by Karis Walsh
“Sure,” Iris said. She slipped her arm around Casey’s waist as if they walked closely together all the time, and it felt just as natural for Casey to reach around and hold Iris tightly against her.
They walked toward the landing in a comfortable silence. A few cars passed them, and most of the businesses were still open. When they got to the bottom of the hill, Casey saw that the Thai fusion restaurant she had been hoping to try when she first arrived was nearly as full as Jazz’s pub had been. She remembered how hesitant she’d been then about staying on the island with none of the distractions of Seattle at her disposal.
She was different now. She slept better and ate better—thanks to Iris and Jazz. She could spend entire evenings reading and chatting with Chert and the elusive cat. Far from the boredom she had anticipated, she felt fuller here. Like life was richer, and all her senses were more in tune with it.
Right now, the sense of touch overrode everything else. Iris’s hands were a little rough from the work she did, and Casey had never before appreciated how much more wonderful they were than hands kept smooth with expensive lotions and little manual labor. When Iris touched her, she fired up Casey’s nerve endings. Even where their skin wasn’t in contact, Casey felt Iris’s every move. Her jacket scratched against Casey’s sweatshirt with a brushing motion that wasn’t tentative or partial. And when their thighs occasionally nudged each other, with denim rasping against denim, Casey thought she was going to lose control.
She pulled Iris into the dark alcove of a closed real estate office and stood facing her, their mouths close enough for their breath to intermingle. “You are enough, Iris. More than enough. Don’t let anyone convince you that you aren’t.”
Iris smiled, and the skin at her temples crinkled in the way Casey loved to see. She reached up a hand and brushed Casey’s bangs out of her eyes, mirroring the gesture Casey knew she herself made all the time. The pads of Iris’s fingers trailed over Casey’s cheekbones and rubbed across her lips. Iris watched the movement of her hand, and Casey felt her gaze with as much intensity as she felt the gentle pressure from Iris’s fingers. There was a heaviness in her chest and she realized she was holding her breath. She exhaled, and Iris closed the distance between them and kissed Casey’s open mouth.
She had thought Iris’s fingers had felt good when they touched her, but they didn’t compare to Iris’s lips. They moved over Casey’s mouth with a confidence Casey hadn’t expected from Iris, but one she understood. This wasn’t the kind of confidence that came from tons of experience and skill—rather, it flowed into a kiss between two women who fit together naturally. Casey felt her world shifting as their kiss deepened, as if their mouths were two sides of a fault plane and the friction between them was causing a level of seismic activity Casey had never experienced before.
She pulled back from the kiss and rested her forehead against Iris’s. She’d keep the geology metaphors to herself, but neither of them could deny what was building between them, however they chose to describe it.
“I’m not here for much longer,” she said.
“I know.” Iris’s answer was little more than a whisper.
“We can stop now, or we can live in the present. Spend what time we have together.”
Iris hesitated. Casey didn’t want to push her beyond what she was ready for. She talked about living for now, but she also said she wanted to play it safe. What Casey was offering was only for the moment, and it definitely didn’t feel safe for her heart. But she was willing to risk it. Was Iris? She wasn’t anything Iris would want long-term. She didn’t belong here, in this community. She wasn’t the animal expert Iris was. She was a scientist, not a poet. She wasn’t sure if Iris would be willing to compromise so much for what promised to be an amazing handful of nights.
“We can think of it like a vacation fling,” Casey said, trying to keep her tone light and carefree. Did she need to prove she wasn’t completely invested in this connection between them to Iris, or to herself? “You know, a time when you do things you normally wouldn’t do.”
“Like me?” Iris pulled away. Her voice held a harshness that made the soft, sensual closeness between them disappear. “So when you said I was enough, you meant for right now. I’m enough for a night of sex, but nothing more?”
