by Karis Walsh
“I was going to reface the kitchen cabinets, but since I sanded the doors I think they look pretty good,” Mel said. “I might just refinish them instead.”
Pam fished out a piece of half sky, half lighthouse and put it in place before she looked up. “It’s cheaper to refinish,” she said. Mel uncurled her long legs and propped her bare feet on the back of the couch. Who knew Black Watch plaid pajamas could be so seductive?
Pam turned her attention back to the puzzle.
“And I’d rather spend the money on a fancy new stove.”
Pam finished a chunk of sky before she glanced back at Mel.
“Paint or stain?”
“I wanted to use a Mediterranean blue to pick up the color of the backsplash, but it might be too dark for such a small space. I’d like to do a color wash with a sponge to soften the tone and give the cabinets some texture.”
Mel talked about glazes and base coats, and Pam tried to focus on her words. Instead, she found herself distracted by the way Mel kept pulling a lock of her hair toward her mouth as if she thought it was still long enough to suck. She was so fucking sexy Pam wanted to toss her on the ground and take her while she talked about sinks and ovens and drains…
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Mel asked. “I’m boring you with all of this, aren’t I?”
“Not at all,” Pam managed to say. “I’m listening. You were talking about installing a garbage disposal.”
Mel continued her monologue about kitchen remodeling while Pam struggled to regain control. It was okay to find Mel sexy when she was being sexy. But to get hot because she was trying to chew on her hair while she talked about a garbage disposal? Pam had crossed a line somewhere, and she needed to find her way back to the safe side.
The puzzle forgotten, Pam looked around the living room.
Puzzles, games, books, movies. Throw rugs and chairs and a sofa.
Mel had turned the old house into a home. A place where her guests would feel cozy and safe. A place where Pam was starting to settle in and get too comfortable. And she was part of the home now, too. Not merely a visitor, she was present on the walls of almost every room in the house. Even the living room had a place reserved for her fifth commission piece. The blank space on the wall hovered over Pam, daring her to fill it and put her mark on this room as well.
“My house is done,” she said, interrupting something Mel was saying about bread ovens.
“What?”
“The construction on my house. It’s finished. Piper and I can move back home and let you have your room back.” The work had been completed a week ago. Pam didn’t mention that. Maintaining the weak illusion of having stayed this long because she’d had to, not because she’d wanted to, was comforting.
Mel took the index card she had been using to jot down notes and stuck it in her book, lining the edge up precisely to buy time before she answered. Step one of ending the affair. Move out of casual sex partner’s house. She had been aware of this inevitability since their picnic in the park—even before that. And she had seen the change coming in Pam’s eyes yesterday, when she’d resurfaced after finishing her kite painting. But Mel had convinced herself that leaving this dead-end relationship was necessary if she wanted to be more open to love. Necessary, but so damn sad. And so soon. She had hoped for a longer time with Pam. More sex, more companionship.
“You know I’ve enjoyed having you here.”
“It’s been fun for me, too,” Pam said, her eyes still on the puzzle.
“But you’ll be full of guests soon. I can’t keep shuffling between Danny’s room and upstairs when he comes to visit.”
“Of course not,” Mel agreed. But sometimes she forgot. On nights like this one, when they spent time together and talked. Nights when it was easy to forget they were supposed to mean nothing more to each other than sex. Nights that seemed worlds away from casual.
Pam came over and sat next to her on the sofa. “Mel, Danny asked about us. When we were at the park.”
“Oh?” Mel wasn’t sure what bothered her more. That Danny had guessed before she’d had a chance to tell him, or that he had talked to Pam instead of her. “What did you say?”
Pam shrugged and took hold of Mel’s hand. “The truth. I said we liked each other a lot, but we weren’t dating or anything. More or less. I can’t remember what I said. But he seemed fine with…everything.”
