Far from the World We Know: A Lesbian Romance Novel

by Harper Bliss

Though I think it’s a little over the top to be proposing a toast at this stage, I sit there beaming with pride nonetheless.

  Toby, his glass of water half-raised, asks, “Why are we holding up our glasses for Laura?”

  “Because Auntie Tess and Laura are a couple now,” Megan says. “You know, like Dad and me.”

  “Okay,” Toby says, looking confused for a few seconds, then turns to me. “Are you getting married?”

  I giggle nervously. “It’s a bit too early for that,” I say.

  “Why? Mom and Dad are married. And then they had me.” Christ, the boy is just like his mother—and me. He doesn’t know when to stop.

  “All in good time, Toby,” Laura says. “People don’t just meet and get married straight away.”

  “But you’ve known each other for aaaages.” He stresses the first part of the word with the seriousness only a child can muster.

  “Toby, that’s enough questions from you,” Megan butts in. “You’ll be the first to know when Auntie Tess and Laura get married, okay?” She shoots me an apologetic smile. “Now eat your vegetables.”

  Later, when Megan and I are filling the dishwasher while Mom and Dad have taken Laura and Toby outside to show them the inflatable swimming pool they’ve installed for the summer, Megan says, “You look happy, sis. You have that glow about you.”

  I wish I could confide in my sister about this. I wish I could share with her—the person I’ve always shared everything with, from the smallest to the biggest things that happened in my life—what Laura’s burden is, but I know I need to keep my big mouth shut. I know if I don’t I’ll lose Laura’s trust forever, and I’ve only just gained a fraction of it.

  “I’m happy. It’s still early days, though the family is treating it more like an engagement already.”

  “We’ve just… you know, been waiting,” Megan says.

  “Well, I’ve been waiting too, Megs. I’ve been waiting for a long time.” Memories of our first night together pop up in my brain. The relief I felt, the sheer joy of being with another woman again. And the right one at that. If I’d somehow managed to crawl into bed with Sherry the cowgirl, it might have been satisfying for two minutes, but it would have been nothing compared to the all-obliterating bliss I felt with Laura.

  “I know you have.” Megan stops piling dishes for a second and I feel her gaze burning on the back of my head. “At times it felt as though you’d wait forever. It made me wonder what you were so afraid of.”

  “What do you mean?” I raise to my full height and look Megan straight in the eyes.

  “You could have made more effort to find someone, perhaps?”

  What is Megan getting at? “This is Nelson, Texas, Megs. Eligible lesbian bachelorettes don’t exactly grown on trees here.”

  “Well, duh. But I sometimes asked myself if you weren’t using us, the family, as an excuse not to put yourself out there.”

  “What? No.” That’s the second time in a very short period of time I’m being questioned about this—and by my own sister no less, the person I always wanted to stay for the most. “Not everyone is as lucky as you, that’s all. You met Scott in college and he moved to Nelson for you.”

  “Yes, he did, but that’s just the thing though. If he hadn’t wanted to move here, I would have followed him. If he’d wanted to settle in Houston or Dallas or even out of state, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have stuck around here, moping for the love I lost.”

  “You can’t compare the two situations. When you met Scott, you knew. I’ve fallen in love, sure, but never to the extent that I was willing to sacrifice proximity to my family. Remember Houston? I did try, you know.”

  “Of course I remember you living in Houston. I knew that woman wasn’t right for you from the get-go, by the way, and I distinctly remember telling you that, but you ignored my twin-sister intuition. You ignored The Force, Tessie.” Megan has a grin on her face now. We can never keep it too serious between us for too long a time.

  “Then do tell me what you think about Laura. What does The Force have to say about her?” I look at her closely, lest I miss any signs of disapproval on her face.

  “Laura is great. I don’t know her that well just yet, but all I need to do is look at you when you’re with her and I just know she’s right for you.” Megan pauses. “But, I don’t know, there’s something about her I can’t put my finger on. Perhaps the very thing that makes her so attractive to you. I look at her and I see someone who’s the opposite of you. Not just in the way she dresses or how she always comes across so serious, but her personality is the opposite of bubbly.”

