"God, it looks like it hurts," the older woman said, looking at the discoloration closely. "Do you have a good doctor?"
"It’s no big deal. I’ve had more black eyes than I can count. It should be fine soon."
Catherine came around the corner looking for her companions, and she stopped dead in her tracks when she saw who Ryan was chatting with. Both Ryan and Laura turned at once, and she pasted on a smile and approached. "Hello, Laura," she said smoothly. "Have you two met?"
"Uh…yes…I …uh, pardon?" she asked weakly, futilely trying to dematerialize.
Ryan decided to rescue her, so she informed Catherine, "Laura and I know each other…" she started to say, as Laura looked like she was going to faint. Nonetheless Ryan continued, "from the gym. I didn’t have the chance to work with her, but we have some mutual acquaintances that we were just catching up on."
Now Laura was beginning to panic for her young friend. It was obvious that Catherine had lost her rational mind by bringing this woman to a public event, but she was a sweet kid and Laura didn’t want Catherine to cause a scene when the other woman emerged from the bathroom. To her amazement, Ryan seemed perfectly calm and at ease with the situation. I guess this sort of thing happens to her all of the time, she thought to herself. Casting another quick glance at Ryan, Laura mused, She looks even better now than she used to at the gym. I wonder if I could get a few minutes with her in the bathroom later. I’ve got plenty of cash in my wallet.
A moment later Jamie emerged from the bathroom, and she immediately walked over to the group. Laura’s eyes bugged out as she waited in vain for the fur to fly. To her astonishment Catherine said, "Laura Slocum, let me introduce you to my daughter Jamie."
Daughter! She’s doing her daughter!!
"Jamie, Laura and I serve on the boards of some of the same charities. You’ve heard me speak of her many times."
Jamie extended her hand and wondered about Laura’s nearly limp grip. She knew she had seen the woman before, but she could not place her. Catherine finally filled in that blank by saying, "Ryan tells me that Laura goes to your gym. Perhaps you’ve seen her there."
"Perhaps," Jamie said neutrally while she tried to avoid looking at Ryan.
They conversed for another moment or two before Laura excused herself to use the facilities. Catherine speculated, "She was acting very odd tonight. I wonder if she’s all right."
"There is a bug going around," Ryan said helpfully.
As Catherine led the way back to the exhibit, Jamie pulled Ryan down to whisper, "Maybe she has the O’Flaherty flu!"
Catherine was considering buying a piece of art, and her companions were offering their opinions when a tall, immaculately put together woman sidled up and said, "Jamie, Catherine, how good to see you!"
Jamie looked far from happy as she replied, "Mrs. Martin, how are you?"
Catherine seamlessly introduced Ryan to the very interested looking woman. "Ryan O’Flaherty, this is Laura Martin. Cassie’s mother."
"Good to meet you," Ryan said with her darkened eye and intentionally evil-looking smile.
Noticing that Laura was staring at Ryan’s injury, Catherine sighed and explained, "Ryan had a little accident yesterday."
"I’m sorry to hear that," Laura replied although her face did not reflect her sorrow. She wore an expression that was a mixture of prurient curiosity and blatant mockery of the young woman, and Catherine could feel her temper begin to flare. "Cassie tells me that you have a tendency to make people angry. Did you finally push someone too far?"
Catherine’s uncharacteristic friskiness continued unabated as she gazed at her former friend and whispered, "I wouldn’t antagonize her, Laura. She’s killed people for less." With that, she placed a hand on the backs of each of her companions and guided them across the gallery.
When they were safely hidden behind a partition, Jamie stared at her mother in openmouthed shock, while Ryan laughed helplessly. "W...w...why did you tell her that? You know how she loves to gossip!"
"I might as well give her something good," Catherine said reasonably. "At least now when it gets back to me I’ll know where it came from!"
Late that night when they were snuggling in bed, Ryan could not stop shivering. She finally got up and put on a long sleeved T-shirt and a pair of thick wool socks. "Don’t you need any clothes?" she asked Jamie, puzzled that her partner looked perfectly comfortable.
