by Harper Bliss
“Of course, I just… sometimes think…” Jane didn’t quite know how to put her sentiments into spoken words. No matter how eloquent she was in her writing, it never translated to the same degree of ease in speaking. “I think it may have disturbed my balance more than I thought it would. Even though that seems kind of crazy, because my office is up here and the shop is downstairs and I should be able to block it out easily. Yet, it hasn’t been so easy for me. I think it may have contributed to throwing that book in the trash.”
“That’s only normal. It has been a big change.”
“Tell me about it…” Jane leaned back.
Annie sat up a little straighter. “Maybe there’s a story in there somewhere. All these new people who come into the shop, the different dynamics, newly forged relationships… It’s a great backdrop for some drama.”
Jane chuckled. “Ain’t that the truth.” Were they getting closer to the subject they really needed to discuss? And was she subconsciously avoiding it because she knew she was hardly squeaky clean either? “I miss writing so much at the moment. It’s such a big help with sorting through my feelings. But at the same time the thought of having to write fills me with dread. It’s all very ambiguous.”
“Give it time. There’s no pressure.”
A short silence fell.
“What do you want to do tomorrow?” Annie asked after a while.
“I don’t know.” Jane drank from her glass of Pinot Noir. “Depends how tonight goes.”
Annie nodded. “I never meant to hurt you, Jane. I hope you can see this for what it is.”
“Your midlife crisis?”
“Then I would have tried to trade you in for an even younger model.” Annie painted a smile on her face.
Even though Jane didn’t much feel like laughing, she managed a giggle.
“It did hurt to realize how you felt about her. Probably even more so because, no matter how much I wanted to blame you, it reminded me of how I hurt you with Beth.” The next question was probably the hardest to ask. “Did you ever… contemplate leaving me?”
Annie shook her head. “No. Not for one second. This wasn’t about that. It wasn’t about our relationship at all. It was just a feeling that got hold of me…”
“Got?”
“Well, I guess it’s still there. I can hardly sit here and say it’s not, but that’s all it is in the end. A feeling. The most nebulous, fleeting thing.”
“When I… I mean, seven years ago… the thought did cross my mind.” Jane didn’t say this because she wanted to hurt Annie, but because the guilt of even having had the inclination had been sitting with her for all that time.
“But you didn’t.” Annie’s voice sounded a bit more matter-of-fact. “That’s the only thing that matters to me.”
“When you think of all the different courses relationships can take at certain points… Sometimes I think it’s a miracle for two people to stay together as long as we have.”
“I tend to agree, but I also think there comes a point when you’ve been with someone for such a long time, it’s no longer a choice. It becomes much more about wanting to safeguard what you have, because you know that the two of you together will always make more sense than you alone.” Annie’s glance softened. “Does that make sense?”
“It does to me. I can’t imagine my life without you. Everything we do is so intertwined. I wouldn’t be the same person I am today if I hadn’t met you twenty years ago.”
“Nor would you be if Beth Walsh hadn’t come along…”
Hearing Beth’s name never failed to jolt Jane. “Do you mean like some sort of test?”
“Not a test so much as a catalyst to some profound realizations.” Annie reached for her wine and swirled the liquid around in its glass.
“What I learned most of all from that… episode,” Jane said, “is that relationships can endure bad times. And that as much as you hope there will only ever be good times, kinks in the road are inevitable, perhaps even necessary.”
Annie looked into her glass for a moment, then fixed her gaze on Jane. “Back then, I did very much fear you would leave me.” There was a slight tremor in her voice. “And what was the hardest of all, was that I didn’t have any control over it. It was entirely up to you. If you didn’t want to stay, there wouldn’t have been very much I could have done about it.” She looked away. “In the very worst moments, I pictured running into you and Beth in the street. Maybe to prepare myself for the worst. Possibly one of the most excruciating thoughts I’ve ever entertained.” She shook her head. “The fact that you didn’t hesitate for a moment to break all contact with her when it mattered, means so much to me. Because it could have so easily gone the other way.
“No. Not easily. Far from easily.” Jane had to take a sip of wine to swallow away a tear.
“Why did you… decide to stay?” Annie looked Jane square in the eye again.
“Leaving you would have been like,” Jane paused to think, “leaving a limb behind. The pain possibly comparable to chopping it off with a very blunt knife.”
“I do love it when you get all hyperbolic,” Annie said.
“Maybe that was a little over the top.” Jane exhaled and let some of the tension seep from her muscles. If all else failed, she and Annie still had a sense of humor between them to fall back on. Something to lighten the mood when it needed lightening most.
Annie leaned over the table. “I’m sorry that I hurt you, because hurting you is the last thing I ever want to do.”
Jane regarded her wife. The crows’ feet crowding around her eyes. Her short gray hair she’d always stubbornly refused to dye. Her kind blue eyes in which Jane often wanted to drown. This was her wife. The woman she knew through and through—and vice versa. “I accept your apology,” she said solemnly, knowing it wouldn’t be so easy as to just say those words. “And I certainly don’t feel like dragging out this stand-off. I hate it. And I hate sleeping alone as well. But I will need some time to just… I don’t know. Feel completely right in my skin again.”
