“I can’t believe you ran the shower just in case your dad could hear us,” Hillary replied.
“Could hear what?” Amara’s father made his way outside, with a black garbage bag in his hand. “And before you think I’m spying on you two, I’m just here to take out the trash.” He held the bag up a little, walked toward the two cans, and tossed the bag into the brown one. “I thought you were running late for dinner. I expected you to be gone already.”
“We’re on our way now,” Hillary said. “Sorry if we were loud in there. We had the music turned up. I had a long day and needed some heavy metal to get my energy back up.”
“Didn’t hear a thing. Have a nice night, ladies,” the man said, turned to go, and then turned back. “Amara, can you maybe run that virus program on my computer again? It’s running slow.”
“Sure,” she told him. “I’ll do it when I get back.”
“It can wait until tomorrow. Have fun tonight.” He waved and went inside.
They stood outside Amara’s car. Amara was silent. Her eyes glued to the door her father had just walked through.
“Babe, I’ll drive. Okay?”
“Probably a good idea,” she said. “And can you not–”
“Call you babe?”
“Just not here, in case…” Amara replied.
Amara didn’t want to say it, and Hillary knew that.
“I understand.” Hillary nodded.
◆◆◆
How had Amara managed to find this perfect woman? Hillary hadn’t mocked her earlier when she’d uncovered Amara’s embarrassing activity. She hadn’t pushed for her to be out in front of her father. She hadn’t even gotten upset with her when Amara had requested she not call her the term of endearment she’d so recently assigned her just outside her father’s house.
Hillary had listened to her at dinner when she’d expressed her concerns over the newness of their relationship. She’d listened when Amara had brought up that Hillary had been with a woman, and for a long time, while Amara hadn’t even been with anyone more than a few months.
Hillary had smiled at her and reassured her that none of that mattered. She’d even told Amara more about Caroline and their relationship. She also mentioned that as a professor of sociology and women’s studies, she encouraged people to be themselves. She loved learning about people, why they did what they did, the concepts and theories of her profession, and everything in between. She wanted to be more open herself. She wanted to find a better version of herself. She’d taken steps to get herself healthier. She’d focused more at work and in her friendships. Most importantly, though, she’d walked up to Amara at the café and asked her out on a date.
Amara couldn’t help her smile as she kissed Hillary good night in Hillary’s car. She didn’t want to leave her; she wanted to fall asleep next to Hillary again. But they’d both agreed that baby steps were important here. Amara needed to get more comfortable with who she was now that she’d finally said it out loud. She needed to figure out how to tell her father and when, if she ever decided to do so. Hillary would wait; she’d told her that. Amara believed her.
Amara smiled as she made her way through the main house up to her father’s study. It was only nine. She could check his desktop before she went to the pool house to try to get some sleep. Hillary had promised to call when she arrived home safely. Amara wanted to shower and get in bed so that they could say goodnight properly. She knew her dad’s password by now, so she logged in and clicked the three whole items to run the virus protection software. She’d taught him how to do this at least ten times, but he always asked for her help. While it was running, she looked around the spacious office. Beside his old-fashioned desk, there was a giant bookcase. It was filled with Christian books and religious texts among other, more classic books.
Amara moved over to the bookcase and examined one of the shelves her father had recently reorganized. She noticed something that wasn’t at all familiar to her and pulled it down. It was an old Bible, but instead of it being the fancy brown leather of most Bibles, it was gray, and its cover was merely a heavy-duty cardstock. On the inside of the cover, she saw her mother’s name scrawled in handwriting she’d seen in other places growing up. She held it out and flipped casually through a few pages, realizing there were notes on most pages and a few scraps of paper stuffed inside. In her mother’s handwriting, on one such piece of inserted paper was written something that confused Amara.
“How can it be wrong if it feels right?” she read out loud. Beneath that text, what looked like Amara’s name was written; but it wasn’t Amara’s name. “Amara Sarai?” she said the name that was enveloped in a heart. “Amara Sarai?” she repeated.
There was a date on the piece of paper along with notes and scripture passages. The date was from about ten years before Amara was even born. Amara’s full name was Amara Abigail. Who was Amara Sarai? Why was her name written in a Bible once owned by her mother? Why was there a heart around it?
CHAPTER 23
“You’re together?” Kellan asked through the screen of the laptop resting on Keira and Emma’s coffee table.
“We are.” Hillary smiled wide at the announcement to her friends.
“Okay, we have got to meet this girl. You look smitten, Hillary Robins.”
Joanna pointed at her from her seat across the room. She and Greene were sharing one of those oversized chairs on the other side of the table. Keira and Emma were sitting to Hillary’s right and left on the sofa. When Hillary had arrived at their place and told them she had an announcement, Keira had insisted they get Kellan on the laptop to video chat. Hillary had meant to tell Kellan how things had gone with Amara, but she’d been so busy. She’d planned to FaceTime her over the weekend if she and Amara didn’t have anything major going on. It was Wednesday night. She hadn’t seen Amara since she’d dropped her off Monday night. They’d exchanged a goodnight phone call then and the following night, along with many, many text messages. But she already missed her. They’d planned a date night for Friday night, and Hillary was counting the minutes until she would see Amara again.
