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Short Stories
"There is no greater agony than bearing
an untold story inside of you."
~ Maya Angelou
The hardest thing about writing short stories, for me, is ending them.
I tend to like to keep the story going ...
Below are a few short stories for you to read and enjoy. Be sure to check back on a regular basis as I plan on rotating new stories into the mix.
Short Story Publishing Credits:
• Peas in a Pod - Chicken Soup for the Brothers' and Sisters' Soul: Sept. 07'
• The Sight of Her - Lesbian Love Stories: Alyson Books - Oct. 07'
• Peas in a Pod - Chicken Soup for the Brothers' and Sisters' Soul: Sept. 07'
• The Sight of Her - Lesbian Love Stories: Alyson Books - Oct. 07'
~~~~
The Accidental Kiss
I was eight years old when I first realized that I was gay. I may not have known the definition, I may not have even known the word...but I knew the feeling. It was the swarm of butterflies that flew into one another deep within my stomach every time I was around her. It was the sweatiness of my palms and nervous vibrations in my voice whenever she was close enough for me to smell the fabric softener in her clothes or the sweet scent of her shampoo. She was my best friend and my first crush.
I was raised in a neighborhood in which there were entirely too many boys and not enough girls for me to play with. This was my mother’s sentiment. For me, I was perfectly happy playing with GI Joe instead of Barbie, riding my bike pretending it was a motorcycle and running around in the summertime without my shirt on. I was just like everyone else. I was happy being a girl who was accepted as one of the guys.
By the time I reached third grade, I couldn’t imagine myself being any other way. My mother had tried to dress me in skirts and put ribbons in my hair, but I wouldn’t budge. I wanted my hair short and I wanted to wear jeans. I was proud of who I was and never questioned it. I didn’t understand that I was a tomboy because I never saw myself as one. I saw myself as Lyndsey, the only way I knew how to be.
In school, I had friends who were girls though there were times I didn’t understand their way of thinking. Instead, I understood why all the boys in our class thought my best friend was the prettiest girl. I understood because I also thought she was beautiful.
At first I didn’t realize that it was a crush. I couldn’t understand why I wanted to be around her all of the time, why I felt so lucky when she would pull me aside and whisper a secret into my ear, why every time I walked into school I was flying because I knew I was going to see her. I never stopped to wonder if other girls felt this way about her, too. Since I considered myself just one of the guys, I thought I was entitled to feel this way.
I entertained thoughts of us holding hands and kissing. I felt a sensation I was unfamiliar with, a tingling quiver between my legs, down there, when I would kiss my own hand pretending that it was hers. I wondered if she felt this way about me. I wanted to find out. Eventually, I did.
I was sitting at my desk after the bell had just rung signaling the start of the day. My teacher had given us an assignment and we were to be working on it silently by ourselves. My best friend, who normally sat in the desk right next to me, had not come to school yet and, as a result, I was in a state of panic. Where was she? Was she sick? Was she hurt? My mind raced with the pace of a tornado, twisting tragedies back and forth past my eyes. I kept glancing over my shoulder to the door. While my classmates were busy completing the assignment, I was busy doodling her name on a scrap piece of paper, my left leg shaking frantically and my heart feeling as thought it might just fly right out of my chest and land on the floor.
I watched the clock; each minute passing only added another drop to the puddle of worry that was growing in my stomach. Then, just when I thought I wouldn’t be able to sit there any longer, the classroom door opened and in she walked. I almost fell out of my chair. She immediately headed into the cloakroom. I looked up at my teacher who was occupied with the papers on her desk. She had warned us to stay in our seats, but this was an emergency. How could I stay in my seat when the most wonderful girl I knew was standing only a few feet away in the cloakroom? I placed my hands cautiously on my desk and stood up while keeping my eyes planted on my teacher. The adrenaline that was pumping through my veins prompted me to make a move or forever be stuck in an uncomfortable half-standing position. So I swiftly left my seat and snuck to the back of the class to the cloakroom. As soon as I saw her, I wanted to hug her. Her smile nearly knocked me over. She was casually hanging up her coat; to her it was just another day at school. To me it was heaven.
“I missed you,” I told her while fiddling with my hands because I wasn’t sure where to put them. Inching closer to her, I felt the sweat begin to creep along my palms. This was it. I couldn’t hide it anymore. I had to do something. I had to express the feelings that were wrapping themselves around me in a blanket of anticipation.
Without thinking, I leaned over and kissed her lightly on the cheek. It was courageous. It was incredible. It was...a very big mistake. The smile on my face faded instantly when I saw the look of fear and discomfort behind her eyes.
“Why did you do that?” she asked, almost angrily.
My heart sank. This wasn’t happening the way I had imagined it. I struggled to find an explanation, a reason that would make sense that what I had just done was completely normal. My eight-year-old mind searched for a witty response but all I could come up with was, “I kiss all my friends like that.”
She wasn’t convinced.
I wanted to hide. I wanted to crawl into one of the lockers and disappear. I knew that I couldn’t ever kiss her like that again. For some reason it was wrong, very wrong. The thickness of the air between us hung there until I cowered and returned to my seat. For the rest of the day, she avoided me. I began to understand why. Girls don’t kiss other girls that way. Girls don’t like other girls that way. I didn’t know why I had these feelings, but I knew that I wasn’t supposed to have them; they were wrong. I could never, ever act on them again.
Being so young and already feeling so different from other girls was difficult for me. I didn’t want to act girly or be something that I wasn’t but at the same time I didn’t want to have these feelings anymore and not fit in. I just wanted to be normal, like everyone else. The accidental kiss, as I call it, told me that what I had done wasn’t normal, that the best thing to do was forget about those feelings, push them down until they weren’t there anymore. I was only eight years old and I was already denying the person I was inside.
Things between her and I were never the same after that. In fact, I don’t even remember our friendship beyond that memory. My family moved shortly after, to a suburb, which was fine by me. All I wanted to do was start over; forget about the mistake I had made, make knew friends who didn’t know me or the feelings I had for other girls. I could like boys if I tried. It couldn’t be that hard.
I soon found, however, that these particular feelings were not going to just fade away. I began to have dreams about other girls at night, and daydream about girls in my class during the day. I kept them to myself, like they were my own special secret. And that was OK. I would be OK as long as nobody else knew. I went on with my life, dealing with every day adolescent issues. I was still a tomboy, but I learned how to blend in with everyone else. I learned that it was acceptable for girls to be athletic and play sports. For a while I was content.
High school came and so did the development of sexual urges. Alone in my room at night, I would fantasize about other girls. The feelings inside me had not gone away like I had hoped they would. They had grown stronger. Still, I knew I could never tell anyone about them. In learning about sex from other kids as most of us do, I also learned that being gay was a disgusting and horrible thing. This only justified my wanting to keep my feelings for other girls a secret. In order to satisfy my sexual curiosity, I dated boys. The pressure to fit in during high school is incredibly suffocating. Before I knew it, I had a reputation to up hold. I was one of the top athletes in my school and popular among my classmates. My boyfriend and I were voted homecoming king and queen. Me, the quintessential tomboy, voted into an office usually held by lipstick wearing girls who cared about whether their shoes matched their shirt or if their hair looked better pulled back or swaying just below their shoulders. Instead of a gown, I wore jeans and my soccer jersey during the homecoming parade. The irony of it all intrigues me. Here I was doing my best to just fit in and be accepted while denying who I truly was inside. And I was being rewarded for it.
