Game Changers

by Jane Cuthbertson

  I settled. I took the gift of my writing, used it to tell of characters who speak to me and through me, revealing their stories of strength and weakness, bravery and fear. They love and are loved, hurt and are hurt, and they have adventures and journeys to find goodness in life. I took pleasure in chronicling their tales, content to let them partially fill my own heart’s emptiness.

  The existence I molded was perfectly okay. There was a freedom to being able to make choices without having to consult or get approval from someone else, and that freedom could get me through the rest of my days, keep me safe and occupied, and mostly distracted from the void in my soul. It would be fine.

  And then someone came to me. She welcomed me into her life, somehow got me to welcome her into mine, and in the process turned my existence completely upside down. Suddenly I have a place in the world of another, and with each passing day I feel like I’ve been there all the time. Suddenly this woman, this lover, this treasure belongs in my life, and it feels like we’ve known each other forever. We are in that first blissful stage where we do not bicker, we do not argue, we both understand the need for the long separations born of living in different cities. We miss each other deeply when we’re apart, and we love each other twice as deeply when we’re together.

  Now I have the freedom to make choices with another, to consider what is best for two, not one. We have the freedom to ponder a future of closeness, comfort, and yes, compromise, but compromise born of togetherness, not solitude.

  How empowering this is, how wondrous, to share between us the great gift of connection and caring. I feel as if I have the strength to move mountains, both hers and mine. I want the simple pleasure of walking by her side, and I want the challenges of helping her realize her dreams. I want to keep telling my stories, but I also want to make her life’s story be the best it can be. I want to give all I can—and take all I’m given.

  I am still who I was. I am also, at last, infinitely more. I have become part of a “We.” And I want to keep being “We,” for as long as she’ll have me.

  

  This evening Jaye and I have the house to ourselves. Bree uses the excuse of being on swing shift for the next two weeks to take a night out and drag Nickory to a club somewhere. The significant glance she gives me as they walk out the door says everything her voice does not.

  I’m grateful, even though all Jaye and I end up doing is having a quiet dinner, then sitting on the couch in the living room, me on my computer, her on the iPad, doing that oh-so-21st-Century social media thing. Granted, we are sitting side by side, legs touching from hip to ankle as we use the coffee table for an ottoman. I have been giving the beatdown from Bree a lot of thought, and I’m trying to coalesce my reaction, feelings, and conclusions into something bloggable. It’s working, but it’s also turning out to be far more honest and raw than I’ve ever been in public.

  Still, I persevere, and as I type the last sentence Jaye breaks the silence.

  “Hey,” she says quietly.

  Her timing, once again, is perfect. “Yes, dear?” My tone is right out of Father Knows Best.

  Jaye grins. “I’m going to post your photo on Facebook.”

  I cringe. “Must you?”

  “Yes. Face it, Bogart, you’re beautiful, and I want everyone to know. But I need a caption.”

  Too easy. “Not everything you meet in a graveyard is dead,” I say, then burst out laughing at my own humor.

  After a second, I realize Jaye is not amused. “I’m serious about this, Rachel,” she says.

  I stop laughing. “I know.”

  “You’re the most important person in my life. I’m a better soccer player for knowing you. I’m a better woman for knowing you. I want to tell the world, and it’s not a joke. Okay?”

  I minimize the blog file, then turn the computer so Jaye can see it. My desktop background is a photo of her, snapped by yours truly before one of her games. The KC Blues uniform brings out the color in her eyes, the sunlight turns her hair into spun gold, and her smile is happy and sexy and oh-so gorgeous.

  “When I’m alone in Denver I stare at this picture and think about how much you mean to me, how you’ve changed my life, how amazing my world is now that you’re in it. No, Jaye. It’s definitely not a joke.”

  Jaye puts her arm around my shoulders and kisses my cheek. “Thank you.”

  “But wait, there’s more.” I bring the blog file back up. “This is what I’ve been working on for the last hour. I think I’m ready to post it, but I want you to see it first.”