“Well, he likes you. And I appreciate you being honest with him. I just thought we could keep it a secret until I was ready to talk to him,” Mel said, silently adding, Since it wasn’t like we were hiding a serious relationship. But she had been serious about Pam. She had tried to fight it, had tried to be fine with no hope, no promises. She knew that now, and of course Danny had been able to see it.
Pam scooted closer and wrapped an arm around Mel’s shoulders, kissing her on the temple. “It’s for the best, Mel. Our arrangement worked because we wanted each other, and neither of us was looking for anything more than sex. But it’ll be better for Danny if I’m not around as much. If he doesn’t get used to me being here.”
Step two. The it’s-for-the-best speech. But why did Pam have to hold her so tenderly while she said it? As if she heard Mel’s thoughts, Pam’s caresses slowly changed from tender to intimate. She gently cupped Mel’s breast and stroked her thumb over her nipple. Mel gritted her teeth to keep from moaning, hating her body for so quickly responding to Pam’s touch even when her emotions were a confused mess. Nothing was certain except she didn’t want Pam to go. But what was the alternative? Move in together officially? They had both agreed to a purely physical, purely temporary relationship. Still, logic wasn’t convincing enough to cool Mel’s heated response. She turned her face away from Pam’s kiss.
Pam sat back slightly. “What’s wrong, Mel?” She kissed Mel’s neck, dragging her soft lips along Mel’s jawline. “We have tonight. And we don’t have to stop seeing each other like this. I just won’t be living here anymore.”
Mel didn’t answer, but she waged a small battle within her mind. She was acting like a teenager who was only starting to date.
They had defined an adult relationship, and Pam was only sticking to the rules they had both agreed to follow. Pam had always been honest about where she was, and she couldn’t be expected to change because Mel was opening up to the idea of forever. Mel turned back and allowed Pam to kiss her, but she was the one who pulled Pam’s sweatshirt off and threw it on the floor. And she was the one who slid her fingers under the waistband of Pam’s sweats and made her come within seconds.
❖
Pam packed her things and moved out the next day. Mel had been silent all morning and left for the hardware store directly after breakfast. Pam had to take three trips to get all her belongings home.
She had come with only a few clothes and necessities, but over the past few weeks she had gradually moved books and extra clothing and painting supplies into Mel’s inn. She moved sluggishly through the process, throwing things haphazardly into boxes, lugging them to her car, moving out of the house as if fighting a strong current.
She took one last glance at the starfish mosaic before she shut the door firmly. Every painting had been a struggle. She felt like a salmon swimming upstream to spawn, leaping rung by rung up a fish ladder. Out of a long-ingrained habit, she filed away the image of the salmon, weakened but sailing upward. Fighting against the odds.
Would she ever have the chance—or the desire—to actually paint it? If she wanted to, she needed to leave. Love and loss had taken away her art once. Pam opened the back door for Piper and got in the driver’s seat. She only paused to light a cigarette before she backed out of the driveway.
Chapter Twenty-One
Pam hurried back to her gallery after lunch and locked the door behind her. She went into the small back office and pulled a fresh canvas from the stack she stored behind the desk.
She didn’t know why she had continued the habit of storing unused canvases in various
places around her home and gallery when she so rarely painted—well, at least until about eight weeks ago, when she’d started on the commission pieces for Mel’s inn—but right now, two weeks since she’d moved home, she was glad to have a clean and prepared surface at hand.
Her haste was so at odds with the subject she had to paint that she almost lost her focus. Then the image rose up again, and she began squeezing colors onto her palette. She had been staring out to sea during her lunchtime walk, and she had almost stepped on a huge jellyfish lying like a puddle on the sand. Only Piper’s sharp bark had alerted her in time to break her stride and avoid the creature. It had oozed along the beach, its movement imperceptible but for the telltale indentation behind it, revealing its path.
