The Ghost of a Chance

by Vivien, Natalie

  She shakes her head, still smiling, her ocean-wide eyes gazing deeply into mine. "I don’t have any secret admirers."

  "Don’t you?" I lick my dry lips and, swallowing, suddenly nervous, look away, pressing the box into her hands.

  "I thought you said no gifts—"

  "Exhibit A." I point toward the box Alis gave me, poised, and still unopened, on the edge of the desk. "You’ve already broken our Christmas presents pact. And, to be honest, I had every intention of breaking it, anyway. I’m dishonest like that."

  "I think you’re confusing dishonest with sweet. But what—"

  "Please open it, Alis."

  She watches me for a moment, lips parted, her eyes large and questioning, searching mine; I tremble a little, wondering what she sees, what she could possibly see, when she looks at me…

  Her mouth curves into the most fantastic, illuminating smile, brighter than any Christmas tree or garish display of holiday lights. "Well, if you insist." With a small laugh, she tears into the paper, making short order of my careful wrapping. She holds the black box in her hands, smoothing her fingertips over its velvety surface. "No one’s given me jewelry since…" Her mouth quirks as she holds up her left hand, naked now of rings. "Not for a very long time," she whispers.

  "Go on, then," I urge her, swallowing again and drawing in a deep breath, though that does little to calm my fluttering heart. I hadn’t been decided until this morning as to whether I should give her the gift: I couldn’t bear the thought of her Christmas being spoiled by that idiot—at least, not completely. And, besides, when I saw the necklace in the jewelry shop case, after I asked the woman behind the counter to hang one of my kitten flyers in her window, my heart stopped and the hairs on my neck stood on end, because I actually heard Alis’ name, as if it were whispered in my ear. No matter the appropriateness, no matter the cost, I knew, absolutely, that the necklace had to be hers.

  When she flips the top of the box open, her eyes widen, and her mouth forms a perfect "o."

  "Do you like it? I’m not sure if it’s your taste, but the color…" I take the box from her shaky hands and detach the necklace from its velvet backing, taking care not to knot the delicate silver chain. "See? It’s just like your eyes—the bluest blue." The aquamarine-and-sapphire-studded heart twinkles as it dangles before us, swinging in slow, wide arcs.

  Alis’ gaze follows its motion, but still she says nothing, only glances at me shyly from time to time, twisting her hands in her lap.

  I bite my lip, worried that I’ve made a mistake, upset her, overstepped an invisible boundary of our friendship. Maybe she thinks… Oh, I don’t know what she thinks. My mind works quickly to shape the right words. "Listen, Alis. I was a beast to you after Catherine died—"

  "You weren’t!"

  "I was. I was a grouchy, growly, ungrateful Rochester. No, worse. I was the madwoman raving in the attic! And you had the patience of a sainted Jane."

  She leans back against the sofa and laughs. "You’re such a librarian."

  "It’s a terminal condition. But, seriously, Alis, if it weren’t for you—"

  "Don’t. I was being paid. I was only—"

  "No. You weren’t ‘only’ anything. You were a nurse, yes, but you were a friend to me, too, the exact sort of friend I needed—gentle, kind, but firm when you needed to be, and persistent, even when I pushed you away."

  Alis stares at the sparkling heart, her eyes shining.

  "And this…" I gesture toward the necklace with my free hand, shaking my head. "This is nothing—a bauble, a trifle—compared to what you mean to me, what you’ve done for me. How you’ve saved me."

  Surprised, she draws in a quick breath, and her gaze flicks to mine. "Saved you?"

  "Yes. I would be a shadow if it weren’t for you. I—whatever I am—would have disappeared. But you kept me here. You gave me a reason to be here."

  "What…" Lids lowered, Alis whispers in a voice almost too soft to hear, "What reason?"

  I feel the corner of my mouth draw up, and I wrap an arm around Alis’ shoulder, pulling her near. She leans her head upon my shoulder naturally, resting a light hand upon my thigh.

  "The pleasure of your company, of course," I tell her, my voice low, thick. I clear my throat, swinging the necklace into my hand and holding it before her eyes. "Would you like to wear it now?"

  "Please."

  "Come into the bathroom with me."

  Hand in hand, we rise and pace across the floor until we’re standing together before the small bathroom mirror.