“She doesn’t look smitten; she looks satisfied,” Greene argued playfully.
“Did you have sex, Hillary?” Keira poked her cheek mockingly.
“Leave her alone.” Kellan laughed through the computer screen. “But, seriously… did you?”
“Oh, my God! How old are you guys?” Hillary chuckled.
“How was it?” Emma questioned. “Also, our reservation is at 7:30. We should probably get going soon.”
“Well, that’s not fun for me,” Kellan argued.
“You’re the one that has moved far away and hardly ever visits,” Keira replied.
“It’s Tahoe. It’s not that far. I’m running my own vet practice, Keira.” She smiled at her ex-girlfriend and now a close friend.
“And planning your engagement with your girlfriend,” Hillary pointed out.
“Hey!” Kellan’s eyes were wide.
“You’re getting engaged?” Keira leaned toward the coffee table.
“I am thinking about getting engaged,” she corrected. “I told Hillary that in confidence.”
“Yes, let’s shift this conversation to Kellan’s upcoming proposal and away from my love life.” Hillary stood and moved toward where she’d placed her jacket over the kitchen table chair.
“No way.” Greene stood, too, and stretched her long, lean body.
Joanna watched with a lifted eyebrow. Hillary rolled her eyes at them. Joanna had been straight up until she met Macon Greene. How she hadn’t realized she could be attracted to the female form before that, though, was beyond Hillary: that girl was always checking out her girlfriend.
“I’ll sum it up for everyone,” Kellan stated. “Reese and I want kids. We want at least two; maybe more. I’d like us to be married first. Call me old-fashioned. She does, too. We haven’t set a timeframe or anything, but we’re also not getting any younger. We also have to consider that we can
’t have them the traditional way, and there’s a chance it won’t take the first time.”
“More than two?” Keira said into the screen. “I don’t know how people handle one.”
“That’s one of the reasons I married you.” Emma scooted closer to her wife on the sofa, kissed her cheek sweetly, and stood. “Kellan, I say go for it. You love the woman; she loves you. You both want it. Just do it.”
“Like I said, I’m thinking about it.”
“What’s to think about?” Greene moved to where she’d placed her own jacket on top of Joanna’s. She passed Joanna her jacket and slid her own over her shoulders. “Just tell us when and where. We’ll be there.”
“Another Tahoe wedding?” Keira asked. “I’m down.”
“Well, the first one went so well,” Emma commented about their own nuptials.
Hillary stood off to the side, enjoying the banter of her ever-expanding group of friends. Even though Kellan was hours away and living her new life with Reese, they could still find times like these to get everyone together to catch up. She smiled at that thought, and then her smile diminished when she realized that she was – once again – here alone. Joanna kissed Macon on the lips before wrapping her arms around the woman’s torso and pulling her in. Emma matched the gesture nearly identically with Keira. While Reese wasn’t on the video chat, her presence was felt merely because they were talking about their impending engagement. Hillary was standing there alone. She had a girlfriend, but her girlfriend wasn’t there.
She wanted more than anything to be able to share moments like this with Amara. Her worry, though, was the fact that all her friends were lesbians. They were all out lesbians. They had no problem being who they were with one another and out in public. They kissed, held hands, applied comforting touches, and spoke openly about sex. Hillary wanted to give Amara an immense amount of credit for the steps the woman had taken recently, but she wasn’t sure if Amara could handle a night out with all her friends like this. They were an intrusive bunch.
“Where’s your girlfriend tonight?” Kellan asked through the computer speakers. “Did you not invite her?”
“She’s busy,” Hillary explained. “And we should get going. Kell, I’ll call you later.”
“Sure. Order that calamari and enjoy it for me,” she replied.
They all said their goodbyes, disconnected the video chat, and headed out of Keira and Emma’s to one of their favorite seafood restaurants in the city. They called an Uber, and all five of them crammed into the SUV. Hillary texted Amara that she was missing her tonight. It wasn’t until they arrived at the restaurant and had ordered their food that Amara texted back that she missed her, too. They arranged a goodnight phone call for later. Hillary hated that Amara lived outside the city. Mileage-wise, it was next to nothing, but traffic-wise on a weekday, it was over an hour away. Hillary couldn’t stay over, and it was hard for Amara to explain another night away from home to her father. They’d save that night for the weekend, when they could have more time together. This was going to be tougher than she thought.
◆◆◆
Amara snuck into her father’s study for the second time that week. She’d left the book behind last time, but tonight, she planned on taking it with her. Her father was asleep and, likely, wouldn’t wake considering he took a sleeping pill nightly. Amara flipped on the light and made her way to the bookshelf. The Bible was just where she’d left it. She pulled it off the shelf and pushed the two adjacent books together to cover its absence. She hated lying to her father, and now she was stealing from him, too. She decided she’d find a way one day to make it up to him, but that she had to know more about this book and why it had been hidden from her all these years.