Pam quickly streaked a thin wash of Payne’s gray over the surface to make a blue-gray ground for the painting. While it was still wet, she stippled paint over the base for the damp sand. Dry sand created a border along the bottom of the canvas, and the edge of a wave defined the top. She played with several blends of colors on her palette before she sketched the jellyfish slightly to the left of center, its trail leading off the canvas to the right. She couldn’t reproduce the quivering blob with her heavy oils, but she visualized the sea glass in place before she even finished the early stages of painting. Pale blues and grays and clear, polished glass would bring life and lightness to the heavy mass of paint and imitate the glistening reflection of sunlight off the creature’s surface.
Smudge this line a little. Yes, perfect. Pam’s brush froze on the canvas. She held her breath and carefully finished the stroke before lifting the brush. Where had the thought come from? Where was her usual disconnect from the work? She was right there, watching the painting unfold, making adjustments so it matched her vision, holding both the painting-in-progress and the finished product in her mind.
Instead of locking part of herself away and letting the painting happen.
Almost against her will. Now she was present, making conscious decisions about the work. She slowly put her brush against the canvas again, exhaling through her mouth as she stroked across the painting.
Seeing the paint as it spread, anticipating the next layers of color, visualizing the completed and sea-glass studded mosaic.
Pam’s mind moved ahead even further, beyond the completed picture, and she saw Mel hanging the painting in what Pam called the Gray Room. She named the rooms by their colors, but Mel had taken to referring to them by their paintings. She had a Starfish Room, a Seascape Room, a Storm Room, a Kite Room, and soon she’d have a Jellyfish Room. Pam refused to use those terms out loud, but under Mel’s influence she was beginning to secretly follow Mel’s lead.
She had been unaccustomed to living with her art. Over the past years, she had put her paintings up for sale as soon as she had managed to finish them. But the daily exposure to the pieces while she had been living with Mel had worn away some of her discomfort. She hadn’t spent a lot of time contemplating the paintings as they hung on the walls, but she had at least been able to walk past them without cringing.
She had to admit that Mel’s excitement with each new painting was a big part of the reason she was slowly allowing herself to accept inspiration when it came instead of fighting so hard to ignore it.
Pam stepped back from the easel and from the vision of Mel hanging the picture in her inn. She had seen jellyfish on the sand hundreds of times, but never before had she felt so compelled to paint one. Maybe she felt a kinship with the slow, shapeless animal.
These past weeks with Mel had left her feeling as if she were crawling through sludge in an attempt to keep pace with Mel’s explosion of growth. From her inn to her garden to her relationship with Danny, Mel was transforming at a rapid rate. Pam, by comparison, barely was able to drag herself from painting to painting, from isolation to an uneasy companionship. She’d settle back into her own pace as soon as she delivered the last of her paintings to Mel.
Or would she? Go back to her sluggish pace of one painting a year, when she had just finished her fourth in less than twice as many weeks? She had been so accustomed to denying herself this outlet, this way of expressing her pain. Her pain and vulnerability, those feelings too intense to express any other way than through her art. She had blamed Mel for forcing her to paint, but Mel had only asked. Pam had picked up the brushes, had let the images pour out, had slowly moved from expressing her pain to easing it.
She looked closely at every detail of her painting. Looked at every line, every texture, breaking it into sections as she analyzed her work. She made some small changes to the jellyfish’s shape so it didn’t appear so symmetrical. Darkened the sand in one area, so the contrast between wet and dry was more pronounced. She had fought Mel’s positive interpretations of her paintings at first. Then she had started to see them through Mel’s eyes. Indirectly, cautiously. Always on guard against the chance of being hurt again. But she didn’t need the filter anymore.
Her vision was direct and clear, even through her tears. Seeing the painting objectively, but still investing all her emotion in it.
