by Gerri Hill
Melanie was used to being by herself, used to making this trip upstream alone—usually on her bike and not on foot, like today—and she was used to stripping off her clothes, completely uninhibited. None of the others ever came up this way so she didn’t concern herself with modesty. In fact, even in her previous life, she was never shy about her body.
Yet now, as she and Erin stood beside the creek, a half-mile or so up from her cabin, she was feeling self-conscious. No one had seen her naked in over seven years. Actually, eight, she supposed. She remembered the dark-haired woman she’d met at the bar, remembered thinking “why the hell not?” when that woman had propositioned her. She couldn’t remember her name, but she could see her face plainly. It was the last time she’d been touched. The last time she’d been intimate with anyone. The last time she tried to be intimate, she corrected. She hadn’t actually been able to go through with it.
Since Adam’s death, she hadn’t been able to…to connect with anyone. It had been more than a year later before she’d been comfortable enough to even consider being with someone. It had been a disaster. Her therapist encouraged her to try again. And she had. A few times. And that night at the bar was the last try. At the time, she had decided it was her punishment for Adam’s death. She was to go through life alone, without love. Love? No. She wasn’t looking for love. She was simply looking for some human contact, some comfort, some release.
It never came. She finally gave up looking for it.
She glanced over at Erin, who was wearing the new swimsuit she’d bought, a rather plain, black one-piece. She had on a pair of her hiking shorts over it and the new sandals. No shirt. It emphasized how thin she still was, but Erin didn’t seem to care. Melanie noted that her pale skin was finally getting some color back, thanks to her time being outside and helping in the garden.
“We picked a great day for this,” Erin said. “It’s hot. The hottest day yet, I think.”
“Yes. Summer is upon us. The monsoon season will start soon.”
“What is that?”
“Not monsoon in the traditional sense, but for here, it means it rains nearly every day, usually in the afternoon, then it clears up by evening most days. Occasionally we’ll have an all-nighter. That’ll be the pattern into August. If we’re lucky, it’ll last into September. After that, we’re pretty much dry and rain-free until next year.” She smiled at her. “As you can tell, I don’t mind the rain. And it certainly helps cool things down.”
“Is the water cold? I mean, when I was fishing I didn’t really notice it too much.”
“It’s a mountain stream so…yes. But that, too, is relative.” She bent down and ran her hand through it. “It feels like it always feels.” She stood up and placed her hand on top of Erin’s arm. “Cool, not cold.”
“It’ll feel good.”
Erin unbuttoned her shorts and stepped out of them. Again, Melanie was conscious of how thin she was. This time, Erin seemed to read her thoughts.
“I know. I could probably stand to gain twenty pounds.” She ran her hand up her chest. “My breasts have all but disappeared.”
Melanie followed her hands with her eyes, nearly blushing as Erin’s hands rested on her breasts. She quickly shifted her gaze lower. “You…you used to be a runner?”
Erin raised her eyebrows. “Why do you say that?”
“You don’t have any fat on your legs, but your muscle is still defined.”
“I’m surprised. I haven’t even been on my treadmill in…”
“Eighteen months,” she finished for her.
Erin sighed and leaned her head back, looking into the blue sky overhead. “I stopped…living. I stopped doing everything I enjoyed. I cut off my friends…our friends. I retreated into my own little shell and worked until I collapsed.” She looked back at her. “As much as I hated my father—and Joyce—for making me do this, I feel so…so good. And that word seems far too mild to use. Every day I feel better. Stronger.”
“Every day you look better. And stronger.”
“I…I don’t think about her much. She doesn’t cross my mind much at all anymore, in fact.”
“Are you still in love with her?”
“Oh, honestly, I don’t even know that we were still in love toward the end. I was working so much and she’d obviously lost interest. At the time, when she told me she was leaving, yes, I would have said I was still in love with her. Surely. I mean, why suffer all of this,” she said, motioning to herself, “if it wasn’t love?”
