by A. E. Radley
“No.”
Wyatt didn’t turn away from her trucks, but hooked a car onto another with a paper clip and made quiet car noises with her mouth. Jesse watched for a moment before she shrugged and walked back out. Misha and Cara sat halfway between the hallway and the living room. She watched as Misha picked a petal from one of the flowers and put it directly into his mouth.
“Baby, we don’t eat flowers,” Jesse sighed as she walked toward him.
Cara chuckled. “They’re organic, at least. No pesticides.”
“At least there’s that,” Jesse said, and plucked the flowers from Misha’s clinging hands. He squawked at her and she tutted. “What if we put these in water on the window sill? That way we can enjoy them for more than just a snack you didn’t ask for.”
“But I like it,” Misha complained. He didn’t move to stop her, though, so Jesse walked to the kitchen.
Cara got up off the floor to complaints from Misha. She consoled him that she would be right back, then followed his mother into the kitchen toward the sink where she was filling up a vase. Jesse added an aspirin to the water, fluffed the flowers, and watched a couple of petals float down onto the counter. She smiled at the thought of her son snacking on them, then swept them up into her empty hand. She placed the vase on the sill of the window over the sink and threw the petals away in the garbage can. When she turned around, she found Cara watching her from a few feet away.
“What’s up?” she asked, slightly unnerved at how close she was.
“I’m here to apologize to you, too,” Cara said softly. “I never should have presumed. I thought…” She shook her head. “That doesn’t matter. What matters is what you want.”
Jesse glanced over at the living room. Misha’s legs were poking into the hallway, but he was occupied with a toy he had been playing with before. Then she looked back at Cara. “Of course. I understand what happened, and I…” She lost her words, if she had ever had them to begin with. Her palms started to sweat and her pulse beat at her neck. Cara’s eyes were watchful but open and her lips begged to be kissed. Cara turned back toward the sink, the vase, and the window. “I may have led you to believe something that wasn’t true.”
“I should have known better.”
“Why?” Jesse asked. She turned around to look at Cara again, her embarrassment gone for the moment as the voice inside her head screamed that she would not be pinned down or pigeonholed into a box by Cara or anyone. “Because I have kids? Because I was married?”
“Because you’re too beautiful to be interested in someone like me. Too beautiful and too big-city.”
Whatever she was expecting Cara to say, that wasn’t it. Jesse gawked at her a long moment, then closed her mouth and closed the distance between them. She took Cara’s hand, put her other hand on Cara’s hip, and pulled her in close. The scent of her was intoxicating and Jesse closed her eyes for a moment to breathe it in before she moved again. Then she opened her eyes, cocked her head up, and placed a kiss on Cara’s lips.
And everything else fell away. With their lips pressed together, nothing else mattered. The boxes she had placed herself in were unimportant. Her past didn’t compute. All those times she had played pretend lesbian in college paled and ran together like a watercolor painting tossed into a swimming pool.
Then Cara broke the kiss and pulled away. Cara looked into her eyes with a watchful curiosity that made Jesse want to kiss her again.
“What was that?”
“I don’t know,” Jesse said breathlessly. “But I liked it.”
So she did it again.
CHAPTER 9
“Wait.”
Jesse’s stomach twisted painfully inside her as Cara pulled away from the kiss and out of her grasp. She took a step forward into the empty space left behind as Cara shuffled back away from her. She could feel the hurt written all over her face, knew there were tears brimming in her eyes, but she couldn’t make a sound to protest.
Cara’s brow furrowed as she spoke. “I know you think this is something you want to do right now, but what’s going to happen is that I’m going to fall for you – hard - and you’re going to rethink things.”
When she paused, Jesse took a breath and let it out with a hitching shudder. She opened her mouth to protest, but Cara shook her head and stopped her with a raised hand. The same hand that had helped her out of her car that first night, the touch of which had sent a shiver down her spine that started something in motion inside her she still didn’t understand. Now it was raised in something like defeat.
