Silver Threads

by Lyn Denison

  “You don’t have to keep going out with Gary just to please your mother if you don’t like him,” Crys said, hoping Angela wouldn’t be annoyed with her for siding with Mel. But Mel was obviously unhappy about it all. It seemed pointless to Crys to force her into something she wasn’t ready for.

  “It’s not Gary exactly,” Mel conceded. “I mean, it’s okay when we go out in a group. But when we’re on our own I, well, I hate trying to make conversation. And I really hate waiting for him to get up the courage to put his arm around me. And I’d rather he didn’t, anyway. It’s, well, humiliating.”

  Crys sighed. “I know, Mel. But it will get easier,” she said sympathetically.

  Mel stood up and walked across to gaze up at the painting Crys had on the wall. She took a sip of her Coke, “Did it get easier for you?”

  Crys tensed uneasily. “I guess so. Yes.”

  “Did you go out with other guys besides Paul?”

  Mel asked, still not looking at Crys, and Crys hesitated.

  “No,” she said at last. “No, I didn’t. Paul was the first.”

  “Did you sleep with him before you got married?”

  Crys stood up too. “Mel, I don’t see — Has Gary been pressuring you to have sex with him?”

  “No.” Mel denied quickly and turned to face Crys. “I know he wants to, but I don’t think he’s game. He just, you know, touches me. I don’t, well, you know—” Mel exhaled loudly.

  Crys took a calming breath. “Mel, you don’t have to do anything with Gary, with anyone, that doesn’t feel right for you. You don’t have to…You see, sleeping with someone, it’s not just the physical side of it. You have to consider the emotional relationship and all that comes with it and—” Crys stopped and raised her hands helplessly and let them fall. “Look, Mel. I really think you should be talking to your mother about this.”

  “Are you kidding?” Mel rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. “Mum would freak out.”

  “I’m sure she wouldn’t.” Crys hoped this would be the case.

  Mel turned back to gaze at Crys’s painting, her hands worrying at the aluminum can she held. “When did you know you were a…that you liked women?”

  Crys leaned against the dining room table for support. This conversation had taken a turn into previously uncharted waters, and Crys wasn’t certain in which direction it was heading. Although she had heavy misgivings that she might. She desperately hoped not.

  Suddenly she didn’t know if she was capable of discussing this specific subject with Mel. Somehow, she’d have to head Mel off onto safer conversational ground. “I, well, I suppose, deep down, I always knew I preferred women. But…”

  “And when you went out with Paul,” Mel continued in a rush, “did you feel…did you wish he was a girl?”

  “It didn’t, I mean, it wasn’t quite like that.” How had it been? she asked herself. If she was honest she’d say that every time Paul kissed her she’d wanted it to be Diane. But she couldn’t tell Mel that.

  Crys pushed herself away from the table, resolutely straightening her spine. “Mel, I don’t want to talk about this just now.”

  “Why not?” Mel had turned from the painting again and walked a few steps closer to Crys. “If you knew you were gay, why did you go out with Paul? Did you feel you had to?”

  Crys swallowed. “Something like that.”

  The air in the room seemed suddenly thick with an inexplicable tension, and Crys felt hot and ill at ease.

  “I don’t want to go out with Gary,” Mel said softly, her voice slightly husky.

  “All right.” Crys tried to relax her tensed muscles. “That’s okay. Just tell him so next time he asks you.”

  “I sort of did.”

  “You did?” Crys made herself smile. “Well, that’s fine then.”

  Mel’s gaze met Crys’s, and something in the young girl’s expression had Crys’s heart beating a wild tattoo in her chest. She swallowed convulsively again.

  “There’s plenty of time for you to meet another young man, one you do like. Someone special,” she said, giving a small cough as her throat seemed to close on her.

  “I already have,” Mel said levelly. “I mean, there is someone I really like. Someone special.”

  Crys folded her arms casually across her chest and conjured up another smile. “There is? So what’s he like? Do we know him?”

  “No.” Crys watched a pulse throbbing in Mel’s throat. “It’s” — she swallowed nervously — “it’s not a guy.”

