by Julie Cannon
“That’s exactly what you’re doing, Lauren. You are thirty-four years old and you’ve just now decided you want to be a lesbian? I’m sorry, but you’ll have to find somebody else.”
“Elliott, let me explain.” Lauren didn’t know what she would have said even if Elliott had given her the chance.
“No, I’ll explain for you.” She came across the room and stood face-to-face with Lauren. This time her eyes were filled with fury, not passion. “It’s very simple, Lauren. I’m a lesbian,” Elliott’s finger touched her own chest then moved to Lauren’s, “and you’re not. I will admit you did an excellent job of hiding it. I didn’t have a clue. Not a fucking clue.”
“Elliott…”
“I’m sorry, Lauren, but I don’t sleep with straight women. Good night.” Elliott stalked away, refusing to listen to another word.
The door closed soundly behind her, leaving Lauren frozen with shock and rejection.
Chapter Nine
“What has your butt out of balance?”
Elliott looked up from the papers she’d been signing and across her desk to Teresa. “Excuse me?”
“I said, what has your butt out of balance? You’ve been a royal bitch for two weeks, and I for one am tired of it.” Elliott’s startled protest did not deter her from speaking her mind. “You have everyone walking on eggshells around here, and whatever it is, you had better fix it, find it, or get over it, because you are making us miserable.”
Elliott was accustomed to Teresa’s directness; they had been friends long enough that she could get away with it. But she had never scolded Elliott like this before. “Sorry. I guess I have been a little on edge.”
“A little?” Teresa raised her eyebrows.
“Okay, more than a little,” Elliott admitted, ashamed of her behavior. “I’m just preoccupied.” That was an understatement. She’d been obsessing over Lauren ever since that night, dissecting every minute they’d spent together, seeking any clue that Lauren was not gay. I still can’t believe I misjudged her.
Teresa scooted her chair closer. “Elliott, I’ve seen you juggle more balls than humanly possible and you’ve never been like this. Not even a little. Is everything all right?”
You mean other than the fact that I have had one of the biggest disappointments in my life, I feel like a fool, and I can’t stop thinking about the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met? “I’m fine. There’s something I have to work out, that’s all.”
“Anything I can do to help?”
Elliott wished there were. She relied on Teresa to take care of just about everything for her, both professional and personal, but this was one problem she had to work out herself. “Just do what you just did, Teresa.” She smiled for the first time in days. “Keep me in line, tell me when I’m out of line, and smack me if I don’t get back into line.”
Teresa didn’t seem convinced. “You need a break. I’m serious.”
Elliott shrugged off her concern. “Don’t worry. This will pass.”
She left the office later than usual and, on automatic pilot, drove home and was soon sitting on the couch with two fingers of Scotch in a glass. As she sipped, she pushed Play on her answering machine.
The only message was from Ryan, insisting on seeing her. Elliott groaned. She really wasn’t in the mood. The very last thing she wanted to do right now was spend another hour trying to figure out how to stop Rebecca from pillaging her life; she didn’t need any outside help with that. Maybe Teresa was right. Maybe she really did need a break. It wasn’t like her to vacillate in a situation that could affect her company. She had to get some perspective, and soon.
Elliott poured herself another Scotch and stared around the room. Comfortable, perfectly decorated, her private retreat was an oasis of solitude she treasured. She had never felt lonely here before, yet suddenly she did, and all she could think about was getting away. Shocked and angry, she set her drink aside. How could this be happening to her? She felt displaced—from the life she’d built, from the person she was, from everything that felt familiar and comfortable. And she had no idea how to get back to normalcy, or whether she even wanted to. I’m a mess. What am I going to do?
*
Lauren listened to the sound of rain for the fourth morning in a row. Crisp, cool air whooshed through a large vent into her hotel room, raising goose bumps across her skin. She glanced at the large red numbers across the face of her travel clock and groaned. Only ten minutes had passed since the last time she’d checked. Frustrated over another sleepless night, she threw the covers back and flipped on CNN. For a few minutes, she sat shivering in her silk boxer shorts and tank top as she watched the usual depressing news coverage, then she padded to the bathroom to prepare for another tedious day.