“Whoa, that is not what I meant,” Casey said, her own tone sounding louder and angrier than she liked. “I just meant we wouldn’t be together otherwise. We’re very different, and we live in different places—”
“What is it exactly, Casey? I’m not sophisticated enough for a city girl like you? I’m not daring enough for your scientific expeditions?”
Casey hesitated in stunned silence. How could Iris think she was the one who was inadequate? Casey had been thinking the same thing about herself. She wasn’t stable, connected. She didn’t welcome people and animals into her life with open arms like Iris did. By the time she was ready to form words, Iris was on her way back to the truck, and Casey had no choice but to follow. They drove in a tense silence, broken twice as Casey tried to explain herself but was shut down by Iris. Finally, she gave up and concentrated on getting them back to the shelter, where they went their separate ways.
Chapter Fourteen
Iris spent the next morning hidden away in her home office until she saw Casey’s pickup leave the shelter’s parking lot. She felt a little cowardly, but she really did have a ton of paperwork to do. The work in the kennels and in the cats’ area was only one part of the rescue work she performed. A lot of what she did each day was more administrative. She read through a dozen emails asking about lost pets and possible adoptions, and answered each of them. She updated photos on the shelter’s website and social media sites, adding new anecdotes where she could. She did everything in her power to make a connection between a potential forever home and an animal. The correlation was direct—the more personal stories she added, the higher her adoption rate, so she tried not to resent the amount of time she had to spend with her computer instead of her animals.
Today, however, she was actively searching for more busywork to keep her inside. She had spent a restless night, alternately railing internally at Casey and wanting to sneak through the darkness and over to the bungalow in search of her. She was exhausted and cranky. All the good her day off yesterday had done for her was negated by the way she and Casey had ended the night.
Iris peeked out from behind her kitchen curtain and made sure Casey’s truck was no longer in sight before she left the house. To be fair, Casey had tried to explain herself during the drive home. But what could she have said to soften the blow from her earlier words? Iris wasn’t her type, but she’d do in a pinch.
She felt annoyance rising again, and she grabbed a bag of dried figs and went outside. She had to keep busy and work out some of her anger. Especially since she wasn’t sure exactly where that anger should be directed. Toward Casey, who had said the wrong thing? Or toward herself because she had wanted Casey last night and might possibly—just possibly—have been too scared to follow through with her desire.
Iris crinkled the plastic bag of figs as she walked until she heard the loud bleats of the Twins. A moment later, two brown-and-white heads with long, floppy ears poked around the corner of the kennels. Once they spotted her, the Twins came across the yard and toward her in a series of enthusiastic hops.
Iris couldn’t help but laugh as they ran to her and begged for treats. She fed them each a few figs before cramming the half-empty bag into her pocket. As soon as the food had disappeared, they lost interest and bounced back the way they had come. She trailed behind and went into the toolshed to get a hammer, nails, and some scrap pieces of wood. She’d finish repairing some of the obstacles in the exercise run today. Casey had nearly completed the work in there, mending the fences and clearing out loose branches and debris. Last week, Iris couldn’t look anywhere without seeing an imposing project just waiting to be completed. Now, she had to search to find more cleanup or repair work to do.
/> Casey’s work for the lab and for Iris was about at its end. And she’d be going back to the mainland. Where she belonged, and where she’d find someone who was just right for her—not just right for now.
Iris opened the gate to the exercise yard and went over to one of the ramps she used for teaching obedience and obstacle work to her dogs. She had tried to change who she was for other women before. She knew it was a trait she needed to watch carefully in herself, for all the reasons she had explained to Casey last night. She had spent too many years attempting to make her parents see her as their perfect child. The only one they needed. They hadn’t, and Iris had been left with a desire to please that could be a hindrance sometimes.
Casey hadn’t asked her to change, though. Iris thought about their conversation while she flipped the ramp on its side and inspected a crack caused by a falling limb. She’d need to get a tree person out here to trim away any remaining dead branches before the next earthquake or windstorm brought them down. She pulled off a broken chunk of wood that was meant to be a paw hold for the dogs and replaced it with a new piece.