  Crys didn’t know what to say. It hadn’t come as a surprise, but hearing Mel actually put it into words…Crys stood there transfixed and watched as Mel took a couple of hesitant steps across the room until she stood in front of Crys.

  She’s grown so tall, Crys thought illogically, and then Mel leaned forward and put her lips on Crys’s.

  It was a soft, quick kiss, and Mel pulled back a little, looking into Crys’s startled eyes.

  “I’ve wanted to do that for such a long time,” she said hoarsely and moved closer, kissing Crys again, this time with more confidence.

  The softness of Mel’s mouth was velvety, her tongue tasting of Coca-Cola as she slipped it between Crys’s lips. A fire of pure desire ignited inside Crys, raged to engulf her, and for wild, erotic seconds she responded, returning Mel’s impassioned kiss.

  Then Crys came excruciatingly to her senses. She was horrified at herself as she thrust Mel away from her. “No! Mel, stop. We, you, we can’t do this.”

  Mel’s face had paled. “I love you, Crys,” she said brokenly. “I have for ages.”

  Crys moved away, raking her hand agitatedly through her hair. “I, Mel, you don’t know what you’re saying.”

  “I do know what I’m saying,” Mel cried fervently. “And I know how I feel.”

  “No, you don’t.” Crys held up her hand, and part of her noticed her hand was shaking. “Please. We have to stop this now. I can’t. It’s all too much for me. I mean, your mother—” She shook her head and looked at Mel, desperately trying to find the right words to explain why this was totally impossible.

  Mel’s young face was stricken, and she put one hand to her mouth. Before Crys could stop her, she’d turned and run out of the house.

  Crys sighed. She wasn’t proud of her behavior with Mel all those years ago. Although she’d followed Mel, tried to explain, to make amends for her rejection, she suspected she’d failed miserably at the time. Mel had certainly avoided her afterward, and who could blame her? And at the time Crys admitted she’d taken the easy way out, deciding to leave things as they were, that it was probably for the best anyway.

  Yet only she knew how much she’d missed Mel’s smiling face and dry humor. Or that deep inside her she’d carried that burden of guilt.

  She’d felt conscience-stricken because in those few moments back then she knew she’d responded to Mel’s fervent kiss in a way she’d never reacted to anyone else. Not even Diane. So it was hardly Mel’s fault that she had misinterpreted Crys’s response, for Crys had certainly not repulsed the young girl. She’d kissed Mel back, and she knew she shouldn’t have.

  What a disaster it had been. And last night she had almost repeated it. There was a lot of truth in the old saying that there was no fool like an old fool. That said it all. She was an old fool.

  Crys sighed again and glanced at her wristwatch. Well, there was nothing to be gained by skulking in her room. She had work to do, and she had to face Mel sometime. She’d simply tell Mel she was sorry and that she’d already forgotten the incident. They would just go on as before.

  Go on as before? Crys groaned softly. What a bitter joke that was. If only…

  Determinedly Crys stood up. Yet all she wanted to do was crawl back into bed. Preferably with Mel, suggested that small, irrepressible part inside her, and she grimaced. Cowardly and self-delusional were only two of the disparaging adjectives that came to her mind to describe herself as she opened the door and left her room, heading along the
hallway.

  The smell of perking coffee wafted from the kitchen, so Crys surmised Mel wasn’t languishing in her own bed. Well, here goes nothing, she said to herself as she continued on her way.

  Crys entered the kitchen and paused as she saw Mel standing in profile, her tall body leaning with one hip resting against the sink. Crys was sure her heart lurched physically in her breast, and she swallowed quickly. Unaware of Crys’s presence, Mel was gazing out through the kitchen window, slowly sipping her cup of coffee.

  Only then did Crys recall Mel’s parting words of the evening before. It wasn’t just sex, she’d said.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Mel had slept rather badly and was wide awake as dawn lightened the sky. Her mind kept playing over the scene with Crys the evening before. The searing heat of desire, the cold anguish of rejection. And her foolishness at allowing herself to be caught in a replay of her humiliation as a teenager, and with the very same woman.

