Tansy
Cai’s face falls. Her skin goes pale and her body language is ridiculously easy to read—she crosses both arms over her chest and even cants away from me. I haven’t poked my finger in a wound—I’ve shoved my hand in her intestines and hauled them out onto her lap.
The urge to tell her no, it’s okay, she doesn’t have to say anything, hovers on my tongue, so I burn it away with more of the Jameson. I am strong. I am bold.
I tell myself so, at least.
I’d be upset with her if it seemed like she was pouting, but this isn’t that. She’s gone deep inside herself to consult the big book of Cai’s Troubles. Sadness lurks in there. I wonder if she’ll decide to tell me or not.
“It’s the usual stuff. I like my life easy. I’ve got a lot of friends and hobbies, and I love my career. Girlfriends get upset when I pick up and leave for Alaska for a week.”
So she’s going with no, I guess. I could leave it be. I could.
I won’t.
There’s a new me, I think. I don’t know why I’m this daring. Because I don’t think Cai will snap off my head? Maybe because she doesn’t yet know my weaknesses, the softest parts of my underbelly that bleed with a perfectly chosen jab. I have the chance to be anyone around her. Maybe I’ll be someone who’s not afraid of conflict.
“It sounds like you’re writing a personal ad.” Damn, do I like making her laugh. It makes me feel sophisticated. Smarter than I actually am, or like I’m finally one of the cool kids.
“You’ve got claws, kitten.” She doesn’t turn back toward me, but at least she uncrosses an arm and reaches toward the table.
My heart jumps when I think she’s reaching for my hand, and my stomach takes the loveliest flip. But it’s her bourbon she grabs. Oops. I’m such a dork sometimes. I keep my expression under control and don’t betray my disappointment. Or at least I think I do.
More booze. That’ll fix this pit in my gut.
I’m full of gruesome analogies tonight, I guess. The last bit of the Jameson goes down incredibly smoothly. It seems like there’s now a rich umber flavor that I didn’t notice before. Smoky forest stuff. Or something. “I mean, you’ve got a full life. None of those preclude a relationship.”
“Does that mean you’re looking for one with me?”
“No, I think you’d hurt me.”
The words are stones tossed into a pond, with repercussions rippling out by the second. At the bar, Bonnie leans against the rail and chats with a male bartender. The floor-to-ceiling windows open at the far end of the bar are thrown open to the evening breeze. A cluster of surfers have three tables pulled together. A roar of laughter goes up from the group.
I think I recognize one of them from the covers of magazines and watch ads. He’s got short-buzzed hair and eyes that are so blue I can see them from across the bar.
“That’s Sean Westin.” Cai’s voice is quieter than usual. “He’s a local.”
“To San Sebastian? Or to this bar.”
“Both.” She reaches out, and this time she does touch my hand, covering it with hers. “I probably would hurt you. We shouldn’t do this.”
“But you agree there’s something there?” Her hand is warm and her fingers are seriously skinny. I want to stroke her knuckles. I don’t. “Here? Between us.”
“I don’t leave work in the middle of a shift for just anyone.”
“I’m going to choose to believe that means you don’t hit on a lot of your clients, either.”
She turns her hands over and laces her fingers through mine. It’s a light connection, one that makes me think about fragility and how quickly grains of sand could slide right between us. “I don’t. I won’t say never, but rarely.”
“How long?”
“Last time was about six years ago.”
I can live with that. “Is this the date you mentioned, or is it going to be some future thing?”
“Maybe both.”
I don’t think I can discern any differences between the Macallan and the other two I’ve finished, but I’m certainly starting to feel lovely. “Why would Rhett Butler drink these?”
“Because he doesn’t give a damn?” I love her smile. It’s inviting, like I’m being let in on a secret. “He was a guy who didn’t do mixers, which means he’d also needed to drink the good stuff. That’s these.”