“When you do that, you’re going to go back to the live you’ve been living, and I’ll be left in the lurch.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” Jesse insisted.
She pushed down Cara’s hand and tried to take it, but Cara pulled away. Cara twisted around and raised both hands in the air to fend her off. Jesse reached for her, but Cara kept walking. Before Jesse knew it, they had walked back through the house, stepped over Misha spread out in the hallway, and were at the front door.
“Cara, wait,” Jesse said.
But Cara didn’t wait. She opened the door and stepped out onto the porch, leaving the door open behind her, and started across the sturdy, weather-beaten boards with her thick boots. Jesse followed her, panting, begging for her to stop, barely thinking long enough to shut the door behind her to keep the cold from leeching into the house she tried so desperately to keep warm. Cara didn’t stop until she had closed the door of the truck and had her seat belt strapped across her chest. When Jesse put her hands on her hips and barked at her to open the door, Cara started the engine but rolled down the window.
“I don’t understand what you’re doing,” Jesse said. Fire blossomed in her chest and spread over her face in an angry blush. She didn’t understand what was happening, but knew somehow it had been her fault.
Cara smiled, but the way her mouth turned down instead of up went straight to the quick of her, and Jesse took a step back.
“I did this before,” Cara said softly. “This exact thing. I thought it would be easy because it happened so fast that it felt like something real, but it wasn’t worth it in the end. When I got burned, it was really ugly and it lasted a long time. I didn’t know I was even over it until I met you.”
Hope sparked in Jesse’s heart. “I’m not going to burn you,” she answered, though even as she said it she was unsure she could make the promise. She didn’t know what she wanted and she hated that Cara held it against her even as she was sure it was the right thing for the other woman to do.
Cara nodded as if she had heard Jesse’s thoughts instead of her words. Then she turned her head to the front, her gaze piercing the frosty windshield, and put her hands on the wheel. “You have a lot of thinking to do.” She put her hand on the gear shift and dropped the truck into drive. “Goodbye, Jesse.”
With nothing left to say or do, Jesse answered with her own goodbye as Cara pulled slowly away. She stepped back and watched her crunch down the driveway until she couldn’t see the truck anymore. Then she turned around and made her own way back into the house where Misha waited at the door with his face scrunched up in confusion.
“Cara left?” he asked as he tried to peek past her through the open door.
Jesse didn’t have the heart to say the words, so she just picked the boy up and brought him into a hug as she nudged the door closed behind her. He hugged her back, but briefly, before pulling away to look into her face.
“Mama?”
“It’s okay, baby. Everything is going to be okay.”
She just needed to think things through, figure out what she had to offer, and present it to Cara. She didn’t know how, but she knew it was something she had to do.
CHAPTER 10
Jesse sat outside the door to Phillie’s office and tried to look inconspicuous. She had called ahead and set up a meeting, and after a long lecture from the older woman about Cara moping over her sudden change of heart, Jesse felt sure Phillie would take her
meeting and help her do what she wanted to do. All that was left was to get her in on the plan. It wouldn’t be a piece of cake, but it would be worth it.
She tapped out a rhythm on her thighs and thought about everything that had happened since the day she first came to Brewton. Meeting Cara had opened up something in her that she hadn’t recognized, but once that window was cracked, everything else in her life started to spill over like a long-haul truck on an icy curve. And, true to form, she had thrown a fit and called it all off. That had planted a seed of doubt inside Cara’s mind that had festered until the day a week before. The day Cara left her standing in the snow begging to be understood when she didn’t really understand her feelings herself.
Realizing her mistake and figuring out what she really wanted from Cara was the hard part. After that, it had been easy to arrange a babysitter for the afternoon and plot exactly what she was going to do. The call to Phillie had been rough going, but she was still hopeful… -ish.