Melanie didn’t say anything, giving Erin the opportunity to voice her thoughts without Mel injecting her own feelings on the matter.
“I think back now,” Erin said, turning to look at her. “Now, meaning now that I’ve been here and I’m not doped up on caffeine and booze. I can see things a little more clearly now. The last year, at least, we weren’t really happy. If we’d go out, sure. Sarah was fun. Life of the party, in fact. Then sure, we looked happy. But at home? Alone? I always seemed to be in my office and she…she was in front of the TV or on her laptop.” She shrugged. “There wasn’t a whole lot of intimacy toward the end. I imagine it was hard for her, to sleep with me, when she had a lover across the country who she wanted to be with.”
“Did she have a job?”
“No. I made enough to support us and we liked to vacation, to be able to take off when we wanted. She quit her job that first year we were together. Why? Are you suggesting she was bored?”
“I know I’d be.”
Erin smiled at her. “Would you? Or would you have found something to do?”
Melanie laughed. “Would I have a garden and chickens and goats if I didn’t have to? I guess I could get by with less. I could stock up at the grocery store instead of growing my own, I suppose. But I told you, it’s relaxing. It’s therapy. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s hard work and sometimes I do tire of it, but the rewards I get from it outweigh anything else.” She held her hand up. “I didn’t mean to shift the subject to me.”
“It’s okay. Like I said, I don’t think about her that much anymore. No sense in talking about her.” Then Erin smiled. “You really don’t have a swimsuit?”
“I really don’t.” She pointed at her teasingly. “And the proper thing for you to do would be to turn your back while I undress.”
“No way.” Erin was still smiling as she walked into the creek, the water up to her knees. “A little cold, but not bad.”
“Do you see the deeper hole in the middle? That’ll be above your waist. This is one of the spots I come to. There is another deep pool a little farther up. It’s deeper than this but not very wide.”
She watched as Erin moved toward the middle, the water creeping above her thighs now. The creek was flowing lazily, gurgling and rippling over the rocks, the sound mixing with the breeze. Once the rains came, the creek would swell, the water more fierce than it was now.
She tossed her backpack down beside Erin’s discarded shorts. She was apprehensive about stripping, but she firmly pushed it away. This was her creek, her place. This was her routine—stripping naked on the edge. And long after Erin left, this would still be her creek and her routine. No need to feel embarrassed about it now, no matter how long it had been since someone had seen her naked.
So, without looking in Erin’s direction, she pulled her tank off and tossed it down. Her breasts were small—too small to be considered sexy or alluring, she supposed. And too small for her to bother with a bra. Her shorts followed and without much ceremony—and without looking at Erin she walked into the water, moving directly to the deeper hole. She sunk down up to her neck, ignoring the coolness of the water. She finally dared to glance at Erin, who was blatantly staring, her mouth parted slightly. The crystal clear mountain water hid nothing.
“You…you,” Erin said, swallowing. “You have a really nice body.” Then she smiled. “You must do this often. Your tan…”
Melanie smiled and tilted her head back into the water, wetting her hair. “On p
articularly hot days, I garden without a shirt on.”
Erin laughed. “So you really are an exhibitionist.”
“The benefit of living out here away from everyone, yes. It’s freeing to be shirtless.”
Erin moved into deeper water too, then ducked under, soaking her face and hair. She came up, wiping it away with both hands. “I think I really love the cut. No one back home would recognize me.”
“I like it too. And your face isn’t quite so thin anymore. Isn’t it amazing how quickly your body can heal when you nourish it properly?”
“Yes. Body and mind. And I’ve been sleeping like a rock. That’s a first for me.”
“I think sleeping with the windows open helps. I love it cool and breezy and dark.”
“Was it hard for you to adjust when you moved out here?”
“Oh, yeah. At first, it was too quiet. As you know, living in the city, there are always noises of some kind at all hours of the day and night. And the first time the coyotes came close…well, it scared the shit out of me,” she said with a laugh.