  I step behind Alis, pressing my front against her back, and when I clasp the chain behind her neck and snake my arms over her shoulders to position the pendant in the center of her chest, just above the neckline of her sweater, she blushes, watching my reflection closely, as closely I watch hers. My hands linger for a moment over her bare skin before I draw them back to my sides and nod toward Alis encouragingly. "What do you think?"

  She fingers the pendant with an odd expression: part confusion, part awe. As I look at her, a change seems to move over her face, a subtle shift. "Oh, Darcy," she breathes at last, throwing her arms around my neck, "I’ll wear it always."

  Oh, Darcy, I’ll wear it always…

  My heart slows, stills…stops.

  I carefully loosen Alis’ arms and pull back from her to gaze into her eyes. "Alis?"

  She smiles warmly at me, flushed. "Yes?"

  Alis had spoken the exact same words that Catherine always spoke on Christmas day when I presented her with a new pretty thing to wear. It had become a joke between us, she said it so often. Oh, Darcy, I’ll wear it always, she’d say about the rings and the necklaces and the bracelets—and the books and the artwork and the wigs and the fuzzy monster slippers.

  But as I stare deeply into Alis’ blue gaze, I see only Alis there—sweet, wounded, wonderful Alis—with no glimmer of Catherine at all, and I shake my head, laughing at myself as I step backward into the living room.

  "I’m glad you like it," I say softly, drawing Alis out of the bathroom by tugging at her hands. We sit together on the couch again and are immediately ambushed by seven mewling cats.

  "Oh, wait!" Alis springs up and runs over to the desk, fetching the brown paper-wrapped box and bringing it back to rest upon my knees. "I feel silly about this now. It’s nothing like…" She touches the heart pendant, its shifting blues a perfect match for her eyes, and her blush deepens. "But I hope you’ll like it, anyway."

  "Thank you, Alis." I work at the tape until it comes loose and the thick paper falls away. The kittens on my lap help, scrabbling at the paper with their sharp, thin claws. I let the wrapping drift to the floor, and they spring onto it, rolling on their backs and wrestling with its corners. "Well, that’s their Christmas gift."

  "So easy to please," Alis laughs.

  When I lift the lid of the box, I peer into its dark depths and, at first, see nothing at all. But then I overturn it, and two rectangular pieces of cardstock float down into my lap. I can tell by their shape and markings that they’re tickets of some sort.

  Placing the box on the floor—another coveted object for the kittens to fight over—I pick up the tickets and read them: two box seats for a musical performance of The Secret Garden, to take place on—

  "Valentine’s Day," I say, glancing to Alis.

  "It’s the date of their only local performance. But you can invite whoever you like, and I remembered, um, Catherine telling me once how much you love that book, so when I saw the listing, I thought…" Her voice trails away, and she shrugs, gazing at me with a soft smile. "I grew up loving that story, too. My mother used to read it to me. I still have my old copy, all dog-eared and—"

  "Never use the word ‘dog-eared’ around a librarian," I laugh, pretending to cringe. But then I set the tickets aside and reach for Alis’ hands. "Will you be my date, then?"

  "D-date?" Alis’ face goes white.

  "Um… Culture companion? Play-going pal? Lovely, thoughtful, generous pers
on who accompanies me to this musical performance?"

  Alis beams. "I’d love to go with you, Darcy. But I hope you don’t think I expected you to ask me—"

  "Of course you didn’t." I tap her nose affectionately—and then I realize that our mouths are in dangerous proximity of each other, that her jasmine perfume is, again, clouding my judgment, that it would be so simple to just lean forward and—

  Something crashes against the front door.

  "What—" Instantly, Alis draws her knees against her chest, her eyes wide with fear. "Is it him?"

  I rush at the door and swing it open, heart pumping, brows furrowed as I glance left and right. No one. Nothing. Then I look down at my feet and sigh. "It was only a fallen branch," I call back to Alis, kicking the rotten limb with my wet, socked foot.

  "Oh," she breathes, laughing a little to herself.

  I come back into the cabin, locking the door behind me, and my eyes fall upon the typewriter, still and somehow accusing. I wrote more of the play last night, unconsciously, lost to my lonely, drunken stupor. A few more scenes, I’m guessing, and the play will be complete. Done. Over. Will that mean my life with Catherine is truly over? Will she leave me? Should she leave me? Am I hurting her now, spending Christmas in her cabin with another woman?