  She knew she should simply pack up and leave. That would sort out the entire fiasco. She should take herself out of Crys’s life and save them both any ongoing embarrassment.

  The last time it had happened it had been Crys who had removed herself from Mel’s life, first emotionally, although Mel conceded that had been her own fault for rashly kissing Crys. And then Crys had separated them physically when she bought the farm and moved here with Diane. Now it was only fair that Mel take her turn, she told herself bitterly.

  She hugged her pillow as she recalled the absolute mortification she’d felt when she’d kissed Crys that first time and Crys had pushed her away. Mel had run then, home to a thankfully empty house. Her mother and sister were out somewhere, her stepfather still at work, and she’d reached the sanctuary of her room, closing the door on the outside world.

  Totally devastated, she’d thought her life was over. Dry-eyed, she sat on her bed, her mind and body completely numb. Crys had been part of her life for so long, had come to mean so much to Mel, and now Mel had spoiled the special friendship they’d shared.

  Why had she done it? What had possessed her to try to…? Mel didn’t even know what she’d wanted to eventuate. All she’d known was an urgent need to kiss Crys’s full lips and dissolve into her body. She hadn’t dared to really think past that.

  Of course Crys had eventually followed her that day, although Mel couldn’t have told if it was five minutes or five hours later.

  Through the haze of remorse-filled agony, she had heard Crys call her name, was aware of her footsteps approaching along the hallway and of Crys’s hesitant knock on the bedroom door.

  Mel hadn’t moved a muscle or spoken a word, and Crys had slowly opened the door and taken a step inside.

  “Mel?”

  Mel couldn’t look at the other woman, let alone reply.

  “Mel, I’m sorry,” Crys said softly. “I shouldn’t have…I didn’t mean to, well, fob you off the way I did. It was such a…You took me by surprise, that’s all. I just didn’t know how you felt.”

  Mel clutched her hands together in her lap, her eyes focused on watching her knuckles turn white. Surprisingly, there was no pain. Not in her hands.

  “Mel, please,” Crys pleaded. “Please look at me.”

  Mel didn’t, and then Crys sat down on the bed beside her, and Mel knew instinctively that Crys was being careful not to touch her.

  “Just because you don’t care much for dating at the moment doesn’t mean you’re…You’re only sixteen, Mel, and—”

  “I’ll be seventeen in two weeks’ time,” Mel heard herself say petulantly.

  “Yes, well.” Mel heard Crys sigh. “Mel, interaction with young men is only part of your life, and it doesn’t have to be the focus until you’re ready for it to be. And you also get to decide just how much of a part it will be. But if you’re not ready, that’s fine. Forget about it for a while. You’ll meet someone and you’ll know—”

  “Like you knew when you met Paul?” Mel asked scathingly, and she felt Crys stiffen beside her.

  “I’m not such a good role model,” she said flatly.

  “I’ve made something of a mess of my life. And I wouldn’t want to see you do that with yours.”

  “I love you, Crys,” Mel said. Tears blurred her vision as Crys gently took her hand.

  “I’m very flattered that you think you feel that way, Mel,” she said carefully. “And I know that at the moment you think—” Crys sighed again. “Mel, it’s okay for you to have a, well, a crush, if you like, on someone older, someone you think you admire. That’s all part of growing up. But it will pass. Things will sort themselves out.”

  Mel deliberately removed her hand from Crys’s. “You mean I’ll turn un-gay?”

  “No, I didn’t mean that. It has nothing to do with being straight or gay. But if you do genuinely feel you might be a lesbian, there are people far more qualified than I am that you can talk to. And you can talk to them quite anonymously on the telephone. That could help.”

  “What will they do? Introduce me to other young people my own age who think they might be gay too?” Mel asked scornfully.

  “Perhaps.”

  Mel looked sideways at Crys then. “I’m not interested in other young gay people. I’m interested in you.”