“You mean some time to forgive me.” Annie’s voice was soft and low.
Jane shook her head. “God, no. This is not about forgiveness. You haven’t done anything wrong.”
“I did talk to Kristin before we agreed I should.”
“Yes. And I was quite worked up about that last night. But today I’m not as angry anymore and I’ve had some time to put myself in your position.” A crash of longing suddenly swept through her. Jane wanted to reach out and grab hold of Annie’s hand. “Which, we both know, wasn’t very hard for me to do.”
“I keep going back and wondering whether I should have come clean and told you as soon as I figured out my, er, feelings. I talked to Rita about it and she was adamant I spare you the knowledge of my silly crush.”
Jane managed a chuckle. “Do we need a protocol in case this happens again—to either of us?”
Annie smiled for a fraction of a second, then her face went all serious again. “Do you think I should have told you?”
Jane took a deep breath. “That’s a tricky one.” She drank from her wine. “I think you should have because it would have saved me the anguish of putting two and two together myself, but I’m not sure I would have told you either had I been in your position. Not to keep it from you, but as Rita said, to save you from it.”
“I’m sorry you had to find out the way you did. I’m truly sorry about the whole thing.”
“We’re talking about it. That’s what’s important.”
“And we have all day tomorrow to continue the conversation.” Annie put her hand in front of her mouth as she stifled a yawn.
“Will you come to bed with me?” Jane did reach out and put her hand over Annie’s.
“I thought you’d never ask.” Annie’s grin projected exhaustion as well as relief.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Annie pressed her naked body against her wife’s back. On any other night, she would doze off within minutes—as if her brain knew
that the moment her skin touched Jane’s like that in a warm, comforting embrace, it was time to switch off and let sleep wash over her. But tonight, Annie didn’t feel quite right in her skin just yet. Nevertheless, progress had been made, and Annie pushed her nose into Jane’s hair, inhaling her smell.
She kissed the back of her neck and Jane gave her a light groan in return. This was the last of the day, their version of one last kiss goodnight, and Annie couldn’t help but wonder if it really would be this easy. If her little transgression could be buried like that underneath the vastness of their years together and the bond they had forged throughout them. Most of all, she had to ask herself whether she had truly snapped out of her infatuation. If a confession and a few conversations could really make that much of a difference, or whether she would have to rely on the passage of time to do its magic in that place in her heart where all of this had ignited.
“Good night, babe,” she whispered.
“Night.” Jane grabbed the arm that Annie had slung over her and pressed it a little tighter against her belly.
Had Annie really ever wanted it to be Kristin in her arms instead of Jane? Maybe for a fleeting moment. Or perhaps for the scratching of a faint itch. But not for this. What they had in that moment was the truest, purest form of intimacy. To have Jane fall asleep in her arms took a level of trust that could only be earned by a life lived together, by years of sharing everything. The good and the bad. By knowing each others’ less stellar sides and accepting them as part of the package.
Her infatuation with Kristin hadn’t had anything to do with what made her marriage with Jane so great and long-lasting. It was just a crush, a flash in the pan, everything reduced to a shiver of lust running up her spine when they were together. Not that it was purely physical. Annie admired Kristin’s personality, but there was no depth to that admiration. It was genuine, and perhaps time and the correct set of circumstances could have turned it into more, but Annie had already been swayed by time and circumstance once. And maybe other people believed that a person can have a few, or even many, great loves in their life, but Annie was not one of those people. She knew, all the way in her bones, that Jane was the one and only for her. She’d been privy to that knowledge for twenty years. She’d known when they’d met and Jane’s insecurities had almost ruined everything before it even began. She’d known when they’d first kissed. She’d known when Jane had fallen in love with another woman. Oh, how she had known then—the pain of knowing like a knife in her gut. And she knew now.
And yes, Annie had acted foolishly, and hung onto Kristin’s words a bit too much, allowed her into her fantasies a little too often, but it had also made her realize what she’d stood to lose.
Annie pressed herself closer to Jane still. If she pushed herself any more in Jane’s direction, they’d both be tumbling out of bed. But sometimes, tight hugs like these were needed, and they said more than words ever could.
Annie woke from a delicious night’s sleep. The kind that could leave her so invigorated, she felt like she was twenty-one again. She blinked her eyes open and found herself lying in the middle of the bed. Oops. Jane’s behind stuck out and was glued against her hip. It looked like she had nearly driven Jane out of bed with the sheer force of wanting to be near her. She quickly shuffled more to her side, not that it would make any difference now. But sleeping together was often messy and crossed invisible boundaries. A bit like life, Annie thought.
Her motion must have woken Jane, because she started stretching. Annie watched her as she rolled onto her back, her long hair covering most of her face. A rush of desire swept through Annie. Sometimes she wondered whether her body knew that it was Monday morning, which was often their time reserved for getting it on—if they both felt so inclined. But Annie wasn’t sure she could instigate anything on this particular Monday morning. She wasn’t even sure she could let her desire be known.
She kept her glance glued to Jane, who was wiping the hair from her face, and deemed her previous thought ridiculous. Jane looked too scrumptious to keep any of that to herself.