The trip had come up suddenly when Bradley & Taylor was notified by the Securities and Exchange Board in India that they were being investigated as part of an internal investigation of the Bangalore Stock Exchange. The charges were bogus, but Lauren was still required to appear in person. She’d had all of two days to get her office in order, pack, and be on a plane headed to the other side of the world.
She brushed her teeth and was about to turn on the shower when she froze at the sound of a familiar voice. Slowly she inched around the bathroom door and her heart leapt into her throat. Elliott’s face filled the television screen as she responded to questions from a business reporter. Lauren studied her, noting the circles under her eyes that the television makeup couldn’t quite conceal. A dark red jacket accentuated her coloring, and diamond studs twinkled when she talked. She looked thinner, and Lauren detected an edge that she had not seen before.
The corner of the bed dipped as Lauren positioned herself there, transfixed. Her stomach lurched when Elliott laughed at something. The charisma that had attracted her at their first meeting was evident even over the airwaves. Whatever made me think someone like that would be interested in me? Look at her. Lauren stared at the screen, caught up in the melodious voice. Elliott was rich and famous and brilliant. She was on worldwide television, for crying out loud. Oh, and let’s not forget about gorgeous. She could have any woman she wanted.
Lauren turned off the television and laughed as she marched back to the bathroom. Shit, no wonder she hasn’t called. She scrubbed her body hard but couldn’t erase the cloak of self-doubt that followed her into the shower. During the twenty-three-hour flight a few days earlier, she had rehashed the ultimatum she’d left on Elliott’s answering machine the day of her departure. She had never begged for a lover’s attention, and she certainly wasn’t going to start now. Her message had been clear and to the point. She had explained how she felt and why she was attracted to Elliott, and she’d left the next move to her.
Like all virgins, and she laughingly considered herself a virgin, Lauren wanted her first time to be with someone special. From the moment Elliott practically ran her over she knew she had never met a woman like her, and perhaps she never would again. Since their abrupt parting, she had come up with many different reasons why Elliott had not called her. They ranged from the totally absurd to the vividly morbid, but she kept coming back to something that nagged at her.
Did Elliott think so little of her intelligence that she believed Lauren would blindly stumble into a woman’s arms on some kind of whim? Had she not even considered the effect this could have on Lauren’s career? Elliott had been gay her entire life and was simply accepted for who she was. Lauren, on the other hand, was risking everything. She had no intention of living in the closet; she wanted to share her life openly with the one she loved, when that time came. She had everything to lose. Did Elliott think she would make such a choice lightly?
Toweling herself dry, she examined her reflection in the mirror. What she saw was not appealing. Along with her pride, her self-respect was bruised. She was reliving her teenage dating years and risking the confidence she’d spent her entire adult life cultivating over something as unimportant as whether or not a woman would return he
r call.
*
Elliott was startled by a car horn blasting somewhere in the distance. The crick in her neck told her she had dozed off briefly. Blinking several times, she gazed out at her surroundings.
The old neighborhood still looked the same. The trees were taller, the shrubbery fuller, and other than different cars parked along the street, Claude Boulevard was just as Elliott remembered it. She’d spent the early years of her childhood in the house with the winding driveway, and no matter how many places she’d lived since then, she still thought of this as home. She rolled down the window and turned off the car. The silence was peppered with the sounds of a dog barking and birds welcoming the early morning. The only movement on the street for the past hour was an empty school bus driving by.
Elliott settled deeper into the comfortable leather seats and sipped tepid coffee from a plastic cup she’d filled at the mini-mart a few blocks away. From her vantage point across the street she could see curtains closed over the window where her mother used to stand, waiting for her to return home from school. She remembered the last time she ever saw her there.