  Crys stood up, paced across the room, and turned back to face Mel. “Look, Mel. You know things have been pretty stressful for me this past year, with the divorce, the custody case. And you must know about Diane.”

  Mel thought she’d be unable to draw another breath. Her throat ached with unshed tears. Of course she’d heard of Diane King. Who wouldn’t have, with the publicity the Hewitts’ court case had had. But Mel had never met the woman, had never seen her with Crys.

  Mel swallowed painfully. She’d almost convinced herself that Diane was just a friend of Crys’s. But hearing Crys mention her, say her name, brought reality back to earth with an almighty thud.

  “Do you love her?” Mel asked, wanting and not wanting to hear Crys’s answer.

  “Yes. Yes, I do.”

  Crys’s words were like a knife twisting inside Mel’s breast.

  “Diane and I, we’ve known each other and cared about each other for a long time.”

  Mel’s gaze fell to her hands again, and Crys paused.

  “Mel, look at me.”

  Mel looked up, wanting to lose herself in Crys’s dark eyes, wishing they could both be transported somewhere far away from this place, from Diane King.

  “I love you, too, Mel. But not the way I love Diane. Can you understand what I’m saying?”

  Mel tore her gaze from Crys. She felt as though her heart was breaking.

  “Mel? Please say you understand.”

  “Yes, I understand,” Mel said flatly at last and she heard Crys exhale the breath she must have been holding.

  “Good. Now we’ll just put what happened this afternoon out of our minds.”

  “And forget it ever happened,” added Mel evenly.

  “Yes. I think it would be best. Don’t you, Mel?”

  “I guess so.”

  After a long moment Crys walked over to the door. “Just give it some time, Mel. As I said before, it will all sort itself out. Okay?”

  Mel nodded forlornly.

  “Well, I’d better go. Your mother will be home soon.”

  Crys had gone then, and that’s when Mel had fallen back on her bed and cried.

  And Mel had wanted to do just that last night after she’d left Crys. But she hadn’t allowed herself that luxury. She’d cried enough tears in the last six months. Instead she’d got burningly angry with herself, chastised herself for putting herself, and Crys, into the same distressful position as she had all those years ago.

  In the early hours of the morning, for what seemed like the hundredth time, her memory had tossed up the whole scene from over a decade ago, followed by the one last night.

  And then suddenly had come that unnerving question. If Crys didn’t care for her, why had Crys returned Mel’s
kiss when Mel had kissed her the first time, just as she had last night? Because Mel knew that on both occasions Crys hadn’t been immediately repulsed. She had responded.

  Now, over ten years later, Mel was no longer the naive teenager she’d been back then. She had the experience to recognize what had occurred. Crys had kissed her back, and her response hadn’t been perfunctory. What if Crys was attracted to her?

  Mel’s stomach tensed, and she felt a spark of fire surge within her. She clenched her thighs together as she felt the blossom of an electrifying craving center between her legs. Last night Crys had also returned Mel’s kiss, and for those few heady moments Mel had thought she’d faint dead away with wanting the other woman, with the wonder of having Crys in her arms.

  It’s purely physical, she told herself again, the thought surfacing to mercilessly taunt her. Crys had been on her own for five years, and Mel had been celibate for six months. Mel paused. Well, for a long time before that. She and Terry hadn’t made love in months before Terry finally told Mel it was over. Was it just a physical reaction on both their parts?

  Then it had occurred to Mel that she didn’t know if Crys had been alone since Diane passed away. For all Mel knew Crys might already be in a relationship. There could be any number of reasons why she and another woman just didn’t share the same house. Maybe Crys was involved with one of the women she went to dinner with on her Tuesday evenings out. Mel tortured herself with this possibility, recoiling from the picture of Crys making love to another woman. Mel shifted uneasily, hurriedly banishing that thought to the back of her mind.

  Last night probably was simply a moment of weakness, hers and Crys’s. And if they recognized that then maybe they could put it behind them. Or maybe they should just go to bed together and get it over with, said a wicked voice inside Mel. Then they could put that behind them, too.