They were quiet for a moment and she listened to the chatter of a group of chickadees in the piñon pines, foraging for pine nuts, most likely.
“What are they?”
“Chickadees. Cute little birds.”
Erin ran her hand slowly under the water. “And the hummingbirds? I really love watching them.”
“Those are black-chinned hummingbirds. During the fall migration, I’ll get different species coming through—broad-tailed, for one. I usually put up three feeders then.”
“And what are those large black and white birds that I see around the chickens?”
“Magpies, looking to steal corn.”
“You’ve really embraced living out here, haven’t you?” Then Erin smiled. “I guess you have, it’s been seven years.” She tilted her head thoughtfully. “Have you ever wanted to leave?”
“Ever? Or do you mean recently? Because at first, yes, I thought often about leaving.” She held her hand up sideways against the current, watching it spill over. “I had sold my house in Phoenix for almost three times what I paid for it. I used that money to build the cabin, dig a well—which cost a small fortune—and bring electricity out. I didn’t use all of it, thankfully, and was able to have a nice savings account and even invest some. My little cabin was quite reasonable to build.” She moved into shallower water and found a rock to sit on, the water splashing just below her breasts. “I sold my car and bought the truck, used. By the time I had the shed built, the chicken coop, the fence…Well, I’d spent way too much money to walk away. That’s not to say I didn’t think about it.”
She knew the more she talked, the more questions Erin would have. The question she asked now, however, wasn’t the one she was expecting.
“You were involved with a man?”
Underneath the water, Melanie wrapped her arms around her knees, wondering at the question. Wondering how she should answer it.
“Yes.”
“So…you’re not gay?”
Melanie met her gaze. “Yes, I am.” She could see the confusion in Erin’s eyes, could see more questions forming.
“So you were with this guy when you realized you were gay? I mean, a lot of women do that, I guess.”
“No. I knew I was gay at a young age.” She blew out a quick breath. Did she really want to talk about this? “He—Adam—was the son of my last foster parents. I met him when I had just turned sixteen. We became fast friends. Close. Brother and sister close.” She drew her knees up even higher, resting her feet on the rock she was sitting on. She leaned her cheek against her knee, picturing his sweet face, his dark eyes. “He was convinced he was in love with me. I didn’t tell him I was gay. He kept saying that we would be good together, that we’d be happy…as a couple. I told him I didn’t feel that way about him, but he seemed so sure of it, so sure that I could fall in love with him. I was eighteen when he first told me. Nineteen when he first kissed me. Every time I told him no, I could see the hurt in his eyes. I didn’t want to keep hurting him, so when I was twenty, we became more than friends. I thought maybe—eventually—I could love him that way. We moved in together shortly after that, and we were a couple, like he wanted.”
“You’re here now so obviously that didn’t work out.”
Melanie dropped her knees and submerged into the deep pool, as if hiding from Erin would stop the questions. As if hiding from her would stop the memories from pouring back in. When she surfaced, she slicked her wet hair back from her face, noting the shortness of it.
She looked at Erin then, trying to decide how much to tell her. “I…I was much like your Sarah. I met a woman. I was twenty-three at the time. We had an affair for over two years. I couldn’t bear to tell Adam. I couldn’t break his heart like that. He truly, deeply loved me. And yes, I loved him. But I was never in love with him. Not ever. And he knew. He’d stopped asking me if I loved him.”
“And this other woman? Were you in love with her?”
“More lust than love. She gave me what was missing with Adam, that’s all. Physically, she gave me what I needed. I wasn’t in love with her, no.”
“She’s obviously not around either.”
“No. That…that ended.” She held her hand up when Erin would have asked another question. “That whole story, that time in my life…To talk about that, I’ll require a very dark night.”
“I’m sorry. I have no right to pry.”
“No, you don’t.” Then she smiled, softening her words. “But friends pry, don’t they?”
