Falling for Summer (5 page)

I rub at my eyes as Summer shuts the door behind us and flops her dripping wet braid over her shoulder with a sigh.  “Well,” she says, lifting a single brow and appraising me, “this night's not going as planned.  I really am sorry about the cabin, Amanda,” she says, her mouth folding into a frown. 

“It's all right,” I tell her tiredly.  And I'm telling the truth.  Honestly, being rained out of my cabin isn't how I thought this night would go, either, but it happened, and there's nothing that either of us can do to combat the power of Mother Nature. 

I lift my eyes to her, and she's watching me with an intense, unflickering gaze.  When she sees me looking, she clears her throat, shifts her eyes away from my face, curves her shoulders forward as she shoves her hands into her shorts pockets.

“Anyway,” she says, her soft voice a little gruff now, “you need to get out of those wet clothes.  You're going to catch your death.  The rain was freezing.”

“It's okay.  I don't have anything to change into, anyway.  All of my clothes in my suitcase are wet,” I tell her, wrapping my arms even tighter around myself.  I'm now shaking uncontrollably; the day was warm, but the night descended into the forties, and with the rain on top of the cool temperature, I'm freezing beyond belief.  My teeth clatter together as I try my best not to look cold...and, I'm sure, fail miserably.

“Well, you'll just have to wear some of my clothes,” says Summer, her tone brooking no argument.  “Come on,” she tells me, inclining her head toward the back room.  “Let's see what I have that will fit you.”

We're roughly the same height, and I suppose we might be the same size, though we have very different builds.  She's muscled, and I'm slightly curvy from working a desk job and not having much excuse (or, you know, time or motivation) to go to the gym. 

We both walk around the wooden desk and toward the doorway behind it.  Beyond that doorway is a much warmer room, made warmer by a fire crackling merrily in a little cast iron wood stove in the corner.  The stove looks antique, like it was made in the eighteen hundreds, and who knows?  Maybe it was.  As I cast about the room, I see other antiques, too, looking a little incongruous with the kitschy “Relax, you're camping!” type of hangings nailed to the wall.  There's an antique loveseat covered in an old tapestry pattern of leaves, which looks even more misplaced situated next to one of the wrought-iron cots, like the one that I was supposed to sleep on last night.  There's an old fifties-style table in the corner of the room, complete with red vinyl and chrome trim, next to an ancient-looking mini fridge and a single cupboard made out of particle board. 

“You live here?” I ask, as Summer opens one of the drawers of an old dresser next to the cot and takes out a flat sheet from the drawer, snapping it open and unfurling it with a flick of her wrists.

“It's home sweet home,” she tells me with a small smile, as she shakes the sheet. “It wasn't supposed to
originally
be home sweet home.  This back room is where we kept the extra linens and things for the cots, the extra TP.  You know, the stuff that couldn't be stored anywhere else.  My parents also owned the big house on the other side of the campground, closer to town, but the house was so big.”  Summer trails off, shrugs a little.  “I didn't honestly see any sense in keeping it when it was just me.  One person in such a big house seemed ridiculous.  So I sold it.  It helped me get the campground unmortgaged, so I'm glad I did it.”  She smiles at me.  “You know, I don't mind living like this.  It's pretty minimal, simple.  I like it.  It helps me remember that what's really important in life isn't stuff,” she says, picking a tack out of the wall where I never would have thought one was placed.  She tacks up one corner of the sheet, pushing it into the wall again. 

“The camp bathrooms are out in the rain,” she says, almost by way of apology as she shakes her head, “so I thought you'd want to change in here, keep your new clothes from getting wet.  Will these work?” she asks me, handing me a small pile of pajamas. 

I hold up the tank top and the pajama bottoms in a plain blue plaid.  “Yeah, these will work,” I tell her, my mouth suddenly completely dry.  Summer isn't paying attention to me; she's hanging up the other end of the sheet, tacking it into the wall beside her bed.  This effectively turns the corner of the room into a small changing station. 