Elliott was six years old and had hurried home with her first report card clenched in her fist, filled with letters and numbers that she had not yet learned, but she felt sure they were going to tell her mother how smart she was. She still remembered how she felt when she rounded the corner that day and saw her mother waiting: she was proud of herself and eager to share her news. She felt safe, certain her mother would always be there. She was also waiting anxiously for the arrival of a baby brother or sister; her mother was eight months pregnant. Elliott hadn’t known then about the pregnancy complications.
When her sister Stephanie came home a few days later, Elliott was the one standing in the window watching as the car halted in the drive and her father stepped out carrying a pink bundle. He was a solid man, standing well over six feet, but he looked small and broken walking up the front steps. Her mother was not coming home, and Elliott would never feel completely safe again.
She leaned her head back, suddenly very tired. She hadn’t slept at all the previous night and had only managed broken sleep in the period that preceded it. She’d spent some time out of town on what was supposed to be a short vacation that would clear her head. It hadn’t, and that was the reason she was sitting alone in her car on the street she grew up on. She never fully understood why coming here gave her a sense of belonging and peace, but it did. She would often sit in this same spot on different days, in different cars, refreshing the memory of her mother and recalling the happiness she’d known until that loss.
At the sound of an approaching car, Elliott checked the rearview mirror and caught a glimpse of herself. The dark circles under her eyes didn’t surprise her, but the hollowness did. She had never noticed the flat emptiness in her gaze and she pulled the mirror closer. Gone were the intensity and drive that she saw in the bathroom mirror every morning, and in their place was nothing. Is this what my life has become?
Shaken, she brushed off her appearance as mere tiredness. On most nights, her dreams were filled with images of Lauren, and she couldn’t escape her during the day, either. Elliott was usually extremely focused at work, but images of Lauren standing in front of her, alive with laughter and burning with passion, drifted in and out of her brain. She wondered what it would take to drive the beautiful woman from her mind. Maybe she needed to put her head down and escape into her work even more. Maybe she needed to have sex with someone else—or several someone elses. Either was a typical modus operandi when she was troubled about something, but both had failed her this time.
Another possibility hovered: maybe she should just face her feelings head-on and accept that avoiding them hadn’t worked so far. Perhaps the only way she was going to get Lauren Collier out from under her skin was to go ahead and sleep with her. So why does that scare the hell out of me?
*
The insistent echo of her heels clicking could be heard throughout the lobby as she approached the front desk. Glancing at her watch, Lauren informed the desk clerk that the cab she had scheduled had still not arrived. She fumed at the insolence of the man behind the counter, so she asked to speak with the hotel manager, who, after another ten minutes, was only able to generate an apology and not a cab. Frustrated with the lack of amenities, including reliable cab service, she decided that if she was to get to the meeting with any time remaining she would have to walk.
Five minutes into her decision, she regretted it. The rain had stopped and in its place was air so muggy that steam rose from the puddles she was forced to sidestep. The streets teemed with people, all in a hurry to get somewhere. A large woman dressed in a traditional Indian sari almost knocked Lauren’s briefcase out of her hand in her haste to get across the street. Sweat dripped down the side of Lauren’s face, and she cursed as her shoe emerged from a pile of mud she could not dodge. “Great. Just fucking great.”
Lauren usually traveled well, but this trip had drained her, physically and emotionally, and her temper was getting shorter as the sun climbed higher in the hot Indian sky. Seeing Elliott on television that morning must have unnerved her more than she thought. A limousine crawled to a stop a block in front of her, and an exquisite-looking woman emerged from the air-conditioned interior looking as fresh as Lauren wished she was. The woman was so much like Elliott, she stopped suddenly, causing the man behind her to practically run her down. She mumbled a halfhearted apology as the woman disappeared into a building.
Squinting against the sweat that burned her eyes, she finally spotted the building she was looking for a few blocks ahead and heaved a sigh of relief and picked up her pace. If she were going to call, she would have done so by now. It’s history. Let it go.
