The News in Small Towns (Small Town Series, Book 1) (30 page)

Chapter 20

A week passed, slowly.  I was concerned enough about my health that I stayed home and piddled.  I read a few Zane Grey books—the ones Benny had mentioned sounded horsey, and they were.  I pulled up my goat story file and put the finishing touches on it.  I fed and groomed Alikki and Emmy.  I spent hours putting fresh oil on my bows and waxing bowstrings.  I fletched some shafts I had gotten on line and kept an eye out for a used O. L. Adcock two-piece longbow on eBay.

Gina stopped over once or twice but only for quick lunches.  She was busier than usual at work going over the plans for expanding
The Courier
to three issues a week.  She wouldn’t explain why she had missed Pauley Hughes’ funeral and she was equally mum about the state of her relationship with Cal.  Something was weighing on her mind, but when I asked her about it she told me she was just tired.  I had an email from Jack, who had arrived in Baghdad and was getting acclimatized.  That was pretty much my entire social life.

Another Friday arrived.  It was approaching evening and I had just finished
Wildfire
.  I wanted to kill Zane Grey for making his male characters such a bunch of sexist prudes, but I enjoyed the stories.  He seemed to like horses.  I had already washed the dishes, fed and groomed Alikki and Emmy, taken out the trash, bathed, whatever I could think of.  In other words, I was getting cabin fever in a big way.  I was going through the other Zane Grey titles on the shelf when the phone rang.  I let it ring twice just to let whoever was calling know that I wasn’t sitting by the phone.

“It’s me, darlin,” came Gina’s voice through the wire.

“Gina,” I said.  “You sound happy.  Did you get all your work done?  What’s up?”

“It’s a girl’s naht out,” she told me.

“What?”

“You ever been to Sahpress Lake Lodge?” she asked.

Cypress Lake Lodge.  I thought a moment, then remembered an old group of cabins, recently renovated, on the banks of Okachokeme River.  Years before it had been a tourist trap for bass anglers.  “You mean that place out by the state park?” I asked.

“That’s it.”

“What about it?”

“That’s where ah am.”

“What are you doing there” I asked, genuinely curious.  Was she trying to get the owners to buy an ad?  Or maybe she and Cal . . .

“Ah’m waitin for you, silly,” she said.

“Are you serious?” I asked.  My mouth was so wide open I could have stuffed a tennis ball in it.  “I mean, really?”

“Ah’m in cabin 15.”

“I’ll be—I mean, I want to—should I bring anything?”  I was glad she couldn’t see me.  My mouth had suddenly turned all smile.

“An appetaht.  Now git in your truck.”

I got, but it was forty-five minutes before I pulled into the parking lot.  The Cypress Lake Lodge is a motel made up of twenty log cabins set in a semicircle on the lake shore.  It took me a few minutes to find cabin 15, which was only a few steps from the dock.  It had just turned dark and about half the cabins had lights showing through the windows.  I knocked, and felt my knees wanting to knock as well.  They were jelly knees.  “Sue-Ann,” I heard from somewhere in the cabin, “damn it, git in here.”

I got again, and as soon as I closed the door behind me, I was surrounded by the smell of good food.  The inside of the cabin was decorated in a rustic motel-room motif.  The walls were logs, but professionally chinked and sealed.  A small fireplace lay dormant on one wall.  A curtained window looked out toward the lake.  A small table had been set—complete with cloth napkins and gleaming silverware.  In the center was a large silver bowl steaming with what looked and smelled like thick gumbo.  There was a loaf of home-made bread and a bottle of red wine.  The plates were patterned china and the wine glasses crystal.  A matching crystal vase held two roses.  There were two chairs at the table and in one of them sat Gina, attired in a long white dress patterned with what appeared to be magnolia blossoms.  She wore a string of pearls around her neck and her hair was carefully combed and set in a jaunty wave along her shoulders.  Just beyond, under the window, was a queen-sized bed.  The covers were already peeled down revealing fluffy-looking pillows.  I looked at Gina, then at the bed, and back again.  I swallowed.

“You’re . . . gorgeous,” I told her.  “I feel so baggy, why didn’t you tell me to dress up?  Where did you get this food?”

“Ah made it.  An you look exactly the way you should look.”

“Can I sit down,” I asked stupidly.

“Ah was hopin you would.  Now ah want you to eat.  Ah spent all day makin this stuff—this cabin’s got a nahce little kitchen.”  She served us both with bowls of the gumbo and cut thick slices of the bread.  A butter knife and a stick of butter took care of the rest.  Then she uncorked the bottle and poured us both a goblet of wine.  I put the gumbo on my tongue and tasted fish, shrimp, oysters, rice, okra.  I took a sip of wine, which went directly to my head.  I dipped the bread in the gumbo.  I realized I was hungry and also that I was way too nervous to talk.  Gina watched me with kind of a sly smile, which made me even more nervous.  I had a second bowl of gumbo and we finished the bottle of wine.