When I flip back to my journal, I often turn to an entry that I made while in eleventh grade. It was after a summer writing camp at Clemson University where I developed a crush on a girl I had met there. I wrote: “I know that I like other girls the same way boys like girls and I don’t think it is ever going to go away. But I can hide it. I think that if anyone ever found out I would just die. So, I just keep it a secret. And I am okay with that.”
I know now that I was never “okay” with that. Deep inside, I was hoping that someone would find out, that something would happen so that I could just pop the cap on the bottled up feelings that had been dwelling inside of me since the third grade, maybe even before then.
But it wasn’t until my junior year of college the top of the bottle came flying off. I had enrolled in a creative writing class that met once a week on Thursday night. I distinctly remember the second class, where we were to read our journal entries from the week before out loud. Naturally, I was doodling and letting my mind wander, barely paying attention when her voice slipped into my thoughts. It was soft and captivating. I listened as she described a visit to the beach when she was younger, the way the frigid water curled up over her toes and made her feet go numb. The way she used her words was like honey, sweet and dripping lightly off of her tongue. When she finished, I wanted more.
The next class I couldn’t wait for her to share her work again and, to my pleasant surprise, she sat next to me. She spoke to me, wanted to get to know me and I was stunned. Me? This brilliant, spectacular girl wanted to get to know me? It was exactly like third grade, only this time it was no longer a childish crush, it was an intense infatuation, too intense to be capped up in a bottle.
Sometime during that semester, I lost the hold that I had kept so tightly over my feelings. They became too overpowering to deal with, but because of the fear of being rejected by my friends, I never sought out anyone to talk to. Instead, in my fridge there would be bottles of beer or cheap champagne stocked for the sole purpose of easing my nerves before Writing Class. Each Thursday, I would lock myself in my room and listen to music while drinking. With liquid courage, I would be calm enough to be around her and control the feelings that were overflowing inside of me.
Despite being intoxicated for almost the entire semester, I was able to pass the class successfully. The girl, whose name is as exotic as she is, was well aware of my feelings for her. She played with them, sometimes flirting with me, sometimes ignoring my presence. I was stuck in a web of mystification spun by her desire to do with me whatever she pleased. We never kissed, though I desperately wanted to. At the end of the semester, she had grown bored with me and reunited with her old boyfriend. She stopped talking to me completely. That was when I fell flat on my face with depression. I had never felt for any of my boyfriends the way I had felt about her. She was everything I needed and she had understood my passion for writing. More importantly, she knew the one thing that nobody else knew about me, the one thing I had been denying my entire life; she knew I was gay.
After she ended our friendship, I was convinced that my interactions with her were the closest I would ever come to experiencing homosexuality. I was devastated because I no longer wanted to keep my feelings to myself. I wanted to explore them. I needed to explore them. But I had no way of doing so.
A depression took over me and I lost myself. I relied heavily on alcohol to help me get through the rest of the semester. The last night of my junior year, I drank till I became numb. On my way through the dorms later on in the evening after my buzz had taken control of my conscious, I ran into a girl who had been a good friend of mine during the fall semester that year. Sometime during the year we had drifted apart, and I never questioned why...until that very moment.
I decided to lay it all out and ask her what had happened between us, why had she stopped talking to me. Was it something I had done? She suggested that we talk in her room and I agreed. Once within her dorm room walls, I exploded, spewing words so fast from my mouth they seemed to be tied to one another at the ends. She tried to get in a word here and a word there, but couldn’t seem to break into my self-absorbed flow. Completely frustrated, she blurted out something that made me stop talking in mid sentence.
“Since the moment we met, I’ve had a crush on you.”
My jaw hit the floor and bounced back up to my face. She proceeded to tell me that the reason she had stopped talking to me was because she didn’t know how to deal with her feelings. I couldn’t believe it! The entire time I had been locked in my room drinking endless bottles of beer and cheap champagne, someone else had been going through the exact same thing. I fell onto her bed and told her everything. We talked for hours and she understood how I felt. It was so reassuring to know that another living person was dealing with the same confusion that I had been. She made it seem okay, she made me feel normal again.
That night, I finally experienced my first real kiss with another girl. It was everything I had imagined it would be and more. The kiss confirmed to me what I had already suspected; that I was gay. It also told me that it was time for me to fully explore this side of me that I had so carefully denied since the third grade.
After my junior year of college, I felt a change sweep over me, a sense of acceptance of who I was that I hadn’t felt since that day I had kissed my best friend in the cloak room. I spent my entire senior year learning about myself, and taking time to be by myself either by reading, writing or working out in the gym. This prepared me for my move to Boston the next year, where I lived with a childhood friend that I had grown up with throughout middle school and high school. Once in Boston, the full exploration of my homosexuality became a reality. I met other people who were just like me, dressed liked me, thought like me, and took me to gay clubs and activities.
I came out to myself completely and came out to my childhood friend who laughed and simply said, “So what. I still love you.” One positive reaction after the next only enabled me to become more comfortable with myself. I slowly came out to members of my family, dated my first girlfriend and pursued interests I had long forgotten. Eventually, I left the closet behind me.
I often think back to the accidental kiss in the cloakroom, how before that moment I was completely happy with who I was and loved myself unconditionally. That one little kiss changed my whole perception and sent me off on a journey of self-discovery and acceptance. Interestingly enough, another little kiss brought me back.
People sometimes ask me how old I was when I first realized that I was gay. I was eight years old, I tell them. That was when I first realized it. But, it wasn’t until I was twenty-four that I finally accepted it. It wasn’t until then that I fully understood how good it felt to just be me.
The Lesson of Graham Brooklyn
I didn’t know who Graham Brooklyn was. But I’m the one who found his body. I imagined that the 40 oz. beer bottle he had been holding, perhaps purchased only minutes prior from the liquor store around the corner, slipped from his crestfallen hand and smashed on impact as it hit the ground. Shards of glass burst in every direction like shrapnel. Sweat trickled down the base of his neck, dampening his torn button down shirt. He tried to inhale, gulped then captured nothing. His eyes danced from side to side until a blurry haze of darkness flashed before him. He fell, first to his knees and then onto his stomach, arms extended out in front of him grasping for helping hands like elusive straws. The alley remained deserted, but for a few pieces of trash scattered about and a thick, snot-colored liquid collecting near a clogged sewer cage. The smell of something rotten, sour milk or possibly scalded fish, lingered over a rusty bin overturned and resting comfortably on its side. A slight twitch shook his left leg momentarily. Then nothing.
***
Life matters not when you’re twelve. What matters, or what mattered to me I suppose, were the worn baseball cards protruding from my back pocket, the yo-yo, baseball glove and Yankees hat (with the brim bent just so) in my knapsack, and particularly, the baseball in my hand.