  “She has been through a lot, Megs.” It’s out of my mouth before I even think about a suitable reply.

  “So you keep saying.” This time, it’s Megan’s turn to examine my face for signs of something I’m not telling her—me, her sister who tells her everything. “Is this about her parents? I can still see them arrive at Milly’s funeral. Such disrespect.” Megan shakes her head.

  “They certainly didn’t help.” Again, that war waging within me. I know for a fact that Megan would keep whatever secret I told her. “Mom and Dad are a million times more Christian than they are and they never even go to church anymore.” Deflect, I tell myself. It’s a good strategy.

  “The way they sat so stiffly on those chairs at Laura’s house at the reception, keeping away from everyone, as though we were all Satan’s spawn.” Megan seems to have taken the bait.

  “Can you understand now why I could never leave this family? You make every other family out there look bad.” I try to drive my point home—something Megs and I both like to do with each other—and make a joke in the process. And I know I don’t have an ounce of darkness within me and, perhaps, that’s why Laura is drawn to me. I’m her light at the end of the tunnel.

  The kitchen door opens and Dad walks in. “Tessie, darlin’, I’ve convinced Laura to try that craft brandy I’ve had for years. The one neither one of you, nor that husband of yours, Megs, wants to touch.” He seems mightily pleased with himself.

  Mom, Toby, and Laura file into the kitchen. “What have you girls been doing?” Mom asks. “I thought my kitchen would be spic-and-span by now.” She turns to Laura. “Put those two together and they get absolutely nothing done. Always gossiping and giggling and forgetting the task at hand.” She comes over and gives me a kiss on the cheek. “Why don’t you join Dad and Laura in the lounge, I’ll take it from here.”

  My gaze finds Laura’s and the wink she shoots me fills me with an unspeakable burst of happiness.

  ✶ ✶ ✶

  “This is so uncomfortable.” I huddle next to Laura under the duvet. “You’d better not touch me inappropriately.”

  “I can’t believe this room.” Laura slurs her words. “It looks like you never changed it since you were a teenager.”

  “Tomorrow, when your brandy goggles are off, you can have another look at it and apologize for what you just said.” I perch on one elbow and look at Laura. “What were you thinking, babe? You barely drink and then you let Dad liquor you up like that?”

  “I could tell it would mean a lot to him.” Laura folds her fingers behind her head and looks at me with the most relaxed expression I’ve seen on her face.

  “You don’t need to impress him, Laura. We all love you already.”

  “Oh really?” Apparently, she’s not too far gone to defy me. “Earl loves me?”

  “He’s fond of you. I’m sure of that.”

  “Because I took his daughter off the streets.” She giggles so hard she snorts.

  “I think you should close your eyes now and go to sleep.” There’s no point in prolonging this conversation, although it’s a joy to see Laura this giddy and uninhibited.

  “I don’t want to sleep, Tess.” Under the sheets, her hand clamps down on my thigh.

  “Is that right?” No matter how drunk Laura is, her touch shoots through me like an electric shock. Every time. “And what would you do instead?”


  “Maybe something you’ve never done in this room.” Her hand travels higher, her voice is deep and alcohol-soaked.

  “Laura, sweetie, your hand might be close to the money, but I don’t think it has enough energy left to do anything of the sort. And my parents are a little too close for my comfort.” I cover her hand in mine.

  “Your family is just so… nice. How is it even possible?” Her words are coming slower now. “I thought families like yours only existed in the most unrealistic fiction, in children’s books or something.”

  “No father would get his daughter’s brand new girlfriend drunk on brandy in any children’s book,” I retort. I should turn off the light but I’m enjoying looking at Laura in her current state too much.

  “No women ever had girlfriends in the books I read as a child,” Laura says. Her hand starts squirming underneath mine, pulling itself free and riding up a little higher. It stops right below the hem of my panties. “But, foolishly, as a child, I did believe my family was perfect. Until I found out they weren’t. The first big disillusionment of my life.”