"No, Baby, I’m fine. It doesn’t seem cold to me." As Ryan hopped back in bed Jamie asked, "Was it odd to run into that woman from the gym?"
"Yeah, it was," she sheepishly admitted. "You know, of all the casual sex partners that I ever had, she’s the only one I regret."
"Why? Because she’s so much older than you?"
"No, of course not," Ryan said quickly. She looked at Jamie for a moment and said, "I think I was afraid of becoming like her some day."
Jamie sat up immediately and stared at Ryan as she tilted her head. "How, Honey?"
"She was just there for sex—she made that clear. But it struck me that not only didn’t she want emotional involvement with me, I doubt she had it with anyone else in her life, either. She just seemed cool and distant. Maybe I felt like I’d lose my ability to be intimate with someone if I continued on my path," she said softly. "It scared me."
Snuggling into Ryan’s body, Jamie let herself feel the bone deep connection that they had slowly developed. "That will never, ever happen to you, Ryan. You are totally, lusciously, fabulously intimate. And we’re going to spend the rest of our lives getting closer and closer."
Ryan was relaxing at her family home on Friday afternoon, Coach Placer having given them a rare day off. "Calm down, Duffy," she urged her wildly barking dog as she ran up the stairs to answer the ringing doorbell. "Jeez, you act like every visitor is the devil himself!" Without bothering to look to see who it was, Ryan flung open the door, a wide smile on her face, that quickly froze before morphing into a grim, wary expression. "Jamie’s not here," she said when her eyes landed on her father-in-law.
"I know that," he answered brusquely as he brushed past her. "I’m here to see you."
"Me again?" she asked, her anger at the man peeking out a little. "Your last visit sure didn’t get you want you want. Trying for best two out of three?"
He turned and fixed her with a look that was almost unreadable, but there was a hint of sadness in his eyes that reminded her so much of her partner that it shocked her into silence. "If you ever find yourself in my position, I assure you that you’ll understand how difficult this has been." His head shook slowly as he looked around the neat, modest home.
Ryan stood behind him, turning her head to survey her home as he did. She saw a tidy, organized space, completely devoid of any attempt to decorate in the traditional sense. The rooms looked like they had been furnished to stand up to a significant amount of rough use, and in fact, they had been. The fabrics were sturdy and man-made, the carpet the thin-piled industrial variety. Family photos were the main decoration, and they littered every bookcase and horizontal surface. A woman's touch was largely absent, even the colors looking like they were made to appeal to a masculine taste. Letting the images roll around in her mind, Ryan fought with the small inner voice that mocked the home her father had lovingly created for her and her brothers, knowing that Jim Evans’ servants enjoyed a much more opulent lifestyle.
"This is the longest I’ve ever been away from her." The words came from just a few feet in front of her, but she could barely hear them, his voice was so soft. "Is that her… your… room?" he asked, jerking his head towards Martin’s bedroom.
Taken aback by his odd demeanor, Ryan shook her head. "No. We…uh…our room is downstairs."
He cocked his head, torn between the business he had come to attend to and the deep longing that had hit him the minute he'd entered this unfamiliar space. "Can I see it?"
"Why…uh…well, sure, I guess so," she said, having no idea what was going through his mind. With Duffy right on
her heels, she led the way, stopping uncertainly in the center of her room, watching Jim pace slowly around the perimeter.
He took in their bed, the center visibly sagging from years of use. Ryan had never told Jamie the history of the piece, but the bed had once belonged to her parents. After her mother died, her father had been unable to sleep in the bed he had shared with his beloved wife, the memories of their nights together giving him horrible insomnia. Eventually, he consigned the bed to the basement room and bought a new one for himself. Since the original had been a wedding present, the bed she and Jamie slept on was a full thirty years old, something that she knew would horrify her partner. The comforter was nearly as old, but the sheets were a more recent vintage, no more than six or seven years, if she recalled correctly.