I walked, one lace-loose sneaker in front of the other, chomping on a stick of Wrigley’s gum and tossing the ball up in the air with my bare palm.
A collision ensued between an elderly woman lugging her metal shopping cart behind her while navigating the cracks in the sidewalk with a wooden cane and my left foot.
She squealed as I kicked the cane, causing my sneaker to break free from the sole of my foot and sail through the air. The ball hit the ground, bounced off the shopping cart and rolled into an adjacent alley.
At twelve, you don’t stop to think about a feeble old woman with a cane when your most prized possession in the world has just disappeared into an alley. I didn’t apologize. Instead I ran full throttle, stumbling with one shoe on and the other in my hand. I spotted the ball trickling along the ground, propelled forward by a slight downward slant in the concrete.
I slipped on my sneaker and sprinted, gathering the ball up in my hands before it reached the sewer. Something foul stung my nose. I winced, walked backwards towards the street and studied the ball to make sure it was entirely intact.
A bird or some kind of airborne species flew by, stealing my eyes less than a second. Which was more than enough time for me to notice the body. I saw a pair of feet first, followed up the bean stalk legs to the tattered clothing, color-faded and ripped along the seams, then across the broad shoulders to the back of the balding head and to the arms spread wide like a pair of broken wings. Whoever lay there had been wearing a maroon cap, velvet red at some point before the weather had gotten to it.
It was then that I lost the spit in my mouth. Swallowed the gum. Felt the urge to run, though my legs were cemented to the very concrete beneath my feet. The baseball leapt gently from my hand, bounced off the ground and casually rolled along the curb. It came to a decided stop against a heel at the foot of the body, which coincidentally gave me a reason to move closer.
I inched ahead, aware of my breathing and the scraping of my sneakers against the pavement. The world around me seemed to come to a pause, and I glanced over my shoulder to make sure no wandering eyes were upon me. I stopped just short of the ball, bent down to pick it up without moving my eyes from the back of the hairless head in front of me. Biting my lip, I reached for it as far as I could with out bending over then jumped back a few feet as if bitten by the air. I looked on with horror at the maggot-covered body. But when my eyes blinked, the maggots were gone. My imagination was having a go at me.
I stood there not knowing what to do next. The baseball no longer carried any importance. I longed to be back on the crowded streets, away from the body, the alley and the stench of the sewer. My stomach heaved and I wretched, choking back the vinegary acid. I tilted my head towards the sky and let the clean air sail through my nostrils.
After a moment of relief, I glared at the body. A seed of anger began to grow in the gallows of my stomach. I wanted nothing more to do with it. This was the city; there were bodies of homeless people found lying on the ground all the time. If I left it there, someone else was sure to find it. My twelve-year-old conscience wept. I couldn’t leave. Instead, I sat down on the curb.
My head hung low as the afternoon heat rose up from the black top. My armpits caked with sweat. I sat and anxiously waited for someone else to arrive. For someone to save me from the looming responsibility I felt creeping up my shoulders and weighing me down.
***
An hour passed. Maybe two. I wasn’t wearing a watch and I didn’t know how to read the sun. I had noticed the shadows cast over my head shifting, which meant that time had indeed gone by. The body had not moved and neither had the baseball.
A sigh eluded my lips. Hunger pains begged me to call out, to scream for help. But fear warned me that I might be blamed or scolded or judged or arrested or worse.
“But I didn’t do anything,” I whispered.
A fly tickled my ear lobe, flew as if it were drunk from my shoulder to the bent in my elbow and then landed on the leg of the body, stoking my vigilance. The longer I sat there the less I wanted to tell someone of my discovery. They would ask me why I hadn’t alerted anyone sooner, and I wouldn’t have an answer for them. They would wonder had I acted accordingly, if the decaying body of the individual who lay before me could have been saved.
I had already convinced myself otherwise, that this shell of a man had already expired before I came along, and that he had passed from one world to the next even before his bruised face connected with the asphalt.
But questions were unavoidable now. The neon light of the heat lamp in the interrogation room blinded my mind’s eye. If I left now, just walked away, I could pretend I hadn’t seen it. I could simply forget about the baseball and walk home. I could make up a story as to why I was late. A fight perhaps, after school with some pig-nosed bully. A chase, a hiding spot found incredulously in a deserted alley, a body...no. No body. But the chase, the bully, the fight. Those would work.
But what about the baseball?
The bully stole my baseball.
There. It was all set.
***
I made it home well after supper and was sent immediately to my room without question, answer, water or food. My mother cried punishment. I saw a blessing in disguise.
With the lights off and the shades pulled low, I fell into the softness of my pillows letting the mattress cradle me.
My eyes were blood spotted and itchy from waterless tears. They dampened though, when I finally shoved my face into the pillow evoking a soundless scream.
His name had been Graham Brooklyn. I know because I checked his wallet. He had a one-dollar bill, ripped along the upper left corner, crumpled and shoved into the fold. There was no plastic, no library card, no social security, nothing to indicate that Graham Brooklyn had actually existed except for a driver’s license.
It was long expired and revealed a happier time when the hair on his head was a thick mud-brown and the creases of his smile were smooth. Deep-set eyes spoke of a known secret. Handsome some would say. Dapper even. I wouldn’t know. At the time I met him, he looked to me like any other man before the hungry streets ate him up and spit him out into an indebted alley. And I had left him lying there face down on the cracked curb, melting with the asphalt.
At that moment, I hated Graham Brooklyn. I hated him for never amounting to anything. I hated him even more for reaffirming all of my father’s beliefs that no good drunken gutter-dwellers with holes in their shoes end up lying face down in an empty alley, penniless and dead or in a shelter merely delaying the certainty of dying in an empty alley. Most of all, I hated him because he was the epitome of what I feared I’d eventually become.
Me, with my big dreams and lofty aspirations. Hadn’t someone like Graham Brooklyn had those same dreams? What had become of them? Why hadn’t he achieved all that he set out to achieve? Or worse, had he reached the pinnacle of success and decided that was it?
I didn’t have the answers. My God, I was only twelve. I was just looking for my baseball. In the end, my decision to walk away, to leave Graham Brooklyn’s body continued to haunt me for the rest of my life. He left a part of himself, whoever that was, with me. I know because I sometimes see his face in my dreams accompanied by sweaty disorientation, and an inescapable fear of being trapped in that alley.
Days later they found the body. And with it, a baseball. They were buried the two together in an unmarked grave. Maybe they, the cops or another random straggler, thought the ball had meaning. They thought the ball was his soul possession, the one and only thing he cared about in this world. If they only knew.
Years later someone added a headstone, paid in full by guilt masquerading as cash. It was, apparently, a delicate piece of granite that continued to weather each winter with a sense of purpose. It remains etched with elongated letters in an Old English script enlightening all those who cross its path with a single ambiguous sentence.
“You can keep the baseball.”
