the nagging images of Mel with her college girlfriends and flirting with Danny’s teacher. Get to the sex so she didn’t have to wonder why she felt sad when she heard Mel admit once again that she’d never commit to someone, would never allow anyone to take her freedom away and make her live with compromise. The whole conversation should have made Pam relieved. Mel had made the ideal confession. Pam wasn’t sure why she felt disappointed.

“Why sea glass?” Mel asked, breaking into Pam’s thoughts.

Art?
Why hadn’t Mel asked about sex, Pam’s past flings, her first time? Something less personal, less revealing. But Mel had shared too much tonight for Pam to ignore her question. She owed Mel some sort of answer. “My grandparents took me on vacation to the ocean every summer when I was a kid. My grandfather would spend hours hunting for glass on the beach, and he got me hooked.” She answered as if Mel wanted to know why she collected it, not why she used it in her art. “I loved the colors and the feel of the smooth glass in my hands.

The best part was imagining it whole again. What shape it was, who used it and for what.”

“Sounds like you were very close to your grandfather. What about your parents?”

“We had a good relationship while I was growing up.” Pam straightened her legs and crossed her ankles before she topped off her glass again. Family questions she could handle. The answers weren’t always pleasant, but Pam could face them. She drank the shot and was chewing on her lime when she realized she had forgotten the salt. “I was a real tomboy and Dad loved it. He was my softball coach and drove me to all my basketball games. We’d go rock climbing together.

Fun stuff. He didn’t care at all that I wasn’t girly, so I thought he’d be okay when I came out to him in high school. He blew up. Couldn’t even stay in the room with me so we could talk.”

“And your mom?” Mel shifted her legs so they were barely touching Pam’s.

Pam tried to focus on her story and not on the physical contact of Mel’s bare legs. Even through the denim of her jeans, the light touch made her skin feel electric. “I think Mom would have been okay eventually. We were never really close. She tried to get us to reconcile a few times, but she wouldn’t go against my dad’s decision to cut me out of his life. By then, my grandmother had died, but Grandpa took me in, and I lived with him through high school and college. He and my dad never spoke after that. Because of me.”

Mel put her hand on Pam’s ankle and squeezed gently. “That wasn’t your fault. Your grandfather made a difficult decision, but it was the right one. He must have loved seeing you use the sea glass on your paintings.”

Pam hesitated. Full circle back to her art. Didn’t the game only require her to answer one question truthfully, not a whole slew of them? She blamed the tequila for making her follow Mel’s change in subject. And she blamed Mel’s hand, still resting on her ankle. Warm.

Safe. Touching her, touching her pain, in a way that was intimate but not sexy. Pam wanted to get back to sexy. “He had passed away before I came here and started making mosaics. He left everything to me, including the beach house. I had just gone through a bad breakup, so I moved here. I don’t know why I started putting the glass on my paintings like that. I haven’t done many of them.”

“How long ago was this?”

“Eight years. I was a graduate student when I met Diane. She was my advisor. We started an affair while I was working on my degree, and we moved in together right after I graduated. She had a son, just a baby then. Kevin.” Pam shook her head and the room tilted slightly.

Why was she talking about Kevin? She looked at the four lime peels lined up by the salt shaker. Too many. “Anyway, I painted portraits as a career. Made a good living at it, too. Diane asked me to leave when Kevin was three, and I came here.”

Mel reached for the tequila bottle. “You do portraits? Maybe you could—”

“No, Mel,” Pam said sharply. She’d do the mosaics. No portraits of her or Danny or whomever else Mel had been about to name.

No matter how sexy Mel was or how persuasive she could be. Pam could barely piece together her fractured visions. Scratch paint onto a canvas. Stick on some glass. But portraits meant staring a subject in the eyes, letting them into her soul, where they could reach her most vulnerable places and do the most damage.

She used to be open, used to enjoy the connection she’d form even with strangers when she felt some inexplicable urge to paint them. It had been her calling, her way of pulling the essence out of a person and freezing it in time. Permanence. A fallacy Pam no longer trusted. She cared about Mel, was proud of her, admired her. She wanted to know Mel’s story, to know her body, to know every fantasy and desire she kept so carefully hidden inside. Trace her outline. Not use brushes and oils to reach any deeper than friendship and sex.