  I shudder and nearly fall, the wave of grief and guilt is so overwhelming… I might drown in it. I’m failing, failing, failing everyone. Failing Catherine. Failing Alis. What mad signals am I sending her—half-hot, half-cold? Flirting one moment and somber as a grave the next. And can I really protect her from her crazy husband, or will I mess that up, too? Will my stupid bravado end up getting us both hurt?

  "Darcy? You look pale. Are you okay?"

  "Oh… Yeah. Just cold. It’s really coming down out there."

  "Well, let me get you a blanket—"

  I shake my head. "No, never mind. How about we do something festive? Um…" My eyes flit around the room anxiously, desperately, before resting upon the dusty stack of board games on the bottom of the bookshelf. Catherine and I hardly ever played them, so they’re safe, memoryless, guiltless. "Up for a game of Scrabble?"

  ---

  I drop an "n" onto the board and shake my head, picking up the pencil to note my sorry word score. Alis is beating me by forty-seven points. "Pathetic, aren’t I? Some librarian. Don’t tell Marjorie, all right? This could ruin my rep." I pause, pencil in the air. "Don’t tell her I said rep, either."

  "Oh, I don’t know." Alis taps my latest offering with her fingertip. "I think fain is a lovely word. As in…" Sitting cross-legged on the floor across from me, she smiles demurely, leaning over the carefully positioned tiles. "I am fain to get to know you better, Darcy."

  I duck my head, but my mouth curves up as I absentmindedly stroke the kitten coiled in my lap—Marjorie’s kitten, Scarlett, wearing a bright red collar now. "Yeah, well, I’m good for your ego." I gesture toward the score pad. "You’re trouncing me here."

  With a grin, Alis begins to unload her tiles onto the board—letter after letter after letter.

  "Seriously?" I laugh.

  She laughs, too, with a not-so-humble shrug of her shoulders. "I haven’t been entirely honest with you. I think it’s time to come clean…" She places her final letter, perfectly centered over a triple-letter score square, and sits back, wearing an exaggerated expression of shame. Then she says quickly, all in one breath, "I was Scrabble team captain at my high school."

  "Wha—wait. You were on a Scrabble team?"

  "Yeah." She smiles bashfully, removing more tiles from the game bag and lining them up on her tray. "I was kind of an ultra nerd. Read the dictionary for fun. And all of my clothes were covered in paint splatters—not the cool, manufactured kind. The kind that results from teenage artistic ‘experiments,’ as my mother called them. So, naturally, I was super popular and invited to every cool party." She gives me a sardonic grin. "If watching old episodes of Star Trek in Amaranth Jones’ basement counts as a cool party."

  "Sounds cool to me." My eyes follow the impossible length of Alis’ latest word: LOVESICKNESSES. I add up her score and whistle, waggling my eyebrows at her, impressed. "You know, I wasn’t exactly Ms. Head Cheerleader myself. The whole lesbian thing didn’t go over so well at Brookdell High."

  "I can only imagine," Alis sighs. When she gazes at me in the cozy lamplight, the blue of her eyes is muted, like fog drifting over the sea. "When did you know? That you were a lesbian. I mean, if you don’t mind my asking. I’m sorry if that’s private—"

  "No, it’s okay." I frown down at my hopeless selection of letters—X, W, G, Q, V, Z, O—before lifting my gaze to smile warmly at Alis. She watches me with a soft, distant expression. "I knew when I was six years old."

  "That young?"

  "I probably knew earlier than that, but I just didn’t have the life experience to, I don’t know, put the pieces together. But when Timmy Frankel asked me to be his girlfriend during recess in first grade, I was struck by this lightning bolt moment of clarity. I still remember it. I told him that I didn’t like boys. And, yeah, most little girls say they don’t like boys. But I knew I really didn’t like them, not in that way…and I’ve been a card-carrying member of Sappho’s salon ever since." I smile a little, squinting at the game board, trying—and failing—to cobble together a word with my tiles. "I came out to my parents when I was thirteen, and they have very carefully avoided any mention of the topic for the entirety my existence."

  "I’m sorry."