The Face In My Dreams
Last
night I had the dream again, the one where I’m kissing another girl. It
was the same girl every time. And she was always faceless, a hazy blur
mixed with a Caucasian complexion. I didn’t even know her name but I
knew she was beautiful. I could even smell the vanilla scent of her
shampoo. It was left lingering as my fingers inched their way through
her autumn, wavy hair.
Our lips only brushed against one another’s for a fraction of a second, but it was long enough for me to feel the sensation run though me like an electric current. My entire body lurched as the warmth of her breath swept over my face. I could taste the want in her lips.
Before anything else happened, I awoke to the realization of my empty bed. Tucked neatly in between the covers of confusion, my thoughts ran wild. As the sky broke pink like the center of a grapefruit in the youthful morning hours, I wondered to myself. Would the dream ever come true? More significantly, did I even want it to?
The odor of melting tar hung in the air as we were packing up the car. My family and I were leaving to go to the cottage for a week. It was a late summer tradition, being that we always went in the thick of August. I could feel the dampness of my underarms as I slid my suitcase into the back seat. My younger brother, Bo, was already sitting in the car with the newest Harry Potter installment spread across his lap and a bag of Doritos open beside him. The car was stifling as I coughed up the stale air from my lungs and turned my head to the side to inhale.
“Ready?” my father asked. Beads of sweat were forming on the crown of his shiny bald head and I wondered which way they would eventually fall.
He was a man of good nature, my father, who loved to take long trips mostly by road instead of by air, and listened heavily to the many political pundits of talk radio. I knew that I could expect a political conversation or two during the ride, which is why I made sure that my disc players was stuffed safely in my backpack.
“I think so,” I said while running through a mental list of everything I had packed. I found good dental hygiene to be extremely important, so my toothbrush was the first thing I grabbed.
My father climbed into the front seat just as my mother rushed out of the front door, muttering something about my father’s propensity to leave everything in the house plugged in.
I waited till the last possible second before I had to take my seat in the four-door sauna that was my father’s Toyota Corolla.
As soon as I closed the car door, Bo turned to me and smiled. Orange chunks of Doritos were nestled between his braces. I made a face, turned back to the window and desperately wished I were back in bed ... still dreaming.
As soon as we pulled up to the cottage, I sighed. The drive had taken longer than expected because of an unforeseen traffic jam. Bo had fallen asleep and was letting out a long-winded whistle from the depths of his nostrils.
“We’re here,” I smacked him and he awoke harried, nearly knocking the glasses off his face.
My father eased the car into the driveway and tapped the steering wheel signaling our arrival. He clasped his hands together, “Let’s unpack the car!”
I ignored the request and walked around the cream-colored cottage into the backyard. It was a short walk to the ledge, where the cement wall separated our land from the beach. In order to reach the sand, you had to descend the rickety metal stairs that rested at the top of the wall. They were worn and rusty from being washed numerous times by the lake during heavy storms.
I sat down at the edge of the wall, resting my hands beneath my legs and inhaled the fresh water scent that filled the air. My feet dangled, the heels of my sandals bouncing playfully against the cement. I peered out across the murky water, gazing for miles at the glass-like surface of the lake. A slight breeze teased the hair on my legs.
“Katie, come help us with the car.”
Again, I ignored my father’s plea. But this time it wasn’t on purpose. My attention had been simply diverted.
There, down on the beach, was a girl I had never seen before. Her stonewashed cut-off jean shorts hung just below her knees and her hair, tied back in a ponytail, was hidden by a backwards baseball cap. She wore a brick-red tank top, revealing her tan, and was she skipping rocks across the water. Skipping rocks was something I had never been able to master.
I watched intently as she picked up a rock carefully from the sand, stood ankle deep in the water and chucked it across the lake. I didn’t know if it was because I was fascinated by the fact that she was able to get a rock to dance at least three or four times before it stopped dead in the water, or if it was because I liked the way she looked. Either way, I couldn’t stop myself from staring.
Then, as if she felt the burning of my eyes upon her skin, she paused momentarily and threw a casual look over her shoulder. It was aimed directly at me.
I gulped, looked away.
By the time my father was about to call me for a third time, I was already walking beside him carrying a box full of toiletries and cleaning products from the back of the car, over the threshold and into the safe haven of our cottage.
We were sitting around the coffee table with cards in hand as the rain dribbled down the windows. I yawned, flipped over a card and picked another from the deck.
We had been at the cottage for two days already and each day had been rainy and overcast. My swimsuit was still neatly packed in the bottom my suitcase feeling unimportant. I sat with my legs crossed and my elbows resting on my knees preoccupied with my dreams.
I hadn’t had the dream at all this week and I noticed that it had darkened my mood a bit. I didn’t know the reason, but I knew that I missed her. I missed the faceless girl in my dreams. She hadn’t reappeared since we had arrived at the cottage, since I had seen that stranger skipping rocks on the beach.
“Katie, it’s your turn.” Bo poked me with the tip of his finger.
Heaving a sigh, I studied the cards in my hand. Then laid them down, face up.
“I don’t feel like playing anymore.”
I gave up and wandered into the back porch. The rain fell softly from the sky inviting me to come out and play. I accepted.
My feet sank into the damp ground as I stepped onto the grass. The air around me swallowed me up, keeping me warm while chilled raindrops dotted my skin and clothes. With my eyes closed, I tilted my head back and spread my arms as wide as they could reach. The rain continued on with its aquatic symphony as I listened with eager ears.
“Do you normally play in the rain?”
My reverie interrupted, I straightened up and searched the yard. Under a tree that separated our land from the neighbors, she stood, leaning again the bark and waiting patiently for me to answer.
“No,” I said finally, wiping the water off my face with the back of my hand. “I’m just bored I guess.”
“And you couldn’t find something better to do than stand out in the rain?”
“Guess not.” Realizing I wasn’t the only one getting wet I said, “What’s your excuse.”
“I was curious.”
“Curious?”
“After the other day, when you were sitting up here watching me. I wanted to find out who you were.”
“I wasn’t watching you.” I felt the fingers of my left hand rise up and mindlessly itch my shoulder, exposing my embarrassment.
“You weren’t?”
“No, I was watching the water.” My bottom lip quivered under the weight of my teeth, a clear giveaway that I was lying. “I...I like the water.”
“That’s obvious,” she hinted at the sky, which continued to spray a steady flow of rain down on our heads. “It’s a little less wet under here.”
Against my better judgment, my feet sloshed willingly with each step as I joined her underneath the tree.
It was a matter of minutes before she spoke again. Her name was Jordan and she had a thick accent. It was peppered with a hint of Australian and something else I couldn’t put my finger on. It turned out that her aunt was renting out a cottage down the road from us. She came to visit for only a week. And it just so happened that this summer, our weeks collided.
I studied her face as she talked, telling me more about herself than I would have cared to share. Her nose titled up slightly at the end, but fit perfectly in the middle of her oval-shaped face. Dimples formed at the curves of her mouth every time she smiled, and at certain angles her fierce blue eyes reflected a softer shade of green.
As I shivered in the rain, my arms constantly shifted from my sides to my face and across my breasts. I felt exposed, nearly naked, yet I hadn’t told her a single thing about myself. I didn’t want to, I was content to just listen. Every word seemed to dance off her tongue and trap me in a circle of captivation.
