Seeking Sara Summers (15 page)

Julia dropped a handful of pasta into the boiling water. Even cooking pasta felt sexy in Sara’s current mood. She finished the red wine in her glass. Something about it tasted earthy, sensuous, as if an act of communing with the body and blood of Tuscany.

Sara thought back over the last couple of days. There had been more than one surprise. Several, in fact. She thought again of how she had called this her farewell tour. So why not do a few things she might regret? What did she have to lose?

“I feel like I’m standing on the edge of a high dive and trying to decide whether to jump,” Sara said.

Julia turned to face her. “It must look pretty scary from there,” she said, as if she understood.

“But what if I don’t know how to swim? What if my heart just can’t take it?”

This kind of ‘what if’ talking always irritated Grady. It was too abstract. But Julia nodded thoughtfully and walked around the island in the kitchen to stand next to Sara who was still sitting on the stood. Julia caressed Sara’s cheek. Her touch was soft, loving.

“There’s something I’ve wanted to do all day,” Julia said. She lifted Sara’s chin and leaned in to kiss her.

The kitchen door burst open. “How’s it going in here?” Melanie asked.

Their brief connection ended, a switch thrown, instantly separating them from its power source.

“Your timing is impeccable,” Julia smiled.

Melanie covered her eyes and apologized. She turned and left the room, a slight smile on her face, as the door fanned her heels.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen Melanie so embarrassed,” Julia said.

“I know how she feels,” Sara said. “I wonder how long it will take her to tell Max.”

“Maybe a millisecond,” Julia laughed.

Sara squeezed her temples, anticipating the headache that would come. Within seconds the old Sara had returned. The Sara that played by the rules imposed by society. “I’m sorry, Julia. I seem to be playing with fire these days. We need to stop this. We need to stop this now.”

“Do we?” Julia asked. “I’ve been thinking about that, and I’m not so sure.”

In another week Sara would be going home to her safe, predictable life. Meanwhile, she was in a foreign land, experiencing foreign desires. At that moment, she had no idea what she wanted. Or did she?

Julia’s acceptance was like an aphrodisiac. If not for the crowd of dreaded Puritans looking up from the bottom of her gene pool, she might have taken the plunge with Julia already.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

It was Sara’s last morning at Max and Melanie’s before returning to Florence. She rose and opened the wooden shutters to view the courtyard. The lady of the fountain stood in the early morning sun, her stone gown still in shadow. She looked eternal, like the sunrise. Julia knocked on the door and Sara let her in.

“I heard you open your shutters,” Julia said. “How’s your headache?”

Sara had retired early the night before blaming a non-existent migraine. The truth was she had lost her courage. Being with Julia challenged not only sociological barriers, but emotional ones, as well. This was actually someone who she could fall in love with and someone who could break her heart.

They stood at the window looking down into the courtyard at the statue. “I don’t want to leave her,” Sara said. “This sounds crazy but it feels like she’s one of the reasons I came. Not in a religious sense. But something bigger. Like I’m here to get some kind of archetypal acceptance.” 

“I forget sometimes how much goes on underneath that quiet persona of yours,” Julia said, not taking her eyes from the courtyard.

“Thanks for not laughing at me,” Sara said.

Julia leaned into Sara’s shoulder. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

For the next several seconds Sara attempted to memorize the scene before her: the courtyard, the Tuscan countryside, and Julia at her side. To say that she didn’t want the moment to end was a cliché. But it was true. Sara wanted to reset the timer on her life and begin a new lifetime right there. She would have no regrets for the first half of her life. It had served its purpose. Now, the second half would be lived with intention. That is, if I’m granted a second half, she thought.  

Later that morning Max and Melanie drove Julia and Sara to the train station. A slight melancholy rode along with Sara as she viewed the Tuscan countryside, its rolling hills, sans trees, except for the occasional olive grove and trees planted around a farmhouse here and there.

“It’s been incredible,” she said to Max and Melanie. “I can’t tell you how much it’s meant to me to be here.”