  I shrug, straightening Alis’ LOVESICKNESSES tiles. "Could have been a lot worse. I’ve had friends who were homeless, who tried to commit suicide…"

  "That’s awful, Darcy." Alis reaches across the board to graze her fingers over my hand.

  "What about you?"

  "Me?" Pulling back, she straightens, and a pink blush creeps over her cheeks. "You mean…"

  "After Thanksgiving dinner, you said—and I quote—‘I’m not as straight as you think I am.’" I smile at her encouragingly, winking. "Come on. Truth or dare."

  She laughs, then bites her lip, smiling sweetly, shyly at me. "Okay. I’ve never told anyone about this before, so it’s weird to… Well. I’ve always had crushes, you know. On boys…but mostly on girls."

  "Ahh. Hey, sure you were just watching Star Trek videos in Amaranth Jones’ basement?"

  "Um…well…" She bows her head, gazing up at me coyly through her lashes.

  "Wow." I lean back on my arms, to Scarlett’s annoyance, and regard Alis with one raised brow. "Was it serious?"

  She shrugs her shoulders slightly, gathering my annoyed kitten into her more accommodating lap. "Not to her. She ditched me for Henry Portsmith. Told me we were only ‘messing around,’ and warned me never to speak a word about it to anyone. I didn’t, until now."

  I nod sympathetically. "I’ve been there, Alis. That’s tough."

  She tilts her head back and closes her eyes, and an expression of blissful remembrance softens her features. "But then, in nursing school, I met Sally."

  Her voice sounds different. I’ve never heard her talk about Jason the way she just breathed the word Sally. I sit up again, unrightfully jealous, crossing my arms over my stomach. "Sally, hmm?"

  "Yeah. She was tall, dark and…" She opens her eyes, and for a fleeting, breath-held moment, her gaze moves over my body, pausing when she reaches my eyes. "She was beautiful," she whispers, "and so strong, and so brave. I…"

  "You loved her."

  She breaks our stare, lowers her eyes. "I must have, because when she broke up with me, I thought I was dying, it hurt so much. She… She wanted to be out with me, and I wasn’t ready. I kept putting it off, making and breaking promises to her. I was so afraid, Darcy, and I didn’t have anyone to talk to—"

  "I wish I could have been there for you, Alis."

  Her eyes seek me out again, but this time they’re full of questions and confusion—all fog, no ocean. "I miss her sometimes, but… She’s happy now, married to a woman in Vermont
. They have a sheep farm." She laughs a little, but then her hand moves quickly to swipe a tear from her eye. "I met Jason not long after Sally and I separated. I was broken and desperate. Believe it or not, he was charming. And I made a stupid, stupid choice."

  "All choices lead us to where we’re meant to be," I whisper, watching the typewriter, dark and still, upon the desk. "That’s what Catherine used to say. And…she said it so often that I began to believe it’s true."

  "Maybe," Alis says softly, rearranging her tiles and sighing.

  For a long moment, I stare down at the Scrabble board—ostensibly trying to finish up my turn, though I’m really sorting through the conflicted thoughts in my head and the battalions of emotions at war in my heart.

  "So, ready to surrender?" Alis asks suddenly, surprising me.

  "Surrender?" My mouth goes dry.

  Yes, I think, watching her smooth hands moving over the kitten’s back. I gaze at her lovely face, transfixed by her pink lips, gently parted…

  When my eyes flick down to my tiles in a last-ditch effort to form a two-letter word—and to distract my hormones—my breath catches in my throat, and I pick up the tray, bring it near to my face, disbelieving.

  "What is it?" Alis smiles uncertainly, tilting her head.

  Gone are the useless letters. In their place is a phrase that stuns me to stillness, even as it stirs the blood in my veins: KISS HER.

  "Darcy?"

  It’s not possible. It couldn’t— How could it— I had none of these letters, and even if I had had them, I certainly didn’t position the tiles myself. I know the answer before I permit myself to consider it, because once I do consider it…

  What does it mean?

  Catherine is asking me to kiss Alis?

  "Are your letters really that bad?"

  "Um…"

  "Let me see."

  "No, Alis—"

  But she slides quickly around the board to nudge her hip against mine, and she smoothly glides the tray from my hand. For a long, weighted moment, she’s silent, her brows furrowed as she reads the tiles again and again. Then she turns to me, her face a breath away from mine.