Honesty - SF8 (9 page)

"I’m pretty sure she was serious about that," Jamie informed her. "But you can always tell if she’s kidding by looking at her eyes. She just can’t keep them from twinkling when she’s kidding."

"Huh," Mia mused, on her way out of the room. "She’s a hard one to figure out."

To give her partner some space, Jamie worked in the library on the first floor while Ryan used her computer in their room. A little before nine, she went upstairs to find her partner busily typing away. "Still working?"

"No, just writing to my cousin."

"Aisling?"

"Yep. I’m ashamed to say that I never correspond with my other cousins in Ireland. Aisling is my eyes and ears over there." She turned and smiled at Jamie, adding, "I’ve been trying to get her to find out if Granny is mad at me for telling her that I was gay. Ais claims she knows nothing, but something tells me she’s holding out on me."

"Why would she do that?" Jamie asked, taking a seat on the bed.

"Oh, it’s a long-standing thing between us. She has to put up with Granny year ‘round, so she thinks I need to suffer a little once in a while." Ryan laughed softly as she finished the letter and hit send. The e-mail disappeared so quickly that she blinked a few times and asked, "What kind of modem do you have in this monster?"

She was already investigating for herself when Jamie supplied, "When I got the G-3, I decided to have DSL installed. It’s sweet," she added.

Whistling between her teeth, Ryan said, "Well, I should think so. My modem is so slow it takes me 20 minutes to download a song on Napster. Hey, if I bring my computer over here, would you mind if I hooked up a hub and shared your line?"

"Course not. I’ll have a separate one installed for you if you want."

"Splitting the signal is no big deal. That will be fine."

" ‘Kay. If you bring your computer here, what will you use on the weekends? Won’t that be kinda tough?"

"Yeah, I guess it will, but I don’t want to monopolize yours. I use a computer for almost everything." She looked longingly at the G-3 and said, "Of all of the things that you own, that’s the one I love the most. If you were the world’s worst girlfriend, I think I’d keep you just for your computer."

"I’m gonna put a megahertz on you, Buffy," Jamie threatened as she climbed onto her lap, straddling her.

Glancing at her watch, Ryan patted her partner’s butt and said, "Time’s a-wasting. Let’s get to bed."

After brushing her teeth and washing her face, Jamie came back into the bedroom but found that she was once again alone.
Now where is she?

She got her answer a few moments later when Ryan came back carrying two champagne flutes and a bottle of wine in an ice bucket. She was wearing a T-shirt and her sweats, but she stepped out of her pants immediately. Jamie looked up at her grinning face with a questioning gaze.

As Ryan tugged off her T-shirt she solemnly announced, "We have reason to celebrate."

"We do?" Jamie asked, peeking in the bucket to see a half bottle of a rather good vintage champagne.

"Yep. The course of my life was radically altered one year ago today."

"Oh, Ryan," Jamie squealed and pulled her partner down onto the bed. "It’s the anniversary of the day we met!"

"August the 24
^th
will always be one of my favorite days of the year," she whispered as she took Jamie into her arms. "This has honestly been the very best year of my life. And every single day that will live on in my memory is because of you."

Jamie slid her hand behind Ryan’s neck and laced her fingers into ebony hair. She exerted light pressure until Ryan dipped her face so they were nose to nose. "I love you so much, Ryan. I never would have suspected that taking one little course could change my life, but I thank God every day for allowing us to meet on that warm summer morning. Thank you for changing my life."

Ryan shifted just enough to be able to reach her rose tinted mouth. She bestowed dozens of tiny, soft kisses on those supple lips, but seemed content to keep her touch light and playful. Her kisses were tender and warm and sweet, but as with most things that Ryan did there was an undercurrent of sensual passion.