When she tipped the ramp back to its upright position, she perched on the side of it and remembered Casey’s words. She seemed to like Iris. She had merely acknowledged how different they were, something Iris had recognized from the start. Under normal circumstances, she and Casey would never have met, let alone connected the way they had last night.
Would they? What if Iris had walked onto the ferry and found Casey there, headed to a normal vacation on the island? She had a feeling they would have ended up in the same position, kissing in the doorway and contemplating a brief, exciting fling.
Iris stood up and turned toward the next broken obstacle. She let out a surprised yelp when she came face-to-face with Leo, and she nearly knocked the cup of tea out of his hands.
“Jeez, Leo, you almost gave me a heart attack. I’m putting a cat bell on you if I can find a big enough collar.”
He laughed and handed her the cup of fragrant, steamy tea. She could smell the citrusy sharpness of her favorite Earl Grey. “If you weren’t so distracted, you’d have heard me coming. I even called your name.”
“Did not,” Iris said. Had he? Her mind had been too full of Casey to notice anything else.
“I startled Casey this morning, too. Seems the two of you have a lot on your minds today.”
“Thank you for the tea,” Iris said, cradling the cup in her chilled hands and ignoring the implied question in Leo’s comment. She liked the thought of Casey being distracted by last night, but she figured it was more likely that Leo had surprised her with his normal stealthy ways, not because she was lost in thoughts of Iris.
Iris took a sip of her tea and balanced the cup on top of a waterproof plastic bin that was full of dog toys. She started to separate the weaving poles into two piles, still-usable ones and broken ones that needed to be replaced. Leo wordlessly began to help her.
“She’ll be leaving soon,” Iris said, keeping her voice studiously casual.
“Figured. She’ll be needing to get back to work.”
“Yes. Back to the city.” Iris put a little pressure on one of the poles, and it snapped in two. She added it to the discard pile. “I’m sure she’ll be glad to get back.”
“Huh,” Leo said. “Maybe.”
Iris gathered the poles they could repair and tucked them under one arm. She picked up her tea with her free hand. She pictured Casey bar hopping in downtown Seattle, dating beautiful women, and enjoying the nightlife. She wanted to break the remaining poles over her knee, but she didn’t. “What do you mean, maybe?”
“Seemed to me she likes it here,” Leo said. “She’s a lot like you.”
Iris dropped her armload, and the poles rolled over each other and across the grass. She sighed and put down her tea again. “We’re nothing alike.”
Leo knelt down to help her pick up the poles. “You’re both compassionate and disciplined. And you both are interested in the world. Seemed to me you two had fun together.”
“We did, I guess,” Iris said noncommittally. Leave it to Leo to strip away their different lifestyles and attitudes and focus instead on the values they shared. Were they enough to justify sex without strings attached? At this point, Iris was wavering toward the side of yes.
“I’ll work on putting these back together,” Leo said, taking the poles and giving her a gentle push toward the dog runs. “You can clean kennels and play with the dogs for a while. It’ll clear your head.”
Iris started with the two Chihuahuas she had been transporting when she first met Casey. They were exuberant as always when she carefully slipped into their kennel. One of the emails she had answered this morning had been from the Lopez shelter, letting her know the owner had been located and she would be coming to get her dogs later in the afternoon. Iris cleaned their run as well as she could, given all the help they offered.
She watched them tumble and wrestle together like rambunctious siblings. She had told Casey about her parents wanting more children last night, but she hadn’t mentioned how much she would have loved to have a sister or brother—or even a whole houseful of them. Not because she had wanted the company or had particularly envied the relationships she saw between her cousins, but because she would have had more freedom. She sometimes felt as if she had spent her childhood under the intense focus of a high-powered microscope. Her parents had clung to her because she was the only one, but at the same time she had felt the resentment and regret that was aimed at her position of only child.