Awkward pauses or moments of silence were quickly followed by a chain of coy giggles, mostly from me, linked from one end to the other.
Her life or what I knew of it so far seemed lively and filled with adventure. She was originally born in England, had been to Australia and had learned to speak French fluently from a tutor. I had assumed because of her athletic exterior that she played a sport of some kind, but she told me than she hadn’t shot or kicked a ball in her entire life.
“I just like to run,” she said.
“Run where?”
“Anywhere my feet feel like going.”
“I can’t even run a mile,” I admitted.
My lean frame hardly let me partake in anything remotely physical. It came as no surprise to me that I was always picked last in gym class. But, what I lacked in curves I made up for in breast size. For such a thin girl, I was well endowed in that category. My mother always wondered at me, saying bluntly “I don’t know where you got those things from because they certainly didn’t come from me.”
“Are you home schooled?” I asked, after one of our wordless moments.
“For most of my life. I just recently started at a public high school.”
“Do you like it?” I asked as I picked at the bark on the tree.
“So far it’s not bad. I don’t have any problem making friends with anyone. But I know that might change once they find out that I’m gay.”
A massive chunk of bark came off in my hands. I didn’t know whether to try and put it back or let it fall to the ground.
Gay.
She had said it and it was quite obvious that I had heard it, thanks to my kung-fu grip. But like an enormous elephant had just wandered into the yard, neither of us commented on it.
Instead I muttered, “I should get back inside.”
My wet clothes clung to my body and I had noticed that the outlines of my breasts were visible right down to the nipple. Instinctively, I crossed my arms letting the bark fall from my hands.
“I guess I’ll see you around then,” Jordan said shortly, taking note of the sudden shift in my demeanor. She smiled kindly as if to say, “I understand why you’re uncomfortable.”
I nodded and walked back to the cottage resisting the urge to turn around for fear that she might see right through me then, into my mind and into my dreams. For fear that she might know then that the entire time we had been talking, all I wanted to do was melt into her like butter in a searing pan.
The creek flowed freely through the woods about a mile and half down from our cottage. Bo and I crossed the street, him with a bucket in hand in case he found some slimy creature to bring back. He had been bugging me to go to the creek all morning, pronouncing it “crick” as he had grown accustomed to doing. Knowing that he wasn’t allowed to go by himself, I decided to be nice and be his escort.
“Cut through here,” I told him when we reached the forest. We slid down a grassy bank and made our way through knee-length weeds and muddy puddles left over from the rain. A mix of sewage and fresh rainwater filled the air. The creek looked like milk chocolate in certain spots and I warned Bo not to dip his hands into it.
He scoured the ground for creatures, turning over rocks as if expecting to find buried treasure but delighted enough to find a huddle of potato bugs or pack of ants instead.
I spotted a deer across the way. It stood nearly still, posing for me to get a full on look before a rustle off in the distance sent it sprinting deeper through into the trees.
“Did you see that?” I asked Bo, before realizing he was no longer beside me. He had wandered further down the creek, chasing after a frog that had eluded his grasp. I reached him just has he flung the bucket upside down on the frog, leaving it no way out.
“I think I got him!”
I knelt down beside him and helped him turn the bucket over without losing his catch. The frog jumped, desperately trying to reach the top of the bucket but slid back down to the bottom in defeat.
It was then I felt her eyes upon me. How I knew they belonged to her, I’ll never know. But when I looked up and saw her standing there with her hands digging into her pockets, I was thankful.
“Hey,” I said while standing up and brushing off my hands on the front of my shorts.
Jordan smiled as her eyes fixed on Bo who was hovering over the bucket.
“He just caught a frog,” I explained.
She picked up a handful of pebbles, tossed them in the water. Then looked at me.
“I’ve missed talking to you.”
Before I could comment, Bo tugged at my shorts. He offered me the bucket. I took it, keeping tabs on the frog as he continued hunting.
When he was out of earshot, I gave Jordan an apologetic look.
“I’m sorry about the other day.”
“It’s okay, you don’t have to apologize.”
“No, I do. I acted like an idiot.”
“It’s okay, really.”
“It’s just that...I don’t want you to think that I’m...that I’m grossed out or anything. I mean...it’s not a big deal.”
“What’s not a big deal?”
“You being gay and everything.”
“It’s Katie, right?”
“Yes.” To know that she remembered my name pleased me.
“If it wasn’t a big deal, why do you feel the need to apologize?”
I chased a mosquito away from my face.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I just do.”
We walked along the edge of the creek and I glanced at Bo every so often to make sure he didn’t get too far ahead of us.
“I like your accent.” The comment was out of my mouth before I could stop it. I cursed myself silently for sounding so stupid.
Jordan laughed, tossed another handful of pebbles into the water. They sent ripples off in every direction.
“I like you,” she said plainly.
The familiar tingle returned to my chest.
“What?”
Jordan reached out her hand, took mine in hers and said sweetly, “I said like you.”
I knew my heart was beating at a pace that the rest of me couldn’t keep up with. How was anyone supposed to respond to that?
“What are you doing?” Bo was standing in front of us, his hands cupped together. I pulled my hand away, searching for words to explain as Bo’s eyes bounced from me to Jordan and back again. Jordan knelt down in front of him, wondering at his hands.
“What’s that you got there?”
“A salamander.”
“Can I see it?”
Bo revealed his catch.
“Can I hold it?”
The salamander crossed from Bo’s grubby little hands to Jordan’s soft fingers. He watched her cradle it before he lost interest. Jordan stood up and began walking toward me.
“Get that thing away from me.,” I warned.
“What? You don’t like slimy little creatures?” She stuck it right in my face. I screamed and slapped her hand away. The salamander landed on the ground, then scurried off under a rock. The sound of Jordan’s sweet laughter echoed through the trees.
“Come down to the beach tonight,” she said. “After sunset.”
“Okay.” I said, without asking why. I didn’t need to. As I watched her walk away, I already knew the answer.
As soon as the sun began dropping in the horizon, seemingly dipping itself slowly in the lake and casting a soft tone of pink across the water, I found myself standing on the ledge watching her.
She was there already, sitting on a worn wool blanket with the edges frayed and its blue-checkered pattern fading. Beside her was small bonfire, already stacked with sticks and enclosed in a circle of rocks. The flames were growing slowly, teased every so often by the faint breeze blowing in off the lake.
I shifted in my tight jeans, thinking maybe I should have worn something else. But before I could even consider changing, Jordan looked away from the fire and saw me standing above her.
She gave me a slight head nod and a smile. I returned with an awkward wave suddenly aware that I was being studied from head to toe.
I moved tentatively down the stairs, minding myself not to trip. The sand tickled the bottoms of my bare feet as I made my way around the fire. I sat down beside her on the blanket, not too far away but not too close either.
We sat in silence as the flames cracked and the night descended its dark cloak upon us.
“Feels nice.” I held up my hands, palms facing the fire.
“You look nice.”
I shifted on the blanket. Jordan reached out slowly and slid a strand of my strawberry blonde hair away from my face. My eyes focused on the fire.
