Songs without Words (31 page)

Chelsea nodded. “You know, I’ve never done that.”

“Slept with a Turkish tanbur player?”

Smiling, Chelsea said, “Had a one-night stand. I sort of envy you that. I tend to fall in love with anybody I sleep with. Irrevocably. Head over heels.”

Including me?
Harper thought.
Were you head over heels in love with me? Are you still in love with me?

“
I guess it’s time to get back,” Chelsea said.

They stood in unison and collected their things. They walked slowly, silently. Harper wanted to delay their arrival at her house, dreading the moment when Chelsea would leave.

“So what now?” Chelsea asked. “You’ve set Eliot free. Not going there again, I guess?”

“No. Eliot has moved on already. I suppose I will eventually find someone. A woman, I mean. You, Chelsea, have shown me the way!” At this pronouncement, Harper made a sweeping gesture across the sky with her arm.

“Oh, come on, Harper, don’t make a spiritual quest out of this too. All I did was pry the lesbian out of you. Simple as that.”

Harper liked the way Chelsea jostled her, the familiarity it alluded to. Too soon, they stood on the sidewalk in front of her house.
Is there any way I can make her stay?
Harper wondered.
Am I totally powerless over her?

“Want to come in?” she asked, trying to sound casual.

“I don’t think so. It’s been good seeing you again, but I should get home.”

Realizing that Chelsea was about to say goodbye, Harper felt panic rising to her throat.

“We can’t do this, though,” Chelsea continued. “We can’t see one another again. I know that neither one of us wants to be just friends. It’s obvious to me that nothing has changed. We both still...”

“Yes,” Harper said, despairing.

Oh, God,
Harper thought,
how I’ve missed you! And I’ve missed that crooked smile so much.
She felt her eyes filling with tears. Chelsea looked sad and apologetic. Her eyes began to tear up as well.

“Be happy,” she said, then hugged Harper tightly, her hand briefly cradling the back of Harper’s head. In that instant, Harper breathed in everything she could of Chelsea. Then her arms were left empty. She watched as Chelsea walked to her car and drove away, realizing that she might never touch her again, feeling hollow inside and letting her tears fall freely.

Chapter 25

JUNE 29

With a suitcase in the trunk, Harper drove the Coast Highway up above San Francisco, through Bodega Bay and further up into the lesser populated sections of the north coast. The highway snaked its way through cow pastures beside the crashing waves of the Pacific. Harper loved this drive. It was a little bit wild, and, in fog, more of an adventure than most people would welcome. But today there was no fog, and the scenery was brilliant. The smell of the sea filled her with happiness. She had no bad memories to associate with that briny smell.

More than once she stopped to consider how rash this journey was. She had no evidence that Chelsea would welcome her. If not for Sarah, she would not be making this trip, she knew. Sarah’s romantic fantasies had infected her.

On one of her stops to admire the breakers and the hang gliders along the Sonoma Coast, she phoned Sarah, who answered promptly and reported that all was well. When she reached Little River, she knew she was almost there. Her heart started pounding more insistently.
It’s a long shot
, she told herself, trying to calm down. She might be turned away. She might be spending the night alone wherever she could find a room, perhaps in the backseat of her car because, of course, she had no hotel reservation in a town with a significant summer tourism trade.

There were other potential catastrophes to consider as well, even if she found Chelsea at her brother’s house. Chelsea might be angry at being hunted down. Or, worse, she might be with someone else. The closer Harper got to Mendocino, the more likely that seemed to her and the more ridiculous the entire scheme began to appear. She began to panic, wondering how she would handle that situation. Maybe she could just hang out on Main Street until Chelsea happened by, pretending that it was a coincidence, her being here. Everybody ended up on Main Street sooner or later. The town was small. You ran into people like that as they went out to eat or looked into the boutiques and galleries. But, then, how would she explain that she just happened to be passing through? There was no way Chelsea would believe that.

She arrived in Mendocino just after three o’clock. She drove through town, past familiar landmarks, happy to see that things hadn’t changed much since her last visit. She parked near the western end of town at the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean. To the north along this same road tiny houses perched on a thin strip of land, looking like hobbit dwellings, all crowded together and vying for their precious bit of unobstructed ocean view. She glanced at her phone, noticing that it said “No Service.” Chelsea might never have gotten her message, she realized. That thought briefly gave her hope.

She stepped out of her car and stretched, facing the waves, breathing in the salt air. The sun was shining brightly, but it was cold here at the edge of the continent. She pulled a sweatshirt out of her trunk and put it on over her T-shirt. Then she looked at her map, determining that Brandon Nichols’s house was up the hill to the northeast about three blocks. She looked in that direction, hoping for a sign. All was quiet. Still not sure what her plan was, she decided to walk the rest of the way, favoring the idea of an indirect approach. On foot, if she got a glimpse of Chelsea and another woman, she could duck into somebody’s hedge before she was seen. Harper shook her head, wondering at her own lunacy.

She folded the map and shoved it into her back pocket, then walked along the edge of the road toward her goal. This was an impulsive thing she was doing, she knew. Harper cherished her impulsive nature and had been dismayed to find as she got older that she was less likely to give into it. So, she rationalized, even if she didn’t find Chelsea, even if Chelsea was here with another woman, this trip would bear witness to her ability to follow her heart. She wasn’t ashamed of that.