  I watch her face as she reads, watch her expression change as she reads what I’m baring to the world. I’ve said some honest things in my blogs, but I’ve never been as open as this. She understands that by telling my readers about her, even if I don’t yet say her name, I’m revealing how important she is to me.

  Jaye has two expressions unique to her. One shows her vulnerability and the other is a secret smile which, despite our sometimes telepathic familiarity, I never quite fathom. When I see the vulnerability I know she’s unsure, maybe suffering a little, but I might not understand why. When I see the smile, I know I’ve pleased her in some way, touched some chord that harmonizes with her soul, but again, I might not know why.

  Tonight, as she reads my blog, I get both expressions. Only this time I know exactly what she’s feeling. This evening, the chord strikes through both of us.

  Tears shimmer in her eyes. Mine, too. This is where I tell her I love her. The moment’s right, the emotion is there, and I’m sure she wants to hear it. But I’m terrified of saying the words, even if Jaye already has, terrified of losing my grip on this gossamer thread.

  Before the silence goes too long, I take her iPad and put it on the coffee table, then do the same with my MacBook. Device free, I enfold her hands in mine and kiss first her palms, then the backs of them. I stand and move her gently down onto the couch, then follow her there, my face above hers, my eyes willing the message to her.

  I love you, Jaye . . .

  I brush our lips together, lingering at the taste of her, savoring each cell. Her mouth opens to me. I slide in to meet her tongue, still lingering, intense rather than passionate, embers rather than flames.

  I break off and move to her neck, kiss the points of her collarbones, the hollow of her throat, the skin over the shield of bone guarding her heart. I open the buttons of her shirt to free her breasts, then kiss each one as slowly and thoroughly as I did her mouth.

  A low moan of pleasure escapes her. She has one hand in my hair now, another trying to get the rest of the buttons open while I tease each nipple to rock-hard stiffness.

  I love you, Jaye . . .

  Somehow I manage to keep my lips on her as I still her hand and finish the job myself, getting the shirt buttons out of the way as well as the one on her jeans. The zipper is easy, and I sit up again to pull the jeans off her legs. She lifts her hips, our choreography is perfect, and she is naked before me.

  I let myself get lost in her beauty. My hand traces a pattern from her sternum to her ribs to her navel and around, then back up the other side, to finish with a soft caress of each breast.

  I begin the kisses again, starting at her solar plexus. A kiss to the center, the left, the right, a quiet slide down to her navel, a triplicate of kisses there, a further move down to her pubis, and another three kisses—to the center, to the curve where her left thigh meets her hip, to the curve on the opposite right side.

  I love you, Jaye . . .

  And then below.

  I take the swelling of her clit into my mouth. She cries out my name, the first real word we’ve spoken since this started. Tears spring from my eyes as my lips envelop her. I taste her wetness, lap up her arousal, worship her in a slow partaking of total devotion.

  Her flesh grows firm under my touch. It’s hard to stay slow, but I keep my movements deliberate and steady. Jaye opens her hips to me, asks me for more with the movement. I slip
my fingers into her depths, increase the rhythm slightly, build embers into fire into explosion.

  I love you, Jaye.

  When the fulfillment comes, it rockets through her, all of her, a convulsion of orgasm that almost takes us both to the floor. I stay with her, inside and out, ride her through wave after wave after wave. Her cries keen of release and joy, and

  I love you, Rachel.

  She doesn’t say the words, but I literally feel them course through me. I know she is thinking them as I have thought them to her, here and now. My tears burst out in earnest, but I try to stay in tune with her body as the orgasm subsides.

  She comes down from the crest, and I slip my fingers free after the last small spasms, brush one last kiss around her center; then I kiss my way up her body, ending not with my lips to hers, but with a gentle kiss to her cheek.

  I watch her eyes come back into focus. Her fingers touch my tears, and then she slides her hand behind my head to pull me down and bring our lips together.

  I feel the words again.

  I love you Rachel.

  I love you, Jaye.