When the door opened, Jesse sucked in a breath. But Phillie just gestured her in with a grumpy sigh, and she knew Phillie was resigned to do whatever she needed. That was how much she loved Cara; she was willing to let her get her heart broken again on the off chance that Jesse was right about them. And with that sigh, the last piece of her plan clicked into place.
Two hours later, Jesse paid the babysitter and promised pizza would be there shortly. Then she hugged both her kids and said goodbye. She got into her trusty little car, turned the ignition, and headed out on what she hoped wasn’t a fool’s mission. A few minutes into her drive, the snow was piling up around her as expected. She pulled over to the side of the road by the sign she remembered so well from her first day driving in and pulled out her phone.
“I need help. I’m new in town and I’m stuck on the side of the road.”
She recognized the voice of the man on the other line and she could hear the wink in his voice when he said he would send someone out to her. He gave her the same message as before about carbon monoxide care, then promised her driver would be there soon.
Jesse disconnected and waited. The storm wasn’t near what it had been on her first day out, but she still waited for the big truck longer than she expected. She had almost given up and started to call back when she saw the lights cutting through the midday gloom.
Cara jumped out of the truck, started to walk over to the car, then stopped. She put her hands on her hips and Jesse didn’t know how she couldn’t tell she was a woman the first time, even through her thick clothes. Now she could see every curve of her curvy, feminine body and the graceful way she carefully planted her steps in the downy snow.
Jesse cranked down the window as Cara approached and leaned her head in.
“Having trouble driving in the snow, are we?” she asked. She glanced into the back seat where two empty car seats were strapped in. “And you’ve gotten a babysitter for the kids. Well, that’s convenient.”
“Can we talk?” Jesse asked. She gestured to the empty seat beside her.
Cara wasted only a beat before she went around the car and got into the passenger seat. She watched Jesse hand-crank the window back up with a grin.
“What?”
“Not a lot of people can work a hand-crank anymore.”
“Not a lot of people have the brains to know that it would work a lot better in an emergency than electric will.”
“True.”
“Thanks for coming out here today, Cara.”
“What’s the deal, Jesse? Why am I here?”
That was the million dollar question and they both knew it. Jesse closed her eyes as she thought about it. She knew what she wanted, she knew what she didn’t, but she only had a vague idea of what might be going through Cara’s head. She decided she had to ask.
“What do you want from this?”
Cara gawked at her. “You’re the one who called me. I was just working.”
Jesse shook her head. “That’s not what I mean. What do you want from this?” she asked again, pointing from herself to Cara and back. “From us?”
“I don’t want anything. I just wanted to get to know you.”
Cara put her hand on top of the console between them and Jesse took it in her own. She raised the gloved fingers to her cheek. Her fingertips were still cold from the snow and the sensation tingled down Jesse’s backbone like the trill of a piano.
“I want to get to know you, too.”
Cara licked her lips. “As a friend?”
“As a friend and maybe more.”
“Maybe?” Cara leaned closer and her wet lips glistened.
“Maybe,” Jesse whispered. “Probably.”
“I like those odds.”
She was so close, Jesse could no longer see her cold breath as it puffed between them. Against her better judgment – or maybe because of it - Jesse leaned forward just far enough for their lips to touch. Like before, it was a feeling she couldn’t describe. It was hot and cold, sizzling and soothing, scary and somehow right. She wrapped her hand around the back of Cara’s head and leaned closer to deepen the kiss. Cara moaned into her mouth and Jesse’s insides went to lava.
When she finally pulled away, her lips were swollen and her eyes were unfocused. They both breathed hard in the cold car.
“What next?” Cara asked breathlessly.
“Would you like to go out with me sometime?”
Cara’s smile in return was all Jesse needed to see.