They managed to open the champagne and were even successful in drinking a good bit of it, as that slow undercurrent gradually became a raging flood. After a long while, Jamie paused for another healthy swallow of the wine, deciding that champagne was the perfect antidote for the dry throat she always got from panting out an orgasm. Her head was just beginning to buzz from the combination of wine and love when she glanced at the clock to see that it was ten o’clock on the button. Ryan was snuggled up against her back, lightly stroking her thighs as she urged her into sleep. The last conscious thought that lingered in her brain was,
How did I ever get so lucky to be so blessed?

"I’m not going to be home for dinner tonight, Babe," Ryan said on Wednesday morning as she strapped on her backpack.

"Oh? Got a date?"

"Kinda," Ryan agreed. "I’m seeing a younger woman." Waggling eyebrows indicated that she was teasing, but it took a moment for Jamie to understand her veiled reference.

"Are you going to see Jennie?" Jamie had to think hard to recall the young woman’s name, having only met her once, but she managed to pull it from her memory bank.

"Yep. She’s registering for school tomorrow, and I told her I’d help her plan out her schedule. The only time we’re both free is after volleyball practice, so I thought I’d take her to dinner."

"Why don’t you want to bring her here?" Jamie asked, a little puzzled that Ryan wouldn’t do so.

"Mmm, not a good idea," Ryan said, shaking her head. "Her mom is not wild about me anyway, and I don’t want to antagonize her."

"Why doesn’t she like you?"

Ryan shrugged, trying to decide how much to reveal. "That time you saw us together, did Jennie tell you where she lived?"

"Yes, I think it was some kind of group home or something."

"Right. Right," Ryan agreed, feeling that it was safe to reveal the reasons behind Mrs. Willis’ antagonism. "I met Jen when she was first at the group home. It’s a place for lesbian kids that have been thrown out of the house—usually just because they’re gay."

It took a moment for Jamie to be able to get her mind around this concept, but she managed to say, "That’s so horrible!"

"Of course it is," Ryan agreed, needing to cut to the chase to get to school on time. "Anyway, I met her then, and now that she’s home again her mom doesn’t really want her to keep in touch with people that she met at the home. It’s really tough for Jen, ‘cause she was there for almost a year."

"So is she going behind her mother’s back to meet you?" Jamie was a little afraid to have her partner seeing a minor if the girl’s mother was opposed.

"No. She lets her see me, but she wants us to focus on school stuff. She won’t let us do social things any longer." Shaking her head in disgust, she bent to kiss her partner goodbye. "Jennie’s fucked up enough all on her own. Having her mom trying to keep her from her friends just sucks."

A little after ten that night, Jamie trudged up the stairs, her brain clouded with facts and formulas that had never before taken up residence there. When she reached her room, she was surprised to find the computer turned off and her partner nowhere to be found. Taking a look in the other bedroom, she saw her lying on her back, hands laced behind her head. As Jamie approached, she could see the blue eyes darting across the wall opposite the bed, the movement rapid and very focused. She stood by the bed for a full minute, wondering what was going on behind those cool blue eyes, when Ryan abruptly turned to her and said, "Did you just come in?"

Shaking her head lightly, the smaller woman perched on the edge of the bed, stroking the errant hair back from Ryan’s forehead. " ‘Bout a minute or two ago. What were you doing?"

"Oh." Ryan looked slightly flustered, obviously a little embarrassed to be caught doing whatever it was that she had been doing. "I was trying to relax."

Climbing fully onto the surface of the bed, Jamie trailed her fingers across Ryan’s smooth forehead, commenting, "That looked like anything but relaxing. You looked like your eyes were following a really fast tennis match."

Now blushing a little, Ryan admitted, "I’m all keyed up from working on problems for the competition. When my mind is racing, sometimes I have to count to calm down."

Now fascinated, Jamie lay on her side, her face mere inches from her partner’s. She loved to learn little things about how her lover’s agile mind worked, finding that her appetite for the meaningful minutiae was unlimited. She slowly ran her fingers through Ryan’s silky dark hair, knowing that was another way to calm her lover's racing thoughts. "Tell me about counting," she asked softly.

Ryan swallowed, shrugging her shoulders as she did so. "I guess you don’t count, huh?"