  The power of this, the strength of this, raises me to new levels. For the first time in my life, on a warm Kansas evening, I know the feeling of commitment.

  

  And then I leave. The very next morning I leave the cocoon of love and warmth and connection and make my way along the interstate, across the Midwest and New England, to Cape Cod. I’m not even to Saint Louis when I realize I have company.

  Depression has decided to launch an offensive of sorts, hovering over my senses, lurking in the background of every move I make. Why has it come now? Everything to do with my deeply rooted insecurities, perhaps, combined with what I think I know about Nickory. I don’t mention it to Jaye when we FaceTime each night, and I tell myself it’s because I’m so accustomed to living with this alone. I can survive it, I always have. I will again. But deep down, I know it’s because I’m scared.

  I have high hopes for my mood improving when I arrive in Provincetown, my favorite place in the world, a place that, as Lee Lynch once wrote, “wraps itself around you like a lover.” I arrive, and the arms encircle me and it’s good, but even feeling the metaphorical hug of acceptance isn’t enough to stave off the gorilla.

  Guerilla.

  Whatever.

  I walk the streets, breathe in the sea air, note the amazing variety of lesbians, gay men, straight couples, and families doing the same thing, and I see it all as if draped in a shroud. The magic of P-Town is still present, the draw still palpable, but on this visit, peace is elusive. I hope it’s because, for the first time in my life, I have someone with whom I want to share this magic. And she’s not here.

  One evening, seriously out of sorts, I do something out of character to make myself feel better. After hanging out at Herring Cove Beach, watching the sun set, vainly hoping for the ocean to soothe me, I drive back into town, park my car near the hotel, and walk over to Commercial Street and up the stairs to the only bar in the world where people know my name.

  “Rachel!” comes a greeting as I crest the stairs. Bartender Marie’s voice is a welcome touch of the familiar, a balm to soothe my newly-hated solitude. If the ocean can’t help me, maybe alcohol can. Usually I limit myself to two drinks. Not tonight.

  Three hours and some unknown number of Cosmopolitans later it’s closing time. I stagger out of the bar, turn away from the street, and stumble down to the harbor. The night is too beautiful to be inside yet, and if I walk along the water, the cops won’t notice my lopsided gait.

  The tide is low, so low that small boats close to the shoreline are resting on sand. I drift out onto the strand, ambling along, in no hurry. When the moon starts to rise behind the distant curve of the cape, I stop walking to watch it with awed fascination. It is huge, hanging there low in the sky, this amazing crescent of another world.

  And I’m watching it alone.

  I pull out my phone, too agitated to go another minute without talking to Jaye, too agitated to consider the consequences if I drop the thing. I’m too sloshed to figure out FaceTime, and almost too sloshed to find Jaye in my “favorites” section on the phone, though she’s the only one there. I take a couple of deep breaths, letting the salt-and-fish-tinged air sharpen my senses, then focus my eyes on the iPhone’s screen. Finally, my alcohol-fogged brain finds the right combination of swipes and taps.

  Jaye answers on the first ring. She is quick on the uptake. “Have you been drinking?”

  “Oh, yeah. I miss you so much, Jaye. How I wish you were here.” I think of the Pink Floyd song and try not to cry.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Except for the emptiness of being fifteen hundred miles from her. Except for the damned gorilla. “I’m standing in the middle of Provincetown Harbor, at low tide. There are stars above me. The moon has come out. I saw a shooting star, and I wished for you. There’s something wonderful about this place, Jaye, something magical. I wish you were here so you could feel it, too, and understand.”

  “Understand what, Bogart?”

  “Understand, understand.” I lose my train of thought. Actually, my train of thought pulled out of the “Cosmopolitan” station a couple of hours ago. But its absence doesn’t stop me from rambling on in a way only someone with several drinks in them can.

  “Being here fills my soul like nothing else. Well, nothing until I met you. You fill my soul, too. Like nothing else. Like the sun and the moon. The moon’s hanging over the water tonight, it’s amazing. I love this place, Jaye. I love you, too, you know, but I hope when you come you can feel the magic here. It’s okay if you don’t. But I hope you give it a chance.”