As he leaned over and fingered the thin, faded pillowcase he mused, almost to himself. "You think you know her, but you don’t. She doesn’t even know herself." He gave Ryan a long look and said, "Maybe you don’t want her money." Looking away, he turned back to the bed and allowed, "Maybe you do have some pride, Ryan." A long, heavy sigh issued from his lungs as he added, "Either way, it really doesn’t matter. If you want her money, I’ll see to it that you don’t get it. If you don’t take the money that she’ll want to spend on you, she’ll eventually get tired of living like…this…and she’ll abandon you."
Unable to hold her tongue, Ryan said, "It’s not things that make her happy, Jim. If you really knew her, that would never cross your mind."
Laughing softly he said, "Ahh, the confidence of youth." Walking around the room he looked at each item of furniture, noting that no two pieces had any stylistic connection to each other. "So things don’t mean anything to her, eh Ryan? Then why does she insist that her mother buy her a new set of hand-woven linen sheets for Christmas every year? Why did we have to have our butter and fresh cheeses overnighted from France once a week? Why does she have most of her dresses custom made? Why did I just see a bill for over $25,000 for the little shopping spree that my wife took her on during their Newport trip?" Noticing the glimmer of surprise in the vivid blue eyes he sneered, "You didn’t think that she actually lived on that $2,500 a month that I give her for her allowance, did you?"
The look on Ryan’s face revealed that was exactly what she thought, and Jim knew that he had set the hook. "Did she ever tell you about her 20th birthday present?" Ryan shook her head, still reeling from the details of Jamie’s spending that she had known nothing about. "We thought we’d have a small party at our home, you know, just Jack and her grandfather, but Jamie insisted that she wanted a memorable day. Of course, since we give her anything that she wants, we acquiesced to her wishes."
He stood in the room, looking very smug, waiting for her to ask him to finish the story. She did not, crossing her arms over her chest, waiting for him to complete his little game. Realizing that she was not going to rise to the bait, he continued, "She wanted to have dinner at Alain Ducasse in Paris, a Michelin three-star restaurant," he added, since he knew she would not recognize the name. "Her birthday falls in the middle of the term, so she didn’t have much time and we had to take the Concorde from Washington. In essence, Ryan, my little girl wanted a $40,000 dinner for her birthday, and that’s exactly what she got. I defy you to consider the facts and tell me that she doesn’t care for things."
For just a moment, Ryan allowed herself to be carried away by his arguments. Images of herself and Jamie in an opulent home, surrounded by servants, started to make her heart beat faster, and she had an irrational panic that he partner would, over time, require a more and more lavish lifestyle to be happy. To avoid having to look Jim in the eye, she walked to the far corner of the room, trying to collect her thoughts. Her eyes slid up the bookcase, falling upon two framed pictures. All at once, it hit her, and she blinked slowly, surprised that she'd had even a moment’s doubt. Lifting both photographs, she extended one in his direction, waiting for him to accept it.
He gave her a slightly puzzled look, but gazed at the photo, smiling involuntarily as he did so. He, Jamie, and Catherine, all dressed very stylishly, smiled into the camera. They were sitting in a very elegant restaurant, all holding crystal flutes filled with what looked to be champagne. An array of dishes lay before them, the beautifully prepared food just waiting to be consumed. Jim had left his chair and was nestled between his wife and daughter in order to fit into the field of vision of the lens. One arm was wrapped around each woman, and both blonde heads were inclined slightly towards him, both women wearing nearly identical, obviously studied smiles.
"Is this the dinner that you’re speaking of?" Ryan asked as he continued to gaze at the photo, memories of that special day flooding his mind.
"Yes, it is," he said absently.
"What do you see?" Ryan asked, causing him to jerk his head up and stare at her.
"Is that a trick question? I see my family having a lovely time—a time that Jamie obviously feels was very special."
"She does," Ryan agreed. "I didn’t know the details, or how much that dinner cost, but she did have a very nice time that night."
Ryan handed him the other photo, and he reached out to grab it. Before she released it she asked, "Where does she look happier?"