Iris refilled the water bowl the Chihuahuas had knocked over and moved to the next kennel. A much more sedate black Lab waited near the door while she cleaned the floor of the kennel and fluffed his dog bed. He had been at the shelter for over six months after being neglected and then abandoned by his former owner, but just before the earthquake, a family had come to see him after finding his picture online. The oldest child, a boy in his teens, had been aloof during the visit, but the parents and younger child had fallen in love with Blackjack. She hoped they’d call again, and that the dog would find a home with them. She had a feeling the gentle animal would even be able to win over the teenager, who Iris suspected was still grieving the family pet they had lost months ago.
She sat next to the dog when she was done, playing with his soft ears and enjoying his quiet presence. Leo was right, the animals grounded her when she was upset. She had no use for living in the past, and she usually avoided thinking about her childhood unless it was necessary to do so. She had answered Casey’s questions about her family because Casey had done the same for her. It was hardly fair to expect her to open up while Iris remained obstinately silent.
And maybe she had wanted Casey to know her better, too.
How much did she want her to know, though? Iris’s main form of rebellion had been going to Tacoma’s PLU instead of the religious Seattle University her parents preferred. She had lost both of them while she was in her junior year of college—although they had never seemed close in life, they had died within months of each other. She hadn’t had a chance to resolve her mixed feelings about their attitude toward her—disappointment mixed with possessive love—and she had never managed to find out if they were proud of her and what she was accomplishing at school. Not that they had ever been either proud of or disappointed in her grades or talents. Nothing had seemed to please them more than her very existence as their child, and nothing was more devastating than her solo status.
Iris got up. Enough wallowing in the past. This was exactly why she didn’t want to live there, or in the future. Those roads led to a life of disappointment. She focused on the dogs and the kennels instead, and made her way quickly through the remaining chores.
As soon as she was done, she went back to her house and looked through the shelves in her pantry and fridge. She made a grocery list, planning to fill the empty spaces in her freezer where she had removed meals to share with Casey. She’d shop, cook some food, and finish th
e illustrations for her spring cards, and be done in time for the evening feeding.
Normalcy. That’s exactly what she needed.
* * *
Casey had been feeling out of sorts all day. She had briefly contemplated packing her truck and leaving the island before anyone realized she was going, but she hadn’t followed through with her plan. Instead, she had gotten up early and had coffee with Leo in the office. Then she had worked in the exercise yard for a few hours before taking Chert out to the woods. Her day followed the rhythm she had discovered here on San Juan Island with one notable exception. Instead of merely checking her seismometers and making any necessary adjustments, she had collected all the instruments and stowed them in the locked box in the bed of her truck.
Chert had been unfazed by her mood, and he had frolicked in the water while she spent almost an hour trying to skip some damned stones across the calm surface of False Bay. He’d spent a happy morning sniffing around while she hunted for fossils in the Ice Age sediments at Cattle Point. Every so often, she told herself to go back to the bungalow and spend the five minutes it would take to pack her clothes and leave, but she made an excuse every time. She still had more rocks to see on San Juan Island, and there were smaller isles to the north and east she’d like to visit if she could charter a boat to take her there. The quiet pace of the islands made them the perfect place to write her paper about her findings.
Casey sighed and found a nook in the rocks where she could eat her lunch shielded from the cool breeze. She shared the ham-and-cheese sandwich she had bought from a convenience store with the dog as she faced the real reason she wasn’t prepared to go back to Seattle.
Iris. Casey sensed something unfinished, something hopeful between them. And Chert. Casey rubbed his head and felt some dampness in his fur from his swim. She’d tried to dry him off with a towel, but his coat was too thick for the rectangle of terry cloth. He’d likely spend the afternoon in the bungalow, stretched out close to the warmth of the fire, until he was completely dry and toasty. Casey had gotten used to the odor of heating wet dog in her house, blending with the more pleasant smells from Iris’s food.