Chapter Twenty-One
Erin was pleasantly tired and pleasantly full. Tired from their hike and the play day in the water and full from the dinner Melanie had whipped up. She was quite enjoying the vegetarian meals that Mel threw together, almost without much thought. Vegetables, of course. Always two, sometimes three varieties. Potatoes or rice. Beans or the occasional tofu. There was even something Mel called soy curls that had a rather chicken-like consistency. Simple meals yet full of flavor. Tonight’s meal was a combination of leftovers in the fridge along with some squash she’d cut into strips and grilled.
“If you’re in the mood for trout again, feel free to fish any day,” Melanie offered.
“I’m too full to think about fish right now.”
“Too full for a cup of tea?”
Erin eyed her, wondering at the request. Was Melanie inviting her to join her on the porch this evening? As if seeing the question in her mind, Melanie nodded. “If you want to…to talk.”
Ah. So Melanie was ready to tell her life’s story. After today, after she’d ended that vein of conversation so quickly, she had thought it would be days—or even weeks—before she’d want to broach it again. Ending the conversation hadn’t put a damper on their outing, though. They’d lounged in the water, tossing rocks about as they chatted. Chatted like friends. Melanie was very comfortable in her nakedness and Erin—after a while—adjusted to being in the water with a nude woman. Erin found herself telling Melanie anecdotes from her childhood, her teenage years…even college. And Mel, too, shared some things, although her words had a tinge of sadness to them. She’d been lonely growing up, she’d told her, making friends only sporadically until she’d gotten older and gotten into a more stable environment.
Erin looked at her now, taking the last plate from her to dry. Mel was in shorts, a navy T-shirt. No bra. Again, comfortable. Erin finally nodded, seeing the anticipation in her eyes…blue tonight. She’d learned Melanie’s eyes changed color, often matching the shade of the shirt she wore. As those eyes held hers, she wondered how many people she’d shared her story with. Mel looked almost eager to talk.
“Sure. I’d love a cup of tea,” she said finally. “It’s a nice evening. Maybe Goldie and Rick will come by for a song.”
Melanie smiled. “You’re secretly afraid of them, aren’t you?”
“Yeah,” she admitted with a laugh.
After they’d put the dinner d
ishes up and tidied the kitchen, Melanie took down two cups and filled them from the kettle she’d had heating on the stove. Erin opened the cabinet where she kept her tea bags and pulled out a box, one she’d seen Mel use before.
“This okay? Chamomile and vanilla?”
“Yes.”
They took their seats in the rockers and she remained quiet as she took a sip of the hot tea that had been sweetened with a drizzle of honey. The moon was already sliding in the western sky, larger than half-full tonight. She supposed a full moon would be upon them before too long. Even now, it was bright enough to dim the stars, but she didn’t mind. She found she enjoyed watching the night sky. If she lived here permanently, she might be inclined to get a telescope.
“That’s Mars,” Melanie said quietly, pointing to a bright star hovering just over the bluff to the east. “It has a little touch of red color.”
“Are you a stargazer?”
“Amateur at best. I have a few books and sky charts. And I get daily emails from a website that is devoted to starwatching.”
Erin smiled. “Ah. A website? What’s that?”
Melanie laughed. “I’m sorry. I suppose I could give you the password, if you still want it.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Like you said, it is kinda freeing not to have all that. Besides, I only used it for work, really. There aren’t friends to keep up with.”
“Facebook?”
“God, no. I never got into that, thankfully.” She raised an eyebrow. “You?”
“No. And before you ask, no, there aren’t any long-lost friends that I still keep in touch with. When I moved here, I left all of that behind. Intentionally. The ladies out here, Stella, they’ve become my extended family. I wouldn’t say I’m friends with any of them other than in passing. Perhaps Angela. She’s closer to my age although still twenty years older. But she and I have become the caregivers. Most of them are still very independent, but there are some things they can’t do—like operate a chainsaw, for instance.”
“You can?”
“Of course. If I want to keep a fire going during the winter, I have to cut my own wood.”