Month of Sundays (16 page)

Griffin and Rachel grabbed two empty seats and examined the brunch menu.

“What are you going to order?” Griffin asked, eyeing the farmer’s breakfast—home fries, bacon, eggs, and onion. Then again, the potato pancake with smoked salmon, sour cream, and capers looked good, too.

“The camembert with toasted almonds and fresh fruit.”

“Is that going to be enough? We’re going to be walking all afternoon. You need the calories.”

“I’m going to be with you, remember? You know the location of every food truck in New York City. If I get hungry, I’m sure you’ll point me in the right direction. You haven’t steered me wrong yet,” Rachel added with a wink.

“May I bring you something to drink?” the waitress asked.

Griffin ordered two glasses of Liebfraumilch. “It’s a sweet dessert wine that will serve as a perfect complement to the fruit and cheese in your entrée,” she explained after the waitress took their drink order to the bar and their food order to the kitchen.

Rachel chuckled. “I’m doing wine and cheese pairings now? I’ve been hanging around you too long. I take that back. I haven’t been hanging around you long enough. I wish we could do this more often. I look forward to our Sunday get-togethers, but there are six other days in the week.”

Griffin spread her napkin in her lap. She hoped Rachel wasn’t about to press her to change their arrangement. Their relationship was like Classic Coke—perfect the way it was. Why tinker with the recipe?

The time they spent apart allowed her to focus on work and whetted her appetite for their Sunday adventures. If they saw each other more frequently, she feared their relationship might lose some of its spark. After all, it had happened to her before.

If Rachel pressed her to spend more time together, Griffin might bend, but she wouldn’t break. Not on this issue. Absence made the heart grow fonder. In her case, proximity made it run cold.

She and Rachel were more than friends but not quite lovers. She was in no rush to change the definition of their relationship. But would spending more time with Rachel really be so bad? Rachel was asking to see her more than once a week. It wasn’t like she was planning on moving in. Was she?

“I’ll see how my schedule looks. Maybe I can take some time off.”

Rachel beamed. “That would be great. Memorial Day’s coming up soon. We could use the long weekend to go to the beach.”

“Awesome. It’s been way too long since I’ve felt sand between my toes.”

“Memorial Day will be here before you know it. If we’re serious about going somewhere, we need to make reservations now. Where would you like to go?”

Griffin actually found herself looking forward to the trip. She had to leave for
Cream of the Crop
on June 1. A mini-break beforehand might be just the thing she needed to get her head on straight for the competition.

“I don’t care where we go as long as there’s a large body of water nearby. Surprise me.”

“Okay,” Rachel said with a broad smile. “I will.”

After they finished their meal, Griffin paid the bill and they headed outside. She checked the settings on her digital camera while Rachel unfolded the map. Red lines indicated several paths they could follow.

“Which way?” Rachel asked.

“You decide.”

Rachel selected a route that led them from Second Avenue to Central Park. Griffin captured dozens of intriguing images along the way. They wandered through Strawberry Fields, into and out of Belvedere Castle. They stopped next to several iced-over ponds to capture hockey players crashing into each other, figure skaters twirling as fast as spinning tops.

Griffin didn’t think any of her photos came close to rivaling her mother’s in terms of artistry or composition, but she couldn’t wait to load them into her computer and take a closer look. To relive the day.

“This was great,” Rachel said as they rode the subway to her apartment.

Griffin tightened her grip on a worn leather strap as the crowded train car rattled over the tracks. She’d let Rachel have the last remaining seat. “You started out sounding like a tour guide and ended up acting like a tourist.”

“I felt like one. I saw some things today I haven’t seen in years and others I’ve never seen before. I feel like I should thank you for introducing me to the city I’ve called home for fifteen years.”

“Thank me later. I have a few more cities to introduce you to before we’re done.”

The following Sunday, Rachel linked her arm through Griffin’s as they walked to Battery Park. The twenty-five acre area on the southern tip of Manhattan normally teemed with tourists. The cold weather was keeping most of them at bay, though a few diehards braved the wintry conditions to line up to buy tickets for the ferry to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Thankfully, their tickets had been pre-purchased.

They boarded the boat and went inside to escape the bitter wind. After they bought cups of hot tea from a food vendor, they searched for seats with an unobstructed view. The view was spectacular, but the ride was rough thanks to the choppy water. Rachel couldn’t wait to get to dry land. When the ferry docked at Ellis Island, she and Griffin left the tour guides behind and carved out their own path.

“Before we continue forward, I thought this would be an opportune time to reflect on the past,” Griffin said as they stood next to the Wall of Honor.

Rachel looked at the monument bearing the names of more than seven thousand people who had left their former lives behind to immigrate to America.

“I did some research,” Griffin said. “Did you know our great-grandmothers came to America on the same ship? They were both processed at Ellis Island on July 4, 1908. Your great-grandmother Agnieska settled in New York while my great-grandma Saoirse continued across the country to California. Call me romantic, but I like to think they shared a laugh or two before they went their separate ways.”

Rachel found Saoirse O’Malley’s name first, followed by her own ancestor’s. She imagined the two women protecting themselves from the elements with lace parasols as they walked arm in arm on the deck of a vast ship much the same way she and Griffin were walking today.

The woman her mother referred to as Grandma Agnes died long before Rachel was born, but she had seen photographs of her in family albums—sometimes smiling, usually serious, her thick brown hair piled on top of her head in the voluminous bun considered fashionable in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She was one of the group of women history referred to as Iron Jawed Angels, activists who fought for women’s right to vote and sought to be seen as equals both at home and in the workplace.