“I'll go first, if you want,” says Summer, opening up the dresser drawer again and pulling out another pair of pajama bottoms and tank top.  She glances up at me with a wry smile. 

“Sure,” I tell her then, clearing my throat.

Great.  We're going to be changing in front of each other.  Does she know I'm a lesbian?  Does she remember that night, so long ago?  Does it matter?  I know what she is, and I'm attracted to her, no matter how much I'm trying to convince myself that I'm not, and that's a problem, isn't it? 

But there's a sheet between us.  What could possibly go wrong?

Yeah, right.  I sigh for a long moment, and then I avert my eyes as Summer draws the sheet aside and steps behind it.  The problem is that she didn't hang the sheet high enough, and the sheet itself is a little too heavy for two simple tacks to hold it up.  It droops in the middle, so when Summer turns away from me, I clearly see, as she peels off her dripping wet tank top, the soft, delicate curve of her breast.  Heat rushes to my cheeks, even as my breathing starts to come faster, as my blood begins to pound through every vein I possess.

“As soon as I get changed, I'll grab you a beer,” says Summer companionably, peeling away her underwear and shorts—or, at least, I assume that's what she's doing.  I'm trying not to glance her way, but there's something about her, her body, her warmth and the way that she's so forward, so confidant, that's drawing me to her like a moth to a flame. 

No, I honestly don't remember much about her, and the type of person that my sister's best friend has become isn't my normal type.  Not really.  I like more femme girls, softer girls, but there's something about this woman who looks like she's never used makeup, her muscles hardened from running a campground, from living a type of wild life that I ran away from...

Honestly, Summer represents everything that would have happened to
me
, had I stayed at Lake George.  I'm an entrepreneur—it's in my blood—so while I certainly wouldn't have become the CEO of a company out here, I would still probably be running the General Store or the laundromat or...who knows?  But I'd own a business of some sort, even if it was just selling souvenirs to the tourists.  And I would be in the lake constantly, my breaststroke becoming a thing of wonder, propelling me through the water as fast as a dolphin.  And I'd be covered in a dark tan that displayed how constantly the outdoors were a part of my life.

I'd be a lot happier, I realize, as I take a deep breath.  If I'd stayed.

Summer turns then, as she slips a new, dry tank top over her head.  And, in that moment, she catches me looking in her direction.  I clear my throat, avert my gaze...but I've been busted.

“You know,” says Summer, her voice dropping to a low, deep growl, “you kind of threw me for a loop earlier.”

I look at her, my brows up, surprised.  “What?” I ask her. 

“I mean, I knew you were coming.  I took your reservation,” she says, adjusting the tank top and pulling her braid up and through the neck hole to flop down against her back again.  She's holding me in her warm, brown gaze as she ducks under the sheet and holds it up for me, to go under.  “But when I saw you...”  She clears her throat, still staring at me.  “It was like no time had passed at all.  You know?”

“I know,” I manage to tell her, my voice thick with repressed emotion.  Ever since I arrived here—was it only a few hours ago?—back home, back in Lake George, I've felt that the twenty years separating me from my sister's death have been erased.  It's strange, weird, if I'm being really honest.  Like Summer said, it's as if no time has passed at all.

But I guess this is what happens when you go back home after too long of an absence.  Back home to a vacation town that can't really ever change.  That's part of its charm.  Generation after generation, Lake George is supposed to look the same for all of the tourists who come to its shores.  Nostalgia is one of its most important attributes, and Lake George excels at it.

Summer holds me in her gaze, and for a long moment, neither one of us moves or says anything.  But then she breathes out, her nostrils flaring.  “You've changed, though,” she tells me then, still holding up the sheet for me.  She sighs, her mouth downturning into a sensual frown.  The warmth in her brown eyes contains something more now—something glittering and dark.  And as my lips part, as I breathe out, too, I realize that my heart rate is even faster now, that I can feel the blood pounding through me, my skin dancing with electricity.  Maybe it's just because I was caught in a thunderstorm, but I know better.  This isn't the lightning that I'm feeling.