ABOUT ADAN RAMIE
Adan Ramie writes fiction about strong women who love other women. She lives in a small town in Texas with her wife, kids, and one too many cats. You can find her online at AdanRamie.com
GREENGAGE HOLIDAY CHEER BY EMMA STERNER-RADLEY
HOLIDAY CHEER
It was the 10th of December on the little British island of Greengage. In a workman’s cottage on the grounds of Howard Hall, the island’s biggest manor house, Katherine “Kit” Sorel put her hands on her hips and sniffed the air. Now the cottage smelled of:
Cinnamon
Mulled wine
Pine
An open fire
And holiday cheer.
At least that was what the packaging of the posh scented candles she had just lit, claimed. If you’d asked Kit what it smelled like, she’d say “Christmas.” Or “Nice enough, I suppose” if you caught her when she was grumpy. She wasn’t far off ‘grumpy’ at the moment, but she was trying her best to aim for that holiday cheer that the candles promised.
As she was adjusting her glasses, some tinsel scrunched up on the sofa caught her eye. While she’d refused a Christmas tree, she had to decorate a bit. Some tinsel over the fire place, an ugly Santa Gnome thing - which probably belonged in the garden - and some scented candles. That’d have to do for her first Christmas in the cottage she was renting from her girlfriend.
Kit’s Christmas Grinch-iness melted into the glow of love, probably complete with stupid grin.
Girlfriend.
It still made her head swim that Laura Howard was her girlfriend. Greengage’s favourite daughter, the successful businesswoman who was so passionate about her family’s fruit farm - Gage Farm, the caring sweetheart, the insatiable lover. All those things wrapped up in a package of big auburn curls, hazel eyes, freckles, rounded cheeks and full lips. Oh and amazing curves. Now that was the only package Kit wanted for Christmas.
And her wishes would come true!
Kit’s love glow faded again.
At least it will if Laura gets any time off from sorting out that bloody Christmas market. Damn the Greengage Events Committee for coming up with something to keep Laura so busy. Mabel and Ethel owe me.
The island’s first Christmas market, to be arranged cheaply and in last minute, was the idea of two of Greengage’s most famous trouble makers who had just joined the events committee. The grumpy Mabel Baxter, aged 78, and the jovial Ether Rosenthal, aged 80. It was Ethel who had pushed Kit to buy a few Christmas decorations, despite Kit not wanting to
celebrate Christmas at all this year. It didn’t feel right. Especially not as she’d probably be celebrating alone.
She was relatively new to the island, being a Londoner born and bred. The only blood relative she was in contact with was her father, and he was in Costa Del Sol with some new fling. Now, between the Christmas market and the launch of Gage Farm’s new mulled wine, Laura was busy and might not have much time for Christmas. If she did get time to focus on Christmas, she’d probably feel compelled to celebrate it at Howard Hall with her bratty little brother, since no one else wanted anything to do with him and Laura had a big soft heart. Not even Kit’s best friend would be with her for Christmas. Aimee and her little son George were celebrating at their home in Southampton with some bloke Aimee started dating.
Kit shoved her hands in her pockets and sighed when she realised that her boss and semi-adopted-uncle-or-fake-grandfather, Rajesh wouldn’t come over for Christmas, considering he was Muslim. Not that he usually kept to his religion, but he certainly did when it came to holidays. Kit suspected he might be using it as a convenient way to avoid socializing. Still, she’d miss him. And his slobbering bulldog-mix Phyllis, who would surely have liked to knock over Kit’s ugly Santa gnome and have a slice of Christmas turkey.
No, it did not feel like a proper Christmas and so why should Kit have to decorate and pretend to be filled with holiday cheer?
That was exactly what she had said to Ether Rosenthal when she ran into her by the town square a few days ago. Ethel had poked a bony finger into Kit’s shoulder and chirped that traditions were important.
Kit was pretty sure she hadn’t pouted. She was thirty years old. She didn’t pout. She had however whinged like a five-year old not allowed chocolate.
“Ethel,” She’d whimpered. “I don’t want to decorate, listen to Christmas music, cook and all that. It doesn’t feel like Christmas. So why go through the motions? What’s the point? You and Rajesh don’t have to.”