Somehow Mel’s courage as she rebuilt her life and her inn had helped Pam find the courage to stop denying her art. The return to being an artist had been a long one. Eight years followed by eight daring and complex weeks. The eight weeks she had known Mel. Pam wanted to share her tentative hope, the hesitant resurfacing of her abilities, with Mel. But she couldn’t. She’d share this painting with Mel, but not the breach in her protective shell. Not the aching joy she felt as her desire to express and create broke free. Love had almost destroyed her, as an artist and as a person. Being in love, losing her love. How many decades would it take for her to get over Mel if they started a real romance and failed? Pam might never pick up a brush again. She had used up all her courage. She wasn’t brave enough to take the chance.
❖
Mel slowly peeled back the blue painter’s tape from around the window sash. The neat white trim contrasted nicely with the slate-gray walls. She had chosen colors with more depth for the third-floor rooms. Pam’s kite painting hung next door, against a rosy background.
Pam was delivering the painting for this room today. She had given Mel some suggestions for colors but wouldn’t tell her what she had painted.
Mel stopped to admire the panoramic vista offered by the upper-level rooms. They shared a bath, but the view more than made up for the slight inconvenience. Plus, the two rooms worked well as a suite for families, and Mel had already booked the full suite several times for the following month. She sighed and turned away from the ocean to gather her scraps of tape. She was doing all this work for other people to enjoy the views and the rooms while she languished alone in her downstairs dungeon. She was lonely without Pam and Danny and nervous about her soon-to-arrive guests. She had come up with the idea of an inn so she could have more people in and out of her life. But a few days with Pam in her bed, in her house, sharing her world, had spoiled her. She wasn’t certain she’d be able to live her whole life like this. She didn’t think she’d be able to survive with only intermittent companionship, with no lasting closeness.
Her body, her senses wanted Pam. Pam, windblown and smiling after drifting through ocean winds, a storm replacing the calm sea of her eyes when she took Mel in her arms. The taste of her kiss, as wild and uncontrollable as the tides. The feel of her arms, so strong and comforting, as the crashing waves of release washed over Mel’s body. Mel had spent so many years denying her body, and now she was tempted to keep their affair alive. But her instincts whispered a warning so quiet it was almost lost in the turmoil in her mind. She wanted more. She wanted everything. Sex, yes. Definitely. But love, too. Companionship and honesty.
Pam wasn’t ready to give her anything but sex. And it was almost enough, but not quite. Mel had to keep searching, find a new path to the future she wanted. Pam had emotional limits because of her past, because she had been hurt, because of things Mel still didn’t fully understand. But would the women Mel
was going to meet be any more available? Travelers, passing through town before they returned to their real lives. Short days in which to find a spark of interest, to try to find someone who didn’t fail when compared to Pam.
She heard footsteps on the stairs. Pam. Bringing her fourth painting. At this rate, she’d be done with the commission within the week. Without the business deal to link her to Pam, Mel doubted they’d see each other at all except for accidental meetings in town.
She had been so excited when Pam finished the first mosaics. Now, she dreaded the final one.
“Wow, the walls look great,” Pam said, walking sideways to fit through the door with the large painting. She turned it to face Mel.
“The color will be perfect with this.”
Mel stared at the jellyfish. She had seen the creatures on the beach but had never expected Pam to paint one. She loved it. “It’s different,” she said, unable to articulate what she meant. Pam had painted a portrait. Of a globby jellyfish, but it was a portrait. Her other paintings were distant, as if Pam was standing as far away as possible.
This time, however, she had stepped close. Stared her subject in the eye—or whatever it was a jellyfish had. She had somehow captured nuance and subtlety in the heavy oils. Mel wasn’t sure what this step meant for Pam, but she knew it was progress. Special.
Pam laughed self-consciously. She had become accustomed to Mel’s enthusiastic responses to her work, and the implied criticism she heard hurt. This painting wasn’t more technically proficient or conceptually interesting than her others. Mel had no reason to like it better, no way to know how different the process of painting had been. Why had Pam expected her to understand? “Saying it’s different is like saying a blind date is an interesting conversationalist.”