Max and Melanie had been totally accepting of the events in the kitchen the night before and Sara had to resist telling them that nothing had actually happened. At least not physically.

“Please come to visit at anytime,” Melanie said.

“I may take you up on that,” Sara said.

“I hope you do,” Max said.

They embraced. Max and Melanie felt like old friends even after a weekend together, and Sara hated to think that she might never see them again.

“Are you all right?” Julia asked her, once they had settled on the train. “You’ve been very quiet all morning.”

“I guess I’ve just been deep in thought,” Sara said. Her Italian vacation was halfway over and this fact made her melancholy deeper. 

“Anything you want to talk about?” Julia asked. She reached over and touched Sara’s hand and then removed it.

Julia had not forced anything between them. Sara realized now that this would have been the only way that anything between them would have ever worked. Otherwise, Sara might have blamed Julia for coercing her, for creating the raging current in which she had gotten swept away.

The train began to pull out of the small station in Siena. It seemed too simple for the town it serviced. Sara stared out the window, as she always did on trains. She hadn’t realized until this trip how much she loved trains. They made her feel hopeful. It meant a journey was underway. A journey where she could actually see and experience the distance she traveled unlike the abstract miles of a plane.

A woman leaned out a second-story window watching the train with a wistful look. Sara recognized the expression on the woman’s face as one she had experienced herself. The woman appeared slightly younger than Sara, with long brown hair and a white loose blouse. Sara was close enough to see three silver bracelets on her left arm.

For a few seconds their eyes met. The look they exchanged held an entire conversation within it. With this glance, Sara knew that the woman wanted to be on the train, too. She wanted to be going somewhere. But something stopped her.

Sara told her, in this silent conversation, that she understood. She told her not to lose hope. She told her that if Sara could get to Italy, the woman could get to anywhere she wanted, too.
It’s never too late to get what you want
, Sara wanted to tell her.

As the train passed Sara placed her fingers on the glass. The woman gave Sara a brief wave. Had she heard their unspoken conversation?

Sara’s sadness turned to gratitude. The woman had given her a gift: a snapshot of herself just a few weeks before. Everything had changed since then. She now believed in impossible things. And she also now believed that life, when left to its own devices, had a much bigger imagination than Sara had. The last thing Sara would have predicted of her trip to Italy was that she would fall in love with Julia. The absolute last thing, she thought. But she now believed that this was what had happened. And she wondered if she hadn’t always been a little in love with Julia.

“You know, Jules, I’m tired of being so afraid,” Sara said, as she continued to stare out the window.

“What makes you say that?”

The train accelerated until the Italian countryside streamed by as rapidly as Sara’s thoughts. She practiced the words in her head before speaking them.

“I want to be with you, Julia.”

Her right leg began to shake and she steadied it. Sara didn’t know how Julia would respond, but she trusted her to be kind.

Julia placed her hand on Sara’s. “I want to be with you, too,” she said softly.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Roberto parted the blue sea of the quilt between them and made his way to the head of the bed. Sara rubbed his whiskers and face and he leaned into her hand. He had been very affectionate with Sara since she and Julia had returned from Siena. Bella was much more reserved with her affection. No longer able to sleep on her usual pillow next to Julia, she took up residence on the sofa in the living room where Sara had slept the first few days of her visit.

The last three days had been, in a word, unbelievable. Sara had never spent so much time horizontal. Their initial awkwardness with each other’s bodies had disappeared. Aphrodite had indeed come alive in her. It was as if she had fallen in love with love.

At the beginning of this journey she had found herself within the pages of a self-help book and at a crossroads. Now she was living within a Shakespeare love sonnet. And despite her realization of how unrealistic and out of control this was feeling, she never wanted to leave.

Sara waited for Julia to wake up and wondered briefly if Grady had remembered to walk Luke. He had little patience with animals and Luke liked to take his time on his morning walks. Sara pushed this thought away, along with the awareness that she would be leaving Italy in four days.