She made her way soundlessly down the stairs and out to the pool house. She locked the door behind her, moved into her bedroom, wondered for a moment why she even had a living room because she spent so little time in there, and laid on her bed over the comforter. She opened the brittle cover of the book and decided to take a more deliberate approach to trying to untangle the mystery. She moved page by page this time, skipping the ones that had no comments or papers stuck between. She wanted to move directly to Amara Sarai. It was her mother who had wanted to name her Amara; her father had told her as much. Maybe she’d always wanted to name a future daughter “Amara”. Maybe she’d been toying with middle names for her future child even when she was in high school.
That was how old the Bible was. It had been printed when her mother was fifteen, according to the information on the inside cover. Her mother had inscribed her own name as the book’s owner and written the year next to it. She’d been seventeen when she’d either bought it or received it. Amara tried to absorb the winding cursive of her mother’s young handwriting. There were wide loops and ornate dots above the letter I. Amara smiled in wonderment at her mother’s words on some of the pages. The woman had been a student of the Bible, it appeared. Some of her comments agreed with certain passages. Sometimes, she’d circled something or highlighted the text. Other times, she’d written merely a word or two with no other information or context like “yes” or “think about this.” Amara pulled out the first piece of inserted paper, which was actually a napkin that had been torn off and slid between the thin, fragile pages. The words on it weren’t written in the same handwriting. This handwriting was smaller; the loops were tighter; there weren’t near hearts above the letter I.
“I miss you,” Amara read out loud. “You’re here, and I miss you.”
What the hell? Amara turned the napkin over. There was nothing written there, but there was an imprint of someone’s lips in a light peach lipstick. Amara turned it back over and tried to interpret the words. After several minutes, she slid it back inside the book and turned to the next page and the next after that. She found a pressed red rose she hadn’t had time to discover the night she’d found the book. She found another scrap of paper in that same, unknown handwriting.
“Please talk to me. I miss you,” Amara read out loud again.
For some reason, it only resonated to Amara when she read the words out loud to herself. There was no lipstick print on the paper this time. Her mother’s handwriting on the book itself grew smaller in some areas. The pressure of the ink on the page also seemed to intensify as the lightness of her letters turned dark, and those ornate dots turned to dark as night blobs of ink. On one page, her mother had managed to create a hole from pressing so hard. The words were written in so many locations, Amara had lost count.
“It’s wrong. It’s wrong.”
Amara closed the book after having seen them over and over again, along with the name “Amara Sarai”. She decided that, tomorrow, she’d look into finding out more about Amara Sarai. She had to exist. There was no way her mother would have written that phrase alongside the name she’d planned on giving a future daughter. Amara Sarai was a real person, and there was a possibility her mother had loved her.
CHAPTER 24
“So, how was the rest of your week?” Hillary asked.
They sat at dinner on Friday night at the restaurant Amara had chosen. It was nice but not expensive, and in a part of the city where tourists weren’t all over the place. Amara was gorgeous across the table. Her hair was down and framing her face. Her eyes were lined with a dark brown eyeliner that only brought their green out even more. Her blouse was silk and burgundy. Her top two buttons were undone, which gave Hillary’s eyes a nice place to wander. Amara had worn light jeans that hugged her in all the right places and three-inch heels, which made her even taller than Hillary and accentuated her legs even more.
Hillary had never considered herself particularly feminine or particularly butch. Her tastes in women she’d dated had varied just as much as in men she’d dated. But, right now, staring at the gorgeous woman – with gold hoop earrings bouncing at her earlobes while she laughed about something – told Hillary she was very much enjoying the more than feminine side of Amara Simmons.
“It was
strange.” Amara’s laughter died down. “This may sound weird, but it feels like everyone’s looking at me differently. Like they all know what I did earlier this week, and that they know it was the first time I did it.”
“Ah, I remember that.” Hillary looked down and smiled as she forked some pasta. “Like the whole world knows you had sex.”
“Yes,” Amara agreed eagerly. “What is that?”
“I don’t know. I think we all go through it, though.”
“When did you?”
“Are you asking me when I lost my virginity?” Hillary’s light laughter returned and prevented her from taking a bite.
“Should I not?”
“You can ask me anything you want,” she assured.
“You know when I lost mine, obviously, so…” Amara sipped at her water.
“I do.” Hillary smirked at her. “And I lost mine when I was nineteen.”
“Nineteen?”
“Yeah.”
“Was it with a man or a woman?” Amara asked as she sat her water glass down; her cheeks pinked with the question. “Or does it not work like that?”
“I guess I consider it like I lost it twice. It’s different for everyone, though, I think,” she answered as honestly as she could. “I lost it to a boy first. He definitely wasn’t a man.” She chuckled. “He was twenty-one. We had dated briefly before, and I guess it just felt like it was time. Most of the friends I had back then had had sex for the first time in high school or right after they got to college. It felt like I was missing out on something.”
“Did you love him?”
“God, no,” she guffawed and smiled back at her after. “I liked him. He was sweet. He didn’t push me into anything. I think he was surprised that I wanted to do it. We did. It was short.” She chuckled under her breath. “And then it was over.”
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