As Harper climbed the steep hill, her breathing grew labored and the view out to the ocean improved. The exercise had created its own source of heat, so she pulled off the sweatshirt and carried it as she turned down a side street. She walked more slowly now, apprehensive about what she was about to discover. Whatever it was, whichever of the scenarios she had imagined, it was going to be unsettling. There was no possible outcome for the next few minutes other than a huge jolt to her heart. The only mystery was whether it would leave her in despair or in rapture.

She counted the houses ahead, noticing their pattern of address numbers, and picked out the house she was destined for. It was green, pale green like a honeydew melon, and in need of repainting. A small wooden portico sheltered the door. The front windows were closed.

It was quiet. The entire street was silent, in fact. No one was in sight. Harper kept walking. As she came closer to the house, she saw that there was a car on the other side of it. A few more steps and she realized, with a mixture of elation and panic, that the car was Chelsea’s black Honda.

This was the first real evidence that Chelsea was actually here. Harper froze in place on the sidewalk in front of the honeydew house. She didn’t know what to do next. Ringing the bell seemed suddenly out of the question. She remembered her earlier plan. Waiting in town for Chelsea to show up, to run into her by “accident,” now seemed like a much better idea. She was about to turn around and head downhill when the door of the house burst open and Chelsea came flying down the steps on a skateboard, her eyes focused downward. She was heading straight toward Harper. She looked up as she hit the bottom of the stairs and jerked her board violently sideways to avoid a collision. The board raced off across the street without her. She fell flat on her butt on the sidewalk.

Harper rushed to her side. “Are you okay?”

Chelsea looked bewildered. “Harper?”

Then she stood and stared. “Harper,” she said again, breaking into a brilliant smile.

Harper smiled too, then nodded. Chelsea grabbed hold of her, squeezing her in a tight embrace. Harper gripped Chelsea close, relishing the sensation of her body, touching her gleaming hair, pressing her nose into Chelsea’s neck and reveling in the smell of her skin.
My body remembers you so well
, she thought, feeling her nerves tightening.

“Oh, my God!” Chelsea said. “I thought I was hallucinating.”

Finally, startled back to reality by the barking of a dog, they released one another.

“What are you doing here?” Chelsea asked.

“I came to find you. I called, but I guess there’s no reception here. I just decided to come up.”

“But... Hey, let’s go inside. You can tell me all about it.”

Chelsea retrieved her skateboard, and Harper followed her into the old Victorian with its creaking front door and hardwood floors, its floral wallpaper and mustiness. Chelsea obviously wasn’t expecting company, Harper thought. She looked disheveled in her worn jeans with threads at the cuffs, dirty sneakers, a gray hoody with a paint stain on one arm.

Chelsea noticed Harper evaluating her clothes. “Yeah, I’m slumming.”

“You’re here alone?”

Chelsea nodded. “I decided to get away for a while. Since you didn’t return my call, I thought you didn’t want to see me. I was feeling pretty blue. This seemed like a good place to squirrel away for a few weeks, do some thinking.”

For a moment, they stood silently looking at one another, and Harper could see the emotion rising in Chelsea’s eyes. “I’m so happy to see you,” she said.

Harper felt her heart pounding in her throat and her fingertips going numb. She too was overwhelmed with emotion.

The outcome of this crazy trip is going to be the best one there could be, after all
, Harper realized, taking a step toward Chelsea. They moved into one another, then kissed with urgency, desperation even, and were, within minutes, in bed making love.
It doesn’t matter what happens after this
, Harper thought, clinging to Chelsea’s naked body.
Whatever happens, it’s worth it
.

Harper didn’t need any words to tell her that Chelsea’s need was deep and genuine. She felt it in hard kisses that left her breathless and in the strength of her embrace. Two years of longing spilled out onto Chelsea’s bed that afternoon. But as the afternoon turned to evening and the initial intensity of their passion subsided, Chelsea began to speak. Her words were as reassuring as her hands and mouth.

“I love you, Harper,” she said, her lips close to Harper’s ear. “I’ve been falling more in love with you every day for the past two years. I can’t tell you how crushed I was that you didn’t return my call. You had every reason not to, of course. It took me weeks to decide to make that call. I stared at my phone for hours on end those first couple of days afterward, and then I just couldn’t take it anymore. So I came here. Running away, I guess. I thought you were lost to me. I felt so desperate.”

“I was just thinking it over, taking my time.”

“I didn’t expect that. You never seemed like someone who mulls things over like that.”

“No, not normally, but you really hurt me before.”

“I know. I will always be really, really sorry about that. I made a huge mistake two years ago.”

Harper took Chelsea’s hand and pressed it to her mouth, then clutched it to her chest. “It doesn’t matter now. I just want to live in the moment.”

“Okay. That suits me. This is a fantastic moment to be living in.”

Chelsea pulled Harper close again and kissed her tenderly as darkness gradually enveloped the room. Harper let herself sink deeper into that place of love and longing that banishes all thought and has no awareness of the past or the future.