  Finally I stop talking, and while I’m waiting for Jaye to reply, I start to sit down on the sand, realize what I’m doing as my knees bend, and somehow (comically, I’m sure), manage to maintain a Leaning-Tower-of-Pisa upright stance.

  “Is it really that wonderful?” Jaye asks quietly.

  “Oh, yeah. It’s magic to me, I want it to be magic for you, too. But it might not be, Jaye. It might not be. But I hope you give it a chance.”

  Another pause, like the two-second delay one gets on satellite broadcasts. “It must be special, Rachel, because you just said you love me.”

  I laugh, my drunken giggle swallowing a lurch of terror. Have I suddenly cursed the whole beautiful wonder of Jaye and me? “Well, I do, you know,” I say, blowing the whole thing open. “I do love you.”

  “I love you, too. Are you home now?”

  “No, no. I’m still standing in the harbor. It’s so beautiful, it’s so cool, except I’m all by myself.”

  

  The next day, in hindsight, I see why she ended up a little perturbed. Jaye thought “standing in the harbor” meant I was standing in water when I was merely on the sand with the tide out. When I FaceTime her again, in the late morning after the Tylenol has kicked in, I clear up the confusion. And maybe a couple of other things as well.

  “Honest, I never get that drunk anymore,” I say in response to Jaye’s worried query. “Honest, the Rachel you’ve seen since Portland is the real one. Last night was an aberration.”

  “Why? We’ve been apart before, and you haven’t done this.”

  “It’s getting harder to be apart from you.”

  I see empathy in her eyes. “I know. But there’s more to it this time. So tell me.”

  She knows me too well. Six weeks, and she knows me better than anyone in my life ever has.

  “I’m fighting off depression, and I’m pissed about it.”

  “Why are you depressed?”

  “I don’t know. Part of it may be because you’re not here. I can’t wait to share this place with you—”

  “—Rachel, stop. It’s about Nickory, isn’t it?”

  I massage the dull throbbing bones of my forehead. “I’m sorry. I promised you I’d be more open, didn’t I?”

&nbs
p; She nods. “I guess that’s a long-term project.”

  I close my eyes, then open them again. “You didn’t see her expression. Naked, raw desire, Jaye. More than lust. Love, too.”

  “Okay, so what? Remember what I said? I love you, you, Rachel, and I meant it.” Even over the wavering distance of FaceTime, Jaye locks me down with her stare. “And what did you tell me last night?”

  “That I love you.”

  “Right. Say it again. Say it now.”

  I barely hesitate, the faintest catch of air as I breathe the words. “I love you, Jaye.”

  Her face suffuses with radiance, and I swear the screen starts to glow. “See?” she says. “It gets easier with practice.”

  I manage a wan but sincere smile. “I wish you were here. It’s amazing how good I feel, when you’re with me.”

  “Like nothing in the world can get to us.”

  “You feel it, too?”

  Jaye laughs and shakes her head at the surprise in my voice. “Why do you think I’m so crazy about you? When we’re together I feel like the best player in the world, like I can score fifty goals in a game.” Her laughter fades to quiet affection. “I love you, Rachel. Stop worrying about Nickory.”

  

  Somehow I ration out my sanity over the next five days. I do my Provincetown thing, play tourist, walk the beaches, eat seafood, catch up on my reading. I limit myself to two drinks a day, if I drink at all. Depression hangs over everything, though, like it did in days of yore. My nightly talks with Jaye become my lifeline. Her voice recharges me, relights the shadows in my mind. I can’t imagine how bad this would be without her to talk to. I’ve been fairly stable since my last rock-bottom point seven years ago, the details of which I’ve yet to tell Jaye. I have to wonder why it’s coming back now. I finally conclude it’s not only Nickory. It’s Jaye, too. I’ve opened myself up to her, I’m vulnerable in a way I’ve never been before, and I can’t simply “live in the moment” and enjoy it.