"Ahh…no. I have no earthly idea of what you are talking about."

Shrugging her shoulders once again in an endearingly adolescent manner, Ryan tried to explain. "I uh…count…things." Jamie’s look remained blank. "You know—I try to find patterns and schemes." Her brow furrowed slightly, making a small indentation in the flesh between her eyes. "It has always calmed me down."

"Always?" Jamie queried, assuming her partner was referring to her school years.

"Yeah. Always. My earliest memory is of lying in my bed, trying to figure out how many variations of the pattern of my wallpaper were mathematically possible." Looking up at Jamie with the same look of childlike wonder that she had likely evinced then, she said, "There were only seventeen possibilities. I was surprised!"

Blinking slowly, Jamie cocked her head just enough to bring her eyes level with Ryan’s. "Is that even possible? I mean, how on earth would you know to do that?"

Chuckling slightly, Ryan assured her, "Of course it’s possible, Babe. Every pattern can be manipulated, and most of them are finite." She was still smiling broadly, thinking that Jamie was teasing her, but then remembering that they didn’t see the world in the same way. "You really don’t see that, do you?" There was a trace of sadness in her voice as she acknowledged that this was a chasm between them that would never be breached. "I know this is silly," she said softly, "but I wish you shared this aptitude with me. Nobody that I love sees things the way I do. It’s…" Her eyes misted over slightly as she concluded, "kinda isolating not to be able to share things that mean so much to me."

Jamie sighed, not really understanding what Ryan was getting at, but realizing that it was hard for her lover not to have someone who shared her perspective. "No one in your family has this gift?" she asked, continuing to slip her fingers through Ryan’s hair.

"No, not in the same way. Conor has a little bit of it. He’s very gifted at seeing objects in space, and being able to manipulate them, and he’s good with numbers, but it’s not the same. My cousin Cormac has a talent for math, but he’s um…" she shrugged, unwilling to give herself as much credit as she deserved.

"He’s not as gifted as you are," Jamie finished for her.

Blushing slightly, Ryan agreed. "The last time I was in Ireland, he was working on some stuff for school, and he didn’t seem to grasp things in the same way that I do. It seemed like he had to really study the formulas and look at examples to be able to solve problems." She shook her head slightly, not really understanding what that would be like.

"I would guess that most people have to do that, Hon. To get through trigonometry in high school, I had to make little cards with formulas on them and spend my time memorizing them." She tilted her head and asked, "You don’t have to do that at all, do you?"

"Well, yeah, I have to learn formulas and stuff. But I don’t have to try to memorize them. It’s kinda like giving me directions to a place I’m vaguely familiar with. Once I understand the general parameters, it becomes obvious."

"I uh…I don’t have any idea what that would be like," Jamie admitted. "I wish I did. I’d love to be able to see the world like you do." They were quiet for a minute, just enjoying being close. "When did you know that you were…different?"

"Mmm…probably first grade," she decided. "My teacher used to just kinda stare at me when we’d do math. She finally went to talk to my parents, and they let me sit in with the older kids when they did math. It worked out pretty well."

"Sounds like you had good teachers," Jamie decided, remembering the story about Ryan’s second grade teacher, who had helped her decide on her new name.

"Yeah. Mostly. Only real trouble I ever had was in, mmm…fourth grade. I had this teacher, Mrs. Seickman, who just didn’t like me for some reason. She was trying to get us to take notes—not a bad idea for kids to learn—but I didn’t need to. She was so focused on writing things down that she didn’t seem to care if we were learning anything. We went around and around—she finally called Da and demanded that he order me to start taking notes during her boring lectures." Ryan shook her head, smiling at the memory.

"What did your father do?" she chuckled. "Tell her to take a hike?"

"No, no, no," Ryan assured her. "He is a very strong believer in showing respect for your elders, particularly teachers. We sat down and talked about it for a long time. I didn’t see the point in wasting my time, but he was adamant. Finally, he challenged me to think of a way to make it interesting." Her eyes were twinkling with an impish delight that always charmed Jamie.