It’s easy to ignore that our hands are linked together, and hard at the same time because it feels like everything centers on that connection. My rapid pulse hovers in a middle ground between anxiety and thrills. At first I hide my smile behind my glass, and then I decide that no, I’m not going to be a hiding kind of girl. Not anymore. It’s okay to be happy. It’s okay to be joyous. Even if this goes nowhere from here, I’m holding hands with a beautiful woman after having watched a fantastic sunset. Life is pure. Life starts again. I can start again.
I’ll be damned if I let Jody take that away from me for even a second longer.
“Tell me what Idaho’s like,” Cai says after a long, peaceful moment.
“Cold. Insular. Filled with people who are really good people, but who only talk to each other and don’t trust outsiders.” I hear what I’m saying like a weird echo. It’s true, but it’s not all the story—but it’s what Jody used to focus on when she refused to visit. I’ve been home only once since I’ve been gone. “It’s beautiful though. And once people trust you, it’s like joining a cult without the weird religious part.”
Her laugh is a little expulsion of sound, but I like making even that come from her. “I love how you start with cold and then go into this emotional insight.”
“I miss the cold.” I lift my foot just enough to bring it out from under our little table. My flip-flop dangles from my painted toes. “I like these, but I used to snowshoe and ski like crazy. I used to cry every year the first day it was over sixty degrees.”
“You’re lying.”
“Nope. Swear to god.” I cross two fingers over my chest in an X. No, that isn’t a petty ploy to make Cai look at my breasts . . . Okay, maybe it is, but it works. She stays smiling, but the corners of her eyes tighten and something dark passes across them. Win for me. “Mom used to call me a complete drama queen. And sure, after my cry, I’d go out to the creek with Justin and have a blast four wheeling. But I always had a cry first.”
“That’s fantastic.”
“It’s not. It’s silly.”
Cai shakes her head, and her hand tightens on mine. “It’s adorable. You can’t convince me otherwise. How did you end up here?”
“I wanted to try life in a big city. I applied to SUNY Buffalo so I could stay somewhere snowy, but USC is practically a city on its own. So that’s where I ended up going.” I shrug, turning my glass in circles. “I was about twelve when I figured out I was gay. The dating pool is kind of tiny in Salmon. And by tiny, I mean nonexistent.”
“Seriously? No one?”
“Okay, there was Beth Karlsson. She was nice, and we gave it a shot, but we just weren’t into the same stuff. Hunting’s okay, but it’s not my favorite.”
“Wait, what?” She’s laughing, and I can’t tell if she’s laughing at me or with me. “You’ve been hunting?”
“Here come the country-hick jokes.” They were one of Jody’s specialties. I roll my eyes in order to stave off the pinch of hurt behind my ribs.
“No way! I want to go. Can you take me?”
I freeze everything except for the way I look back up at her. “Are you teasing?”
“No.” There’s simplicity in her eyes that tells me she’s being honest. Her mouth is curved into a slight smile. “I don’t want to, like, go on a safari where I’m shooting an endangered animal in a pen or anything. But being out in the woods and part of nature and really seeing what I could do? It’s an experience I haven’t had.”
“Are you an experience junkie?”
“Pretty much. I’ve already been snowboarding and skydiving and climbed mountains. I’m on the go a lot.”
I’m a homebody. I can’t count how many times Jody complained about my reluctance to go out with her. I didn’t ever want to go shopping, or to parties, or to gallery openings. Movies hold very little appeal to me and red-carpet events even less.
But taking Cai into the woods? That’s got appeal. “Ever been four wheeling?”
She shakes her head. “Driven a baja buggy in Cabo though.”
“Oh, it’s so much fun. Mine’s at home still.”
“You still consider Idaho home?”
I’ve never thought about it before, and suddenly I feel like a cat in a room of rocking chairs. I want to tuck in all the pieces of myself. Or better yet run and hide under a bed. “Is that bad?”
“Why would it be?” She’s confused. I’ve confused her.
The view out the window has slipped toward evening. We’ve been here longer than I thought. I bite my bottom lip. “Want to go for a walk on the beach?”
She watches me for a longer moment than I’d like. She sees through me. I don’t even need her to say it. “Yeah, sure.”