Rachel ran her fingers over the black letters of Grandma Agnes’s name. “Thank you for everything you did to make life better for women everywhere. Thank you for your courage and your indomitable spirit. I can’t even begin to imagine the hardships you faced as a woman alone in a foreign country.”

She turned to Griffin.

“Until I met you, I felt like a woman alone, too, though not by choice. When my last relationship ended, I thought my last real shot at happiness ended with it. Then I met you. I didn’t know what to make of you at first. I didn’t want to take a chance on you—I didn’t want to trust you, but I’m glad I did.”

She examined Griffin’s eyes to see if her words held as much meaning for Griffin as they did for her. Griffin’s eyes searched hers just as thoroughly.

“You said you wanted to get to know me,” Rachel said. “To peel my defenses away one layer at a time until you found what lay beneath. In the process, you’ve revealed yourself to me as well. I like what I see—an intelligent, creative woman with boundless enthusiasm and a heart as big as the great outdoors.”

Griffin’s hand in hers felt not like the lifeline she’d thought she needed but a bridge. She no longer felt like she was floundering. She felt like she was moving on. With Griffin.

“I love spending time with you,” she said. “I love being with you. I don’t want this journey we’re on to ever end.”

“Do you have plans for dinner tonight?”

“No.”

“You do now.” Griffin steered her toward the docked ferry. “Give me a few hours to get everything set up, then come to my apartment. Call me when you get to the lobby.”

“Why?”

“I’d tell you, but it would ruin the surprise.”

Griffin wrapped her arms around Rachel’s shoulders. Rachel leaned against her, enjoying the feel of her body. Solid. Strong. Dependable.

“A good surprise or a bad surprise?”

Griffin chuckled. “I’ll let you decide.”

*

When she reached the lobby of Griffin’s apartment building, Rachel pulled out her cell phone and called upstairs as directed.

“I’m here.”

“Come right up. Dinner’s ready.”

She rode the elevator to the top floor and stepped out as soon as the doors opened wide enough to allow her passage. When she passed Tucker in the hallway, he tossed her a key to Griffin’s apartment.

“You can let yourself in.”

“Aren’t you staying?”

“I wasn’t invited,” he said with a strange little smile. The kind of smile that said he knew a secret she didn’t.

What was he up to? Or, more likely, what was his boss up to? She’d worry about that later. First things first.

“Can I talk to you for a second?”

“Sure. What’s up?”

“Griffin and I want to take a trip for Memorial Day. She doesn’t want to know any of the details, so that means I have to do all the planning myself. I want the trip to be unforgettable. I could use your help. You know Griffin’s schedule better than I do.”

“I know her schedule better than
she
does.”

“Exactly. I already have something in mind. It might be expensive, but if it works out, it would be worth every penny. Do you think I could run my idea by you and perhaps get your help making reservations?”

“Not a problem.” He reached into his messenger bag and pulled out a business card. “Call me tomorrow. I’ll be happy to help in any way I can. In the meantime, enjoy your meal.”

She slipped the key into the lock and opened the door. Diana Krall was crooning seductively on the sound system, but Griffin wasn’t around to enjoy it. Rachel headed to the kitchen but still no Griffin. Where was she?

Rachel returned to the living room.

“Griffin, it’s me.” She didn’t receive a response, but a note on the coffee table caught her eye.

Waiting for you in the bedroom
, the note read.
Hope you brought your appetite
.

She followed a trail of orchids to the bedroom, pausing only once to take a sip of the chilled plum wine Griffin had poured for her.

A string of paper lanterns circled the bed, bathing the room in a yellowish-orange glow. For dinner, Griffin had laid out a variety of sushi rolls on the most beautiful buffet table Rachel had ever seen: her body.

Pieces of Philadelphia roll atop a “plate” of woven bamboo leaves were precariously perched on her breasts. An orderly line of cucumber rolls marched down her rippled stomach, pointing the way to the California roll that formed a semicircle on her pubis. Or was that semicircle really a smile?

“I thought we could visit Japan a few weeks early.” Griffin’s voice sounded like it did the night they had phone sex. The way it always sounded when she was filled with desire. Desire for her. “Hungry?”

Unable to speak, Rachel nodded mutely.

“Then why don’t you get out of those clothes and slip into something more comfortable?” She indicated the silk kimono draped across the foot of the bed.

Rachel downed the rest of the wine like she was drinking a shot of whiskey and hurriedly exchanged her Dockers and long-sleeved polo shirt for the kimono. Goose bumps formed when the luxurious material slid across her skin. Or was her condition the result of the sumptuous feast that lay before her?

Griffin extended her arm, offering Rachel a pair of ornately carved jade chopsticks. “Enjoy.”

Rachel took the chopsticks and slowly lowered herself onto the bed, being careful not to send any of the sushi rolls skittering across the sheets. She captured a piece of Philadelphia roll with the chopsticks, then tossed the plate aside and lowered the sushi until a firm nipple imbedded itself in the cream cheese.

Griffin hissed when the cold cream cheese touched her skin. Rachel curled her tongue around Griffin’s nipple and licked it clean. Then she popped the roll into her mouth and slowly chewed, making Griffin wait as long as possible before she repeated the process with the other piece.

“So much for the appetizer.”

She dragged the opposite ends of the chopsticks across Griffin’s skin, gently sliding down the valley between her breasts until she reached the cucumber roll. She took the first piece for her and gave Griffin the second. She was going to need fortification to withstand all the things Rachel had in mind for her.

After she finished the last piece of cucumber roll, Rachel bent to retrieve the slice of palate-cleansing pickled ginger draped across Griffin’s stomach. With her tongue, she slowly circled Griffin’s navel, then gently probed its depths.