  “Nobody is—” I start saying, but Laura just keeps on talking.

  “The second one was Tracy, of course. At first, I thought she was perfect as well. Maybe because I wanted her to be, though I should have known. After all, I had first hand experience with perfect people falling from grace. But I didn’t see. I didn’t know. For the longest time I wondered what exactly saying ‘I do’ to me did to her. The very first time she hit me, I was stunned more than hurt. I was shocked. You hardly feel pain when you’re in shock, I guess. I don’t know.” She falls silent after that.

  Instinctively, I inch closer toward her, throw an arm over her chest.

  “I need you, Tess,” she whispers with a sob in her voice. “Only someone like you will do for me. Someone as honest and utterly nice like you. I promise you I will always be honest with you and the thing about you is that you don’t even need to make that promise to me, because I already know you will be. I see your decency and I know it’s not a front. I just know that.”

  My eyes fill with tears. Maybe this is not the right time, but I’m saying it anyway. “I love you, Laura. With everything I have.”

  “I love you too.” Her voice is barely audible, but I understood.

  ✶ ✶ ✶

  I hardly sleep for several reasons, but the main one is Laura’s words echoing in my mind throughout the night. That, and she snored so loudly it sounded like someone was about to hack up my bed with a chainsaw.

  It’s just gone past 5 a.m. and, for the umpteenth time, I give her a gentle push to, I hope, coax her onto her side without waking her.

  “Hm,” she moans. “What?” Her eyes fly open with what looks like sheer terror.

  “It’s all right. You’re at the Douglas ranch.” She must have had a nightmare.

  “Keep me awake,” she whispers. “I don’t want to fall back asleep.”

  I nod, shuffling closer to her. “Bad dream, snore bear?”

  She shakes her head. “I don’t really remember. I just remember being irrationally afraid of something.”

  “Was it a bear, perhaps?” I smile.

  “A bear? I don’t know. Why?” Her eyes are sleep-crusted and her voice is hoarse and raw.

  “It’s what kept me awake.” I run a finger over her cheek and wait until her brain starts working properly.

  “Did I snore?” Disproportionate panic crosses her face. “Shit.”

  “It’s fine, Laura. You drank too much. It happens.” I kiss her quickly on the cheek. “I’ll survive.”

  She shakes her head. “I woke up once with Tracy’s hands wrapped around my neck. When I opened my eyes, she said, ‘if you don’t stop making those godawful noises, I swear to God, I’ll choke you to death.’ And I believed every word she said.”

  “Jesus Christ, Laura.” As much as Laura’s revelation feels like a punch to the gut—and as much as it would make me want to kill Tracy if she weren’t already dead—I’m also glad that Laura is opening up more, that she’s willing to show me this side of her, this look deep inside her wounded soul. “I’m so sorry.” My words feel wholly inadequate but there’s really nothing else to say. Not even I, bright and fun-spirited Tess Douglas, can reason this sort of evil away with a quip.

  “But… I’m moving on, Tess,” Laura says while she turns on her side. “With you.” She draws her lips into a small smile. Her skin looks a bit ashen and the wrinkles around her eyes seem to have deepened overnight. “And I may have a hell of a hangover today, but I remember every word I said to you last night.”

  “I love you,” I say again. “Now you should probably go back to sleep.”

  “What if the bear returns?” There’s laughter in Laura’s eyes now.

  “I’ll pretend it’s a teddy bear and cuddle it profusely,” I joke, waiting.

  “I love you too.” Her eyes have gone serious again. “And I’m not going anywhere either.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  LAURA

  “Where are you taking me?” Tess asks. I picked her up at The Ledger’s office just when I thought the light outside was beginning to look perfect. That thin strip of time between late afternoon and early evening when it changes into something out of this world, takes on a glow of purples and oranges you can only find in nature.

  “You’ll see.” I drive us in my old Honda to Tess’s land. It’s not far and Tess is a smart girl. She’s just playing dumb to amuse us.

  “Laura Baker, full of mysteries.” She puts her hand on my knee and squeezes tightly.