The cool air in the lobby sent a chill through her body as she approached a bank of elevators. Beads of sweat continued to trickle slowly down between her breasts and lower back. The clock behind her chimed, indicating the half hour, and she pushed the Up button impatiently. She hated being late for a meeting, and she particularly hated losing the edge she needed if it was with an adversary.
Lauren composed herself as she exited the elevator, then took another moment to control her breathing as she stood outside the conference room.
God, what a brutal trip. Thomas Merison had accompanied her to India, and she detected not-so-subtle hostility and resentment from him. On several occasions she’d caught him looking at her peculiarly, almost as if he were trying to figure out if she played for the boys’ team or the girls’. No doubt her stance on John Briggs, the gay employee Merison wanted to sack, had aroused his suspicions. But Merison had a strong sense of self-preservation, and he was also depending on her to be discreet about his daughter, so he wasn’t making any overt comments. Instead, during their meetings with regulators in Bangalore, he questioned the correctness of her position on specific legalities, and often his comments were made in a room filled with parties on both sides. He was clearly attempting to undermine her authority, and after dinner on the first day she called him on it.
Lauren was incensed at his condescending denial and insinuation that she would rather settle than fight the trumped-up charges. She stared at him without speaking until he started to squirm, then told him in no uncertain terms never to question her credibility again. Merison was on his best behavior for the rest of the meetings, but she was forced to be on her guard much more than usual.
The door squeaked when she opened it, and all heads turned to look at her. She surveyed the occupants seated around the table and was not the least bit surprised that every one of them was wearing a dark suit, white shirt, and a perfect Windsor knot in his silk tie. Jesus, not only do these attorneys think alike but they dress alike too. This was not the first time she’d been the sole woman in a room, and she knew it was going to be another long day.
*
Elliott tossed her car keys on the counter and peeled off her clothes as she walked through her house. She needed a hot show
er and a stiff drink. Opting to combine the two, she stopped at the bar to pour Chivas into a thick tumbler. She was naked by the time her feet hit the cool tile on the bathroom floor.
The scalding water pelted her neck and back, and she stood motionless for several minutes, willing it to wash away her melancholy. Then she reached for the soap and lathered her entire body before rinsing. The familiar scent of the liquid was reassuring. Shampoo dripped into her eyes and the burning reaffirmed that she was still alive. Mechanically she turned off the water and wrapped herself in a towel.
The blinking light of the answering machine reflected in the mirror above the bar. She refilled her glass, padded over to the desk, and pushed Play. A familiar voice captured her complete attention.
“Elliott, it’s Lauren. Are you there?” A few seconds of silence. “I’m sorry if I misled you, that was not my intent. I was going to tell you, it was just never the right time.” Elliott gripped her glass with both hands and stared down into the golden liquid as Lauren continued. “Elliott, I am not a naïve, bored housewife looking for kicks.” She sounded angry now. “I’m an educated woman with a law degree from Harvard and a PhD from Princeton. I’ve given this a lot of thought, and trust me, I don’t do anything without thinking it through. Just because I’ve never made love with a woman doesn’t mean that I’m not a lesbian. Jesus Christ, Elliott. Everyone has to have a first time.”
Yeah, but it’s not going to be me. Been there, done that, and learned a valuable lesson.
“I like you, Elliott, and I am very attracted to you. Obviously, I’m attracted to you.” Lauren chuckled as if she realized the absurdity of her statement. “Most importantly, I respect you, what you think and what you believe in. You challenge me, and quite frankly, very few people do. I want to spend more time with you. I could very easily say more. I’m an attorney…I could plead my case for a very long time, but I won’t beg for this.” There was a long pause and Elliott thought she had hung up. The finality of Lauren’s voice surprised her. “The ball’s in your court now, Elliott. I won’t approach you again. If you want me, you’ll have to come and get me.”