“How did you know,” I said. “I mean, how do you know...that you’re gay?”
“I’ve always known, ever since I was little.”
“Did you have any clues?”
Jordan picked up a stick from the ground and began to poke the ashes that had collected at the bottom of the fire pit.
“It was just the way I felt inside, like the way other girls feel about boys.”
“I’ve always wondered what it would be like,” I found myself saying out loud. “I’ve dreamt about it a billon times, kissing another girl. I wonder what it would feel like for real.”
Jordan set the stick aside.
“Do you want to?”
“Do I want to what?” I asked, though I knew perfectly well what she was referring to.
“Do you want to try it?”
“I’ve never...I don’t know how to kiss another girl.”
I expected her to laugh, but she didn’t. Instead, she carefully placed her hand on my cheek and turned my face to hers. I saw the glow from the fire reflect in her eyes before she leaned in and gently placed her lips on mine. Her hands slid from my face to my waist, leaving a trail of electricity in their wake. My hands found their way to her shoulders and pulled her closer. She tasted like peppermint.
When we broke apart to catch a breath, she grinned at me.
“That’s how you kiss another girl,” she said.
I swallowed and licked my lips, ready for more. My fingers gathered up her T-shirt and yanked her forward. Our lips came together again, this time with a force that I couldn’t control.
Aside from her whispering, “You’re beautiful,” softly in my ear, we didn’t speak.
Something had been unleashed, set free within and I didn’t dare deny it.
That night on the beach, next to the fire, I ignored every apprehension and let my emotions run free. There was no going back, and I knew deep inside that after that night I would never be the same.
The last few nights at the cottage were spent exactly like the previous night, with Jordan and I on the beach sitting next to the fire, talking, kissing and soaking up every last minute together that we could.
“I think I love you,” I wanted to say once. Because the emotions I felt for her filled me so intensely to the core that I feared they might drown me. I never told her because I knew she didn’t feel the same. I knew that to her, I was nothing more than a summer fling. Even if that wasn’t the case, I didn’t want to risk finding out that was the truth. I preferred to think that maybe she felt the same way about me that I did about her, that there was no one else I wanted to be with more.
***
The calming sound of the water trickling its way up and down the beach appeased me as I looked down at the lonely pit of charred wood and smoked-white coals, which sat in the sand next to the crumpled up blanket.
“Let’s get going,” my father called as I took in one last look, stoking the feeling of Jordan’s tender hands on my skin to the surface of my mind.
I scanned the beach, hoping I might get once last glimpse of her. But there was just the sand, driftwood and water, and an elderly woman in an eggplant-colored jumpsuit out for an early morning stroll.
The folded piece of paper with her address written on it sat in my pocket. Fingering it, I sighed and wished I could relive the entire week all over again.
Would I have done anything different?
In the latter months Jordan and I exchanged a few letters here and there, but the following summer she chose to go to Europe. Eventually the letters stopped coming and I stopped writing. She began to exist only as a memory. I never saw her again.
Though I continued to have some brilliant relationships and encounters with women after that summer, I never experienced the same rapture that I had those few nights on the beach.
I still have the dream sometimes, the one with the faceless woman that used to haunt me. Only she isn’t faceless anymore.
It’s her face I see, her subtle smile that draws me in. Her features are clearly defined, right down to the speckle of green in her eyes. She’s there with her hair tied back, wearing a worn baseball cap, backwards. I can even taste the peppermint on her succulent lips. But it’s only when I hear the distinct whisper in my head saying, “You’re beautiful,” that I know it’s Jordan.
As mesmerizing as ever, she's the face in my dreams.
Our lips only brushed against one another’s for a fraction of a second, but it was long enough for me to feel the sensation run though me like an electric current. My entire body lurched as the warmth of her breath swept over my face. I could taste the want in her lips.
Before anything else happened, I awoke to the realization of my empty bed. Tucked neatly in between the covers of confusion, my thoughts ran wild. As the sky broke pink like the center of a grapefruit in the youthful morning hours, I wondered to myself. Would the dream ever come true? More significantly, did I even want it to?
***
The odor of melting tar hung in the air as we were packing up the car. My family and I were leaving to go to the cottage for a week. It was a late summer tradition, being that we always went in the thick of August. I could feel the dampness of my underarms as I slid my suitcase into the back seat. My younger brother, Bo, was already sitting in the car with the newest Harry Potter installment spread across his lap and a bag of Doritos open beside him. The car was stifling as I coughed up the stale air from my lungs and turned my head to the side to inhale.
“Ready?” my father asked. Beads of sweat were forming on the crown of his shiny bald head and I wondered which way they would eventually fall.
He was a man of good nature, my father, who loved to take long trips mostly by road instead of by air, and listened heavily to the many political pundits of talk radio. I knew that I could expect a political conversation or two during the ride, which is why I made sure that my disc players was stuffed safely in my backpack.
“I think so,” I said while running through a mental list of everything I had packed. I found good dental hygiene to be extremely important, so my toothbrush was the first thing I grabbed.
My father climbed into the front seat just as my mother rushed out of the front door, muttering something about my father’s propensity to leave everything in the house plugged in.
I waited till the last possible second before I had to take my seat in the four-door sauna that was my father’s Toyota Corolla.
As soon as I closed the car door, Bo turned to me and smiled. Orange chunks of Doritos were nestled between his braces. I made a face, turned back to the window and desperately wished I were back in bed ... still dreaming.
***
As soon as we pulled up to the cottage, I sighed. The drive had taken longer than expected because of an unforeseen traffic jam. Bo had fallen asleep and was letting out a long-winded whistle from the depths of his nostrils.
“We’re here,” I smacked him and he awoke harried, nearly knocking the glasses off his face.
My father eased the car into the driveway and tapped the steering wheel signaling our arrival. He clasped his hands together, “Let’s unpack the car!”
I ignored the request and walked around the cream-colored cottage into the backyard. It was a short walk to the ledge, where the cement wall separated our land from the beach. In order to reach the sand, you had to descend the rickety metal stairs that rested at the top of the wall. They were worn and rusty from being washed numerous times by the lake during heavy storms.
I sat down at the edge of the wall, resting my hands beneath my legs and inhaled the fresh water scent that filled the air. My feet dangled, the heels of my sandals bouncing playfully against the cement. I peered out across the murky water, gazing for miles at the glass-like surface of the lake. A slight breeze teased the hair on my legs.
“Katie, come help us with the car.”
Again, I ignored my father’s plea. But this time it wasn’t on purpose. My attention had been simply diverted.
There, down on the beach, was a girl I had never seen before. Her stonewashed cut-off jean shorts hung just below her knees and her hair, tied back in a ponytail, was hidden by a backwards baseball cap. She wore a brick-red tank top, revealing her tan, and was she skipping rocks across the water. Skipping rocks was something I had never been able to master.
I watched intently as she picked up a rock carefully from the sand, stood ankle deep in the water and chucked it across the lake. I didn’t know if it was because I was fascinated by the fact that she was able to get a rock to dance at least three or four times before it stopped dead in the water, or if it was because I liked the way she looked. Either way, I couldn’t stop myself from staring.