I'm the queen of sex without attachment, which really sounds a lot worse than it is.  I don't hurt women, using them and breaking up with them...  But I do date a lot of them with a clear, no-strings-attached policy from the start.  With that sort of love life, I don't think you'd be surprised to find out that I haven't had very many long-term girlfriends.  It's because—as my last long-term girlfriend so bluntly put it—I'm impossible to get close to.  She told me, just as bluntly, that that's because of all my unresolved issues regarding my sister's death, which I admitted, very calmly, was probably true. 

The thing is, how can I be perfectly happy when my sister is dead?  When my sister never got a chance to date someone, to fall in love, to marry someone, if that's something that she wanted to do?  How can I be happy when my sister never got to make any of those decisions for herself?

As I stand there now, as I feel myself teetering on the brink of a Possible Bad Decision, I take a deep breath.  I'm attracted to Summer, deeply attracted to her.  I don't know if she's attracted to me, but there have been a few hints since we first met to make me think that she possibly is.  What I do with all of this now is up to me.

Am I going to complicate the week this way?  Am I going to sleep with her?

I watch Summer standing still, the tip of her beautiful, black braid dripping gently onto the floor, her tan arm holding up the sheet for me, steady and unwavering.  My eyes follow the length of that arm, dwelling on the slight muscles, the curve of her arm and shoulder and neck that my gaze keeps being drawn back to...

Maybe...maybe I need a distraction.  As I step forward, my heart pounding, I know that I do.  I need something to help me stop thinking about my sister.  I'm back home, back at Lake George, after thinking for the past twenty years that I would never come back here again.  I've taken that first, brave step to try to put my sister to rest in my own life.  And it cost me more courage than I was really ready to give. 

I slip under the sheet curtain that Summer is holding up for me, and she lets the sheet fall behind my back.  My blood rushing through my ears, I peel my own shirt up and over my head, unclipping my bra as I try to make a decision. 

And then the universe seems to force my hand...

Because the sheet so tenuously tacked into the wall swings free, the tack
pinging
out of the wall and falling to the hardwood floor somewhere as the sheet artfully, softly, swishes to the floor, too.

I reach up and draw my arms across my breasts, but I'm already turning, and the heat is already rising in me, and I already know exactly what it is that I want.  What I need.

Summer is standing in the middle of the room, her back to me, her hands in fists by her sides.  The muscles in her shoulders are taut, and I can see that her tan dips beneath the tank top straps.  I can imagine her swimming out to one of the little islands in Lake George, taking off her bikini top and sunning herself on the rocks.  She strikes me as the type of person who wouldn't even blink an eye at that, the type of person who's perfectly comfortable in her own skin.

I step over the fallen sheet, taking a deep breath.  And then my arms are falling away from my breasts, and my thumbs are hooking into the waistline of my gaucho capris, pulling them and my panties down.  I'm naked now; the soaked garments flop wetly onto the floor, leaving my flesh bare, covered in gooseflesh, and drying in the warmth from the wood stove.

I take a deep breath, my gaze tracing Summer's outline, her muscles, her curves.  I take another deep breath, and I pause. 

I've known women for a much shorter time than I've known adult Summer before I've had sex with them.  That's not what's making me consider this. 

The thing is, I could be shot down terribly right now.  I could be shot down, having read the signals all wrong, and then, even in this torrential downpour, I couldn't stay in the cabin with her.  I'd leave.  I'd leave, and I don't know where I'd go so late at night, but I couldn't stay in this small room with the humiliation, the embarrassment, of being told no, of having gone out on a limb and having been so very, very wrong.  So I take a deep breath, and I consider: Do I want to do this?  Do I want to try and possibly fail?

And as I inhale, as I see Summer's shoulders rise and fall with her own breath, her head bent forward, her braid flowing sensually over her shoulder to fall in front of her now, I realize...

Yeah.  I do. 

I pad across the floor, the bottoms of my feet still wet, leaving wet footprints behind me on the hardwood floorboards.