  “We’ve arrived.” I park my car where Tess parked hers when she took me here first. I couldn’t tell her at the time, let alone admit it to myself, but it was the first time I could possibly conceive of Tess and me as a ‘thing’. It was impossible not to recognize the sparks flying between us, the chemistry that coated our words and, perhaps, shaped how we sat and looked at each other. We were becoming fast friends and, underneath the platonic falling in love that happens when you make a new friend like that, something else was stirring. That’s why I wanted to bring her back here. This place means something to me now, and not a lot of places in Nelson do, because I don’t have much history in this town yet.

  “Well, what a surprise,” Tess says, her voice dripping with irony. “I would never have guessed.” She turns to me, her eyes shiny with glee. “It’s the pull of the land, Laura, I get it.”

  If she keeps this up, I’ll never be able to make my heartfelt request. But Tess knows when to shut up, despite her big mouth and the words that just keep rolling from it. She knows when a moment calls for silence, which makes her even more perfect for me.

  I have questioned Tess’s perfection, because how can any person be so good at so many things? How can she be so patient and so understanding and so pretty at the same time? It seems like an impossible combination. Because Tracy was these things too when we first met. She picked up the broken pieces of my daughter-heart long after I had cut off contact with my parents. She restored my faith in humanity, and she was a looker as well. Until she destroyed my heart all over again.

  But what I see now, is the difference between them. Every day, I see where Tess comes from. I know the people who made her into the person she is and, every time, I think, how can she not be the amazing woman that she is? And I stop questioning her perfection because she’s not perfect—no one is—but what she is, is perfect for me. She’s the light to my darkness. The voice to my stillness. The smile to my sad face.

  “Give me a hand, will you?” I hand Tess the blanket I brought. It’s hot and humid outside and sweat already pools in the small of my back. I’m wearing a t-shirt that Tess gave me a week ago, saying, “I think it’s time the color of your t-shirts started reflecting the color I’ve brought into your life.” Only Tess can say things like that without making them sound silly—can make me believe something like that. She handed me a turquoise v-neck and said it would bring out the color of my e
yes.

  Once we’ve sat down and I’ve handed her a bottle of beer from the cooler I brought, I say, “I did some research and building a house here is not inconceivable.”

  Tess looks at me from under her lashes. If she’s surprised at all by what I just said, she doesn’t show it. “Research, huh?”

  “Just looking to the future.” I look at her, because, especially in this light, and on this evening, I can’t keep my eyes off her. To her left, the sun is sinking deeper, but still blasting Texas heat. It’s June now and Chicago will be warming up, getting ready for its own hot and humid summer. I look at her because she is my future.

  “I always knew bringing you here had impressed you,” Tess says.

  What I’ve learned is that, unless I reveal something nasty about my past that snaps her right out of whatever’s going on in her head, it’s not possible to cut right to the chase with Tess. She always has a deflection ready, a quip to steer the conversation any way she’d like it to go.

  “What I’m trying to say”—I’ve also learned to, when I really want to make a point, ignore Tess’s defense mechanisms—“is that I can see us living here someday.”

  She’s silent for a few seconds, then says, “Are you going to build us a house, Laura?” That smirk she’s sporting slowly develops into a smile.

  “I’m not sure my DIY skills stretch that far.” I inch a little closer and take her hand in mine. “I can’t do what you’ve done for me, Tess. I can’t even take you to meet my parents, show you where I come from. Maybe one day we’ll go to Chicago and I’ll show you the place where I was happy once, but it would be a mere act of looking back. I know I need to look forward now. Moving to Nelson was the first step I took. I hadn’t even thought it through properly. I just needed to get away and came here because of Aunt Milly, and then I met you. And you started pestering me, and charming me, and getting under my skin. And look at us now? I’m not the same woman who left Chicago, and that’s all down to you.”

  “What can I say?” Tess winds her fingers tightly around mine. “Meeting a dark, handsome stranger with brooding, mysterious blue eyes brings out the pestering side of me.” She lifts up my hand and plants a kiss on it. “You may not realize it, but you’ve done plenty for me too.”