She tosses some cash on the table, and we both wave to Bonnie. Cai also waves to the little group of surfers. A couple wave back, and one flashes a hang-loose sign. It’s cute. Before I came to California, I thought people only did that in movies.
Between the stonework deck of the bar and the sandy beach is a low wall. The lack of feeling in my cheeks says maybe I’ve had more to drink than I thought I did, so I sit to take off my flip-flops instead of kicking them off and having to lean down. I bury my toes in the still-warm sand and a happy sigh escapes me. “Idaho doesn’t have anything like this, but living in Los Feliz didn’t give me much time at the beach anyway. And my new place is in San Marino. Still no beach. It’s closer to school though.”
“Are you getting your master’s?”
“No, I’m a second-grade teacher at Woodbridge Academy.”
“Never heard of it.”
I shrug. “I’d be surprised if you had. It’s a super tiny private school.”
Cai lets her shoes dangle from two fingers and holds her free hand toward me. “Come on. Let’s walk to the pier.”
I squint south. The shadowy pier isn’t that far away. “Okay.”
I tuck my hand in Cai’s as if it’s perfectly natural. We have no awkward bit where we try to figure out whose hand goes in front and no one’s wrist is bent at an unnatural angle. Everything as smooth as if I’d dreamed up a perfect date.
I catch the tip of my tongue between my teeth. Worry jumps on me and weighs down my shoulders. Maybe I’m living in a land of wishful thinking. It took me so long to realize that Jody was mean. It took finding her sleeping with that guy to recast everything we’d been through in a harsh light. Only then did I understand that I’d often seen what I wanted to see or swallowed lies that I wanted to hear.
Or walked away from subjects that were too hard to pursue because I was afraid of Jody’s reactions.
My reactions are the ones that matter. I have to put myself first. If I can’t do that, I’m bound to repeat the same mistakes over and over again.
I squeeze Cai’s hand. “I understand if this is hard to talk about, but . . . I feel like there’s something you’re not telling me. About why you avoid commitment?”
Her sigh is easier than the snapping that I might have expected. The corners of her eyes don’t tense with anger or fury. That’s a good sign. “It’s hard to talk about.”
“I kinda figured it would be.” I make my smile as endearing as I can. Except I’ve had three drinks, so there’s a strong possibility I’m simply embarrassing myself. Normal face. Normal face. “When someone makes a blanket statement like that, that they’re not looking for a relationship, one of two things are true.”
“What’s that?” She seems amused with me, but I’m not backing down. I don’t think. I don’t mean to, at least.
I tug Cai toward the water’s edge. The chill of damp sand catches me first. Then the cold water is next. I let white foam roll over my toes anyway. “Either they’re a full-on asshole . . .”
“I don’t think that’s me.” She loops an arm around my shoulders.
We face the dark sky. There’s an entire city, an entire country, an entire world at our back. It presses on me. I like the feeling, but only if I let it into me a little bit at a time. The mountains are so much safer. Maybe I should go home. “Or they have some deep dark secret.”
“It’s not a secret. If you google my name, you can find me.” The low, dark tone of her voice sends goose bumps prickling across my arms. I want to take my questions back at the same time that I’m desperate to know her truths. “I did some interviews. ‘We’re looking for Xue. We love her. Please let her come home.’”
My voice is a whisper. “Who’s Xue?”
“Was.” She finally looks at me. There are shadows across her face. The beach is dark and we’re in the dark together, but I still don’t think she sees me. Not really. “She was my older sister.”
“What happened to her?” I lean into her, my shoulder against her side. I wish I could say I was holding her up, but I’m not. She stands all on her own.
“She was in college and walking away from campus. Abducted. Missing for more than seven months.” She sighs, a long and deep sound that’s filled with a whole family’s pain and anguish. “At least we eventually got to have a funeral.”
“Oh god,” I breathe. “I’m so sorry. For you, for your family. When was it?”
“High school.” She starts walking toward the pier again, slowly enough that I feel okay walking next to her. She’s not trying to get away. “I spent most of my freshman year searching the desert, hoping I wasn’t the one to find my sister’s body.”