“Morning, babe.” Annie scooted closer to Jane again. “Did you sleep well?”
Jane rotated to her side. “I’m pretty sure I could have slept better with some more space in the bed. You were all over me, all night long. While I appreciate the sentiment, it doesn’t make for the most comfortable of snoozes.”
“I’m sorry.” Annie nuzzled Jane’s neck. “Keep me away from you for two nights and I fail to keep my distance even in my sleep.” Annie brought her knee close to Jane’s crotch. “You’re too delicious to stay away from for too long.” She pressed her lips to Jane’s neck. “I can’t be held responsible for my actions when I’m under the influence of Jane Quinn.” She kissed Jane on the cheekbone and looked down at her. “I missed you.”
“I didn’t go anywhere.” A small smile played on Jane’s lips. A smile that drove Annie crazy with longing. It was as though she was seeing Jane clearly again for the first time in months. And as though she had some urgent things to say to her wife that could only be expressed by the nearness of their bodies.
“I know.” Annie folded her features into a solemn expression. She needed to know if Jane was on the same page as her. Annie let her knee drop down a little further, parting Jane’s thighs a little more—an action impossible to misinterpret.
Jane’s thighs didn’t give way to Annie’s knee as she had hoped.
“I just woke up, babe,” Jane said. Her legs remained firmly pressed together. “Give me some time.”
Annie wasn’t sure whether Jane meant time to wake up or time for more healing. “Take all the time you need.” Annie smiled down at her, then rolled back onto her side, drawing her knee back in.
“We should talk more,” Jane said. “Before we… do other things.”
“Before we have sex again,” Annie said, wanting to call a spade a spade.
Jane nodded.
Annie tried to remember how long it had been since they’d actually made love, not taking into account the failed attempt of a few weeks ago. She couldn’t even remember, that’s how long. She did know that now was not the right time to bring that up. Perhaps she shouldn’t even have tried, but, sometimes, it seemed to Annie, if she didn’t try to instigate once in a blue moon, they would stop having sex altogether.
“We have all day to talk,” Annie said on a sigh.
“Why do I feel as though it’s you holding something against me?” There was tension in Jane’s voice.
Annie slung an arm over Jane’s waist. “I’m not holding anything against you.” She pecked Jane lightly on the shoulder. “I love you.”
“I love you too.” Jane angled her body toward Annie’s and scooted a little bit closer, and the gesture of her moving in Annie’s direction, even though it was only by a few millimeters, made all the difference.
They’d gone out for a wander in the neighborhood. Sometimes Annie almost literally had to drag Jane out of the house, otherwise she might stay inside for days on end. She had been spending more time in the shop, which was a good thing as far as Annie was concerned, but despite seeing Jane in her writing clothes, Annie didn’t know whether Jane had actually tried to write more. They had a lot to talk about—a lot more than just Kristin—but Annie just wanted to walk along King Street with her wife’s hand in hers. It was all the moment required. They could—and would—talk later. Perhaps say some things that had remained unsaid for too long. But for now, this companionable silence between them was all Annie craved.
They nodded at their neighbors, some of whom Jane, with her indoor ways, didn’t seem to recognize.
Annie remembered the two of them arriving in Newtown twenty years ago. She and Jane had walked hand in hand back then as well, but with a bit more trepidation in their heart. Annie had made it an act of defiance and—so she told Jane—PR for everyone who was deemed different from the norm. How could the everyday person ever get used to lesbians walking hand in hand if they never saw an
y actually doing it?
“Your subversion might get our asses kicked,” Jane had said.
And here they still walked down the same street, twenty years later. The street had changed, and so had they, but plenty of familiarity remained. They had almost reached the university and, as usual when they were on a silent walk, and despite wanting to adhere to an inner stillness Annie knew she needed to cultivate more, she was the one who spoke first. She broached the subject that was easiest for her to talk about.
“As I said before, absolutely no pressure, but I’m curious whether you have started to write again at all.” She used the most gentle tone her voice could muster.
Jane’s grip on her hand slackened a little and even such a minute gesture informed Annie that she had asked the question too soon.
“I want to write so much, but something’s stopping me. It’s as though I can’t follow my own advice, the one I’ve given to every aspiring writer who has ever contacted me. The only way to write is to sit down and just write. I’ve always been convinced that is really all it takes, but now I’m not so sure. I’ve sat down plenty of times with the intention to write and my fingers fail to move over the keyboard. Or I do write something and it’s such utter crap I should not have sat down to write it in the first place.”
“Which is why it might be a good idea to talk about it some more,” Annie insisted. “To understand your creative process better.”
Jane sighed. “I’ve been a writer for two decades. I should know my process by now.”
“I disagree. I mean, the books you write now are a world apart from what you wrote back in the day. If your writing evolves, it’s only normal that your process does as well. And we both know that any kind of evolution doesn’t always involve a straight line from A to B. There are starts and stops.” Annie bumped her shoulder against her wife’s gently. “You know what I think, babe? I think this hiatus is the precursor to something really great. It’s your brain demanding a break so it can get ready to deliver something monumental.”