Roberto walked delicately across Julia’s pillow. She reached up to pet him. “
Buon giorno
, Roberto,” she said sleepily. Julia often spoke to him in Italian. Her reasoning being, as she had told Sara a few days before, that Roberto was from a litter down the street so of course he only understood Italian.

Julia glanced up at Sara with one eye open and smiled. Sara pushed Julia’s hair out of her hazel eyes and was struck again by how quickly life could change. Not only was it unbelievable that Sara was in Italy, but also that she had taken up residence in Julia’s bed.

Sara ran her hand along the curve of Julia’s hip. It was as if Sara’s hand belonged to someone else. Someone in love with the female form. She had never particularly liked her own body. But she was learning a new appreciation for it. In the last forty-eight hours she had surprised herself almost continuously. Not only with the tenderness that she extended toward Julia but also by the amount of passion that had been present in their lovemaking.

“
Buon giorno
,
darling,
” Julia said softly to Sara. They kissed, as Roberto rode the waves of arms and elbows caused by the wake of their embrace. Under the covers they blended together, skin against skin. Sara loved the sensuousness of this. Of becoming one with someone. Not knowing where Julia ended and where she began.

Julia ran her finger along the scar on Sara’s chest and kissed it. “It’s ugly, isn’t it?” Sara said.

“Not at all,” Julia said. She leaned on one arm and looked in Sara’s eyes. “If not for this scar, you might not be here at all.”

Pressure rose from beneath the scar, as if Sara’s heart insisted on expanding. These were new feelings to her, and at times, overwhelming feelings. Could someone die from too much happiness? Sara sat up and leaned against the back of Julia’s bed. She was reminded again of her farewell tour.

“Shall we go out today?” Sara said. “We’ve hardly left your apartment since we returned from Siena.”

Julia smiled and sat up, as well. “If we must.”

“Your neighbors may be wondering if you’re all right,” Sara said.

“They’re used to me disappearing periodically. Especially when I get inspired.”

“Are you inspired now?”

“Definitely,” Julia said. She leaned over and pulled Sara closer. They kissed and Julia pulled her gently down on the bed.

“Wait a minute, honey,” Sara said. At that moment, their closeness felt dangerous. As if Sara had suddenly become conscious of the air she needed to breathe. She was disarmed and vulnerable to Julia’s slightest wish. Did Julia feel vulnerable, too? She got up from the bed and her knees momentarily weakened.

“I need fresh air,” Sara said. She put on her light housecoat and walked out onto the balcony.

The early morning sun bounced from building to building through the alley way and danced on the top of the tree in the courtyard below. I could spend the rest of my life here, Sara thought, and then erased the thought from her mind.

By early afternoon they were dressed and in front of Julia’s building. “Where shall we go?” Julia asked.

“You decide,” Sara said. She squinted at the brightness of the sun, longing briefly to return to Julia’s darkened bedroom. It felt good to take a break from their intensity. Being in Italy felt like a dream. Especially now that she was in love. She had never even approached that level of happiness except briefly at the birth of each of her children. Even Sam, her unplanned child, had brought her unexpected joy by his arrival.

What would her children think of this new version of Sara? Would they be happy for her? Would they celebrate her happiness? Sara was afraid to test them on this point. 

They walked several blocks passing buildings with heavy ornate wooden doors, barricades, Julia told her, against enemy intruder’s centuries before. The Arno River meandered through the heart of the city. They crossed a bridge and waited at a traffic light while a parade of small children on bicycles and tricycles passed by; their parents following close behind, pushing strollers carrying younger siblings.

“It’s nice to see that such an ancient city could embrace so many children,” Sara said.

“The things that go through your mind,” Julia said.

“Am I boring you?”

“Absolutely not,” Julia said.

They paused to let the procession pass. “I can’t imagine what it’s like to live here and see this beauty every day,” Sara said. “Do you get numb to it?”