Then, as if she felt the burning of my eyes upon her skin, she paused momentarily and threw a casual look over her shoulder. It was aimed directly at me.
I gulped, looked away.
By the time my father was about to call me for a third time, I was already walking beside him carrying a box full of toiletries and cleaning products from the back of the car, over the threshold and into the safe haven of our cottage.
***
We were sitting around the coffee table with cards in hand as the rain dribbled down the windows. I yawned, flipped over a card and picked another from the deck.
We had been at the cottage for two days already and each day had been rainy and overcast. My swimsuit was still neatly packed in the bottom my suitcase feeling unimportant. I sat with my legs crossed and my elbows resting on my knees preoccupied with my dreams.
I hadn’t had the dream at all this week and I noticed that it had darkened my mood a bit. I didn’t know the reason, but I knew that I missed her. I missed the faceless girl in my dreams. She hadn’t reappeared since we had arrived at the cottage, since I had seen that stranger skipping rocks on the beach.
“Katie, it’s your turn.” Bo poked me with the tip of his finger.
Heaving a sigh, I studied the cards in my hand. Then laid them down, face up.
“I don’t feel like playing anymore.”
I gave up and wandered into the back porch. The rain fell softly from the sky inviting me to come out and play. I accepted.
My feet sank into the damp ground as I stepped onto the grass. The air around me swallowed me up, keeping me warm while chilled raindrops dotted my skin and clothes. With my eyes closed, I tilted my head back and spread my arms as wide as they could reach. The rain continued on with its aquatic symphony as I listened with eager ears.
“Do you normally play in the rain?”
My reverie interrupted, I straightened up and searched the yard. Under a tree that separated our land from the neighbors, she stood, leaning again the bark and waiting patiently for me to answer.
“No,” I said finally, wiping the water off my face with the back of my hand. “I’m just bored I guess.”
“And you couldn’t find something better to do than stand out in the rain?”
“Guess not.” Realizing I wasn’t the only one getting wet I said, “What’s your excuse.”
“I was curious.”
“Curious?”
“After the other day, when you were sitting up here watching me. I wanted to find out who you were.”
“I wasn’t watching you.” I felt the fingers of my left hand rise up and mindlessly itch my shoulder, exposing my embarrassment.
“You weren’t?”
“No, I was watching the water.” My bottom lip quivered under the weight of my teeth, a clear giveaway that I was lying. “I...I like the water.”
“That’s obvious,” she hinted at the sky, which continued to spray a steady flow of rain down on our heads. “It’s a little less wet under here.”
Against my better judgment, my feet sloshed willingly with each step as I joined her underneath the tree.
It was a matter of minutes before she spoke again. Her name was Jordan and she had a thick accent. It was peppered with a hint of Australian and something else I couldn’t put my finger on. It turned out that her aunt was renting out a cottage down the road from us. She came to visit for only a week. And it just so happened that this summer, our weeks collided.
I studied her face as she talked, telling me more about herself than I would have cared to share. Her nose titled up slightly at the end, but fit perfectly in the middle of her oval-shaped face. Dimples formed at the curves of her mouth every time she smiled, and at certain angles her fierce blue eyes reflected a softer shade of green.
As I shivered in the rain, my arms constantly shifted from my sides to my face and across my breasts. I felt exposed, nearly naked, yet I hadn’t told her a single thing about myself. I didn’t want to, I was content to just listen. Every word seemed to dance off her tongue and trap me in a circle of captivation.
Awkward pauses or moments of silence were quickly followed by a chain of coy giggles, mostly from me, linked from one end to the other.
Her life or what I knew of it so far seemed lively and filled with adventure. She was originally born in England, had been to Australia and had learned to speak French fluently from a tutor. I had assumed because of her athletic exterior that she played a sport of some kind, but she told me than she hadn’t shot or kicked a ball in her entire life.
“I just like to run,” she said.
“Run where?”
“Anywhere my feet feel like going.”
“I can’t even run a mile,” I admitted.
My lean frame hardly let me partake in anything remotely physical. It came as no surprise to me that I was always picked last in gym class. But, what I lacked in curves I made up for in breast size. For such a thin girl, I was well endowed in that category. My mother always wondered at me, saying bluntly “I don’t know where you got those things from because they certainly didn’t come from me.”
“Are you home schooled?” I asked, after one of our wordless moments.
“For most of my life. I just recently started at a public high school.”
“Do you like it?” I asked as I picked at the bark on the tree.
“So far it’s not bad. I don’t have any problem making friends with anyone. But I know that might change once they find out that I’m gay.”
A massive chunk of bark came off in my hands. I didn’t know whether to try and put it back or let it fall to the ground.
Gay.
She had said it and it was quite obvious that I had heard it, thanks to my kung-fu grip. But like an enormous elephant had just wandered into the yard, neither of us commented on it.
Instead I muttered, “I should get back inside.”
My wet clothes clung to my body and I had noticed that the outlines of my breasts were visible right down to the nipple. Instinctively, I crossed my arms letting the bark fall from my hands.
“I guess I’ll see you around then,” Jordan said shortly, taking note of the sudden shift in my demeanor. She smiled kindly as if to say, “I understand why you’re uncomfortable.”
I nodded and walked back to the cottage resisting the urge to turn around for fear that she might see right through me then, into my mind and into my dreams. For fear that she might know then that the entire time we had been talking, all I wanted to do was melt into her like butter in a searing pan.
***
The creek flowed freely through the woods about a mile and half down from our cottage. Bo and I crossed the street, him with a bucket in hand in case he found some slimy creature to bring back. He had been bugging me to go to the creek all morning, pronouncing it “crick” as he had grown accustomed to doing. Knowing that he wasn’t allowed to go by himself, I decided to be nice and be his escort.
“Cut through here,” I told him when we reached the forest. We slid down a grassy bank and made our way through knee-length weeds and muddy puddles left over from the rain. A mix of sewage and fresh rainwater filled the air. The creek looked like milk chocolate in certain spots and I warned Bo not to dip his hands into it.
He scoured the ground for creatures, turning over rocks as if expecting to find buried treasure but delighted enough to find a huddle of potato bugs or pack of ants instead.
I spotted a deer across the way. It stood nearly still, posing for me to get a full on look before a rustle off in the distance sent it sprinting deeper through into the trees.
“Did you see that?” I asked Bo, before realizing he was no longer beside me. He had wandered further down the creek, chasing after a frog that had eluded his grasp. I reached him just has he flung the bucket upside down on the frog, leaving it no way out.
“I think I got him!”
I knelt down beside him and helped him turn the bucket over without losing his catch. The frog jumped, desperately trying to reach the top of the bucket but slid back down to the bottom in defeat.
It was then I felt her eyes upon me. How I knew they belonged to her, I’ll never know. But when I looked up and saw her standing there with her hands digging into her pockets, I was thankful.
“Hey,” I said while standing up and brushing off my hands on the front of my shorts.
Jordan smiled as her eyes fixed on Bo who was hovering over the bucket.