He took the picture and gazed at it for a moment, blinking in surprise as he did so. Jamie and Ryan were sitting on a boulder overlooking the Pacific Ocean, the smaller woman nestled between Ryan's legs, leaning back in a very relaxed manner against her chest. The looks on their faces spoke of almost painful happiness, their smiles stretching their faces past the point of comfort. Jamie’s head was tilted to the right, Ryan’s to the left, causing them to nest one atop the other. Ryan’s left arm was tucked around the smaller woman’s waist and both of Jamie’s arms rested upon it, both women seemingly very used to and comfortable with each other’s bodies.
Ryan’s voice broke his concentration when she said, "This trip required eight months of hard work, every bit of determination that she possessed, and a ton of confidence in herself. It didn’t cost me a dime to help her have this, but having her with me was absolutely priceless. Which trip," she asked, shaking both photos in his face, "do you think will linger in her memory? Which trip changed her life? How can you tell me that things are more important to her than this?"
"Over time," he intoned coldly, "water finds its own level. A few rustic experiences cannot take away the fact that Jamie is the product of her upbringing, and she will eventually want to return to the lifestyle she was born to, Ryan. Then what do you do?"
Ryan was puzzled. It seemed almost as if Jim finally saw her for who she was, but that didn’t make any sense to her. It appeared that he understood that she was uncomfortable with Jamie’s money, and worried that it would become a wedge between them. Try as she might, she could not understand how or why he had changed his mind about her, but she had a very bad feeling about it.
As if he could read her mind, he extracted a manila envelope from his leather portfolio and handed it to her. With intense self-satisfaction he watched as she opened it and allowed the contents to slide out into her hand. With a furrowed brow she sorted through the typed document, trying to understand what it was and what it meant. While still trying to accomplish this, she came upon a series of crisp, sharp 16x20 inch photos, all of her. Thumbing through them, she saw pictures of herself with Jordan, with Jenny, and with some of her other teammates. In every picture she was kissing or touching a woman in what looked to be an intimate way. She recalled each situation, and knew that each instance represented a completely harmless interaction, but the scenes did appear to show that she was quite familiar with each of the other women.
"Wow," she said slowly. "Pictures of me kissing my friends hello. This is shocking—shocking, I tell you!" Her tone was derisive, biting, and Jim recoiled a bit at it.
"The pictures are damning enough, Ryan," he sneered, "but the report is the icing on the cake. Jamie will finally see what I’ve been telling her all along."
; Ryan didn’t even attempt to read the report, knowing there was nothing factual in it, and feeling confident that Jamie would not be tricked into believing lies about her. She slapped the papers against her open hand a few times, shaking her head in disgust. "I guess this is where I fall on my knees and beg for a payoff, huh?"
His eyes narrowed, his lips moved into a grim line. "Well, what do you want?" he asked in challenge.
She sighed heavily, her eyes drooping into a weary, resigned expression. "The same thing I’ve always wanted. For you to be the father that she deserves." She gave him such a sad, wistful look that he was once again taken slightly aback. "I want you to love her enough to trust her—to know that even though she makes mistakes, they’re her mistakes, and they’re absolutely necessary for her to grow up. I want you to love her enough to let her make her own way in the world, even though it isn’t what you would choose for her." Her face gentled into a fond smile as she admitted her true desire, "I want you to be half the man that my father is. That’s the very least that she deserves."
Fighting his anger, he grabbed the photos and the report from her hands and roughly stuffed it back into the folder. "We’ll just see, Ryan. We’ll just see."
Turning on his heel, he strode across the room, stopping when she plaintively asked, "Did you ever love her, or was she always just something to control?"
He faced her, his entire body tingling with rage. Every impulse called out for him to hit her as hard as his could, to knock that self-possessed expression off her face and at least blacken her other eye and mar the lovely features that his daughter was so obviously attracted to. But he knew that would only give the woman a leg up on him, and he would never, ever do that. "No father ever loved his daughter more than I do," he thundered, making the hackles rise on Duffy’s neck. "I told you I’d do anything for her and I meant it!" He waved the report in Ryan’s face, somewhat deflated when she laughed softly, her dark head shaking the whole while.
Honesty - SF8 Page 21