“He just caught a frog,” I explained.
She picked up a handful of pebbles, tossed them in the water. Then looked at me.
“I’ve missed talking to you.”
Before I could comment, Bo tugged at my shorts. He offered me the bucket. I took it, keeping tabs on the frog as he continued hunting.
When he was out of earshot, I gave Jordan an apologetic look.
“I’m sorry about the other day.”
“It’s okay, you don’t have to apologize.”
“No, I do. I acted like an idiot.”
“It’s okay, really.”
“It’s just that...I don’t want you to think that I’m...that I’m grossed out or anything. I mean...it’s not a big deal.”
“What’s not a big deal?”
“You being gay and everything.”
“It’s Katie, right?”
“Yes.” To know that she remembered my name pleased me.
“If it wasn’t a big deal, why do you feel the need to apologize?”
I chased a mosquito away from my face.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I just do.”
We walked along the edge of the creek and I glanced at Bo every so often to make sure he didn’t get too far ahead of us.
“I like your accent.” The comment was out of my mouth before I could stop it. I cursed myself silently for sounding so stupid.
Jordan laughed, tossed another handful of pebbles into the water. They sent ripples off in every direction.
“I like you,” she said plainly.
The familiar tingle returned to my chest.
“What?”
Jordan reached out her hand, took mine in hers and said sweetly, “I said like you.”
I knew my heart was beating at a pace that the rest of me couldn’t keep up with. How was anyone supposed to respond to that?
“What are you doing?” Bo was standing in front of us, his hands cupped together. I pulled my hand away, searching for words to explain as Bo’s eyes bounced from me to Jordan and back again. Jordan knelt down in front of him, wondering at his hands.
“What’s that you got there?”
“A salamander.”
“Can I see it?”
Bo revealed his catch.
“Can I hold it?”
The salamander crossed from Bo’s grubby little hands to Jordan’s soft fingers. He watched her cradle it before he lost interest. Jordan stood up and began walking toward me.
“Get that thing away from me.,” I warned.
“What? You don’t like slimy little creatures?” She stuck it right in my face. I screamed and slapped her hand away. The salamander landed on the ground, then scurried off under a rock. The sound of Jordan’s sweet laughter echoed through the trees.
“Come down to the beach tonight,” she said. “After sunset.”
“Okay.” I said, without asking why. I didn’t need to. As I watched her walk away, I already knew the answer.
***
As soon as the sun began dropping in the horizon, seemingly dipping itself slowly in the lake and casting a soft tone of pink across the water, I found myself standing on the ledge watching her.
She was there already, sitting on a worn wool blanket with the edges frayed and its blue-checkered pattern fading. Beside her was small bonfire, already stacked with sticks and enclosed in a circle of rocks. The flames were growing slowly, teased every so often by the faint breeze blowing in off the lake.
I shifted in my tight jeans, thinking maybe I should have worn something else. But before I could even consider changing, Jordan looked away from the fire and saw me standing above her.
She gave me a slight head nod and a smile. I returned with an awkward wave suddenly aware that I was being studied from head to toe.
I moved tentatively down the stairs, minding myself not to trip. The sand tickled the bottoms of my bare feet as I made my way around the fire. I sat down beside her on the blanket, not too far away but not too close either.
We sat in silence as the flames cracked and the night descended its dark cloak upon us.
“Feels nice.” I held up my hands, palms facing the fire.
“You look nice.”
I shifted on the blanket. Jordan reached out slowly and slid a strand of my strawberry blonde hair away from my face. My eyes focused on the fire.
“How did you know,” I said. “I mean, how do you know...that you’re gay?”
“I’ve always known, ever since I was little.”
“Did you have any clues?”
Jordan picked up a stick from the ground and began to poke the ashes that had collected at the bottom of the fire pit.
“It was just the way I felt inside, like the way other girls feel about boys.”
“I’ve always wondered what it would be like,” I found myself saying out loud. “I’ve dreamt about it a billon times, kissing another girl. I wonder what it would feel like for real.”
Jordan set the stick aside.
“Do you want to?”
“Do I want to what?” I asked, though I knew perfectly well what she was referring to.
“Do you want to try it?”
“I’ve never...I don’t know how to kiss another girl.”
I expected her to laugh, but she didn’t. Instead, she carefully placed her hand on my cheek and turned my face to hers. I saw the glow from the fire reflect in her eyes before she leaned in and gently placed her lips on mine. Her hands slid from my face to my waist, leaving a trail of electricity in their wake. My hands found their way to her shoulders and pulled her closer. She tasted like peppermint.
When we broke apart to catch a breath, she grinned at me.
“That’s how you kiss another girl,” she said.
I swallowed and licked my lips, ready for more. My fingers gathered up her T-shirt and yanked her forward. Our lips came together again, this time with a force that I couldn’t control.
Aside from her whispering, “You’re beautiful,” softly in my ear, we didn’t speak.
Something had been unleashed, set free within and I didn’t dare deny it.
That night on the beach, next to the fire, I ignored every apprehension and let my emotions run free. There was no going back, and I knew deep inside that after that night I would never be the same.
***
The last few nights at the cottage were spent exactly like the previous night, with Jordan and I on the beach sitting next to the fire, talking, kissing and soaking up every last minute together that we could.
“I think I love you,” I wanted to say once. Because the emotions I felt for her filled me so intensely to the core that I feared they might drown me. I never told her because I knew she didn’t feel the same. I knew that to her, I was nothing more than a summer fling. Even if that wasn’t the case, I didn’t want to risk finding out that was the truth. I preferred to think that maybe she felt the same way about me that I did about her, that there was no one else I wanted to be with more.
***
The calming sound of the water trickling its way up and down the beach appeased me as I looked down at the lonely pit of charred wood and smoked-white coals, which sat in the sand next to the crumpled up blanket.
“Let’s get going,” my father called as I took in one last look, stoking the feeling of Jordan’s tender hands on my skin to the surface of my mind.
I scanned the beach, hoping I might get once last glimpse of her. But there was just the sand, driftwood and water, and an elderly woman in an eggplant-colored jumpsuit out for an early morning stroll.
The folded piece of paper with her address written on it sat in my pocket. Fingering it, I sighed and wished I could relive the entire week all over again.
Would I have done anything different?
In the latter months Jordan and I exchanged a few letters here and there, but the following summer she chose to go to Europe. Eventually the letters stopped coming and I stopped writing. She began to exist only as a memory. I never saw her again.
Though I continued to have some brilliant relationships and encounters with women after that summer, I never experienced the same rapture that I had those few nights on the beach.
I still have the dream sometimes, the one with the faceless woman that used to haunt me. Only she isn’t faceless anymore.
It’s her face I see, her subtle smile that draws me in. Her features are clearly defined, right down to the speckle of green in her eyes. She’s there with her hair tied back, wearing a worn baseball cap, backwards. I can even taste the peppermint on her succulent lips. But it’s only when I hear the distinct whisper in my head saying, “You’re beautiful,” that I know it’s Jordan.
As mesmerizing as ever, she's the face in my dreams.