“That was probably the best dinner I’ve ever had,” I told her.  There were tears in my eyes that I blinked away.

“You don’t wanna leave?” she asked.

“I don’t think I ever want to leave,” I told her.  “But I don’t understand.  What about you and Cal. . . . ?”

“We’ll leave Cal at home tonaht,” she said.  “We’ll talk about him tomorrow, but not tonaht.”

“Those are beautiful roses,” I remarked.  “Everything . . . You’ve made everything so perfect.”

“Never got a rose from a girl before, ah guess.”

“No.”

“Finished eatin?” she asked.  “Want anythin else?”

“I want to kiss you,” I said.

“Me?  Whah?” she teased.

“Because I like you . . . I like you more than archery.”

“How could a girl say no to that?” she said, and stood up.  I stood up, too, but my stomach was in half a dozen knots having nothing to do with the food.  We came together, she standing still, me reaching out and touching her cheek, running both hands through her hair, looking in her eyes as she looked into mine.  I leaned forward just a bit and placed my lips against hers, and only then did Gina move.  She put her arms around me and returned the kiss, her lips exploring mine as mine explored hers.  Then our tongues met and our bodies came together.  I reached around and began unzipping her beautiful gown.  She moved back a step and let me.  The dress fell to her bare feet and she stepped out of it, perfectly naked except for the string of white white pearls.  She was so beautiful I almost fainted.  Then I felt her lifting up my t-shirt and pulling it over my head.  I suppose I must have given her some help, but I don’t remember.  Then my bra was gone and she had unzipped my jeans.  When we were both unclothed, she dimmed the lights and led me to the bed.  We lay down, side by side and held each other.  We kissed again, gently.  I ran my hands along her pale shoulders.

“Gina,” I whispered.  “I don’t know how to start.  I mean, which of us is on top?  Tell me what to do.”

She pointed to her mouth.  Start here,” she said.  “And work your way down.”

We kissed and kissed.  I licked the smooth softness of her underarms and trailed my tongue across her neck and chest.  Her breasts were slightly smaller than I had imagined in my fantasies, and maybe not as firm as they had been when she was a teenager, but firm enough.  I had a lot of fun with them and I believe that she enjoyed it vicariously.  And I kept going down, along her thighs, legs, to her feet, which I had wanted to marry the first time I had seen them, and then back up again, and when I made her shudder and squeal, and buck her hips like a wild mare, I knew I had finally accomplished something important in my life.

I moved back up to where I could kiss her lips, let her taste herself.

“It was okay?” I whispered.

“Ah, really do love you, you know,” she said.  “Ah do.”

“Show me,” I breathed.

And in the next half hour, she did, with her tongue and her lips and her fingers and her breath, and my own bucking and writhing and moaning was different from hers, but had the same result.

Flushed and sweaty, we took a shower together, and anyone who has never cupped a beautiful woman’s soapy breasts from behind has missed something special.  There were more kisses under the full spray of the shower.

“Ah’ve always wanted breasts as big as yours,” she told me.

“And now you have them,” I smiled.

We dried off and got back into bed.  I sat back against the headboard, my head propped up on both pillows.  Gina sat crosslegged at my feet and pulled out a manicure kit.  She took one of my feet in her lap and began filing my nails.

“Gina?”

“Umm?”

“Do you think that someday we’ll be two old dykes in slippers and separate armchairs watching reruns on TV?”

“Shush, Sue-Ann.” 

Gina kept her eyes on what she was doing, while my mind raced with odd thoughts.  “Isn’t one of us supposed to be kind of butch?” I asked.  “I don’t feel butch. I feel really feminine.  I mean, I’ve never felt so feminine before.  But do you want me to cut my hair?  I will if you want me to.” 

“Shush.”

Gina was painting my toenails—something I had done maybe twice in my life— with a brownish red polish,.  I lay back and closed my eyes and felt her hands as she gently manipulated my feet. I felt her breath as she blew the polish dry. 

“Listen.  If we got married . . . I mean if there was anywhere in the world that would let us, would one of us have to be the husband?”

“Shhhh,  shhh.”

“You know,” I babbled.  “you can have a baby through AI if you want to.  I can be its mother, too, or maybe its father, it’s pretty confusing.  Or maybe I could carry the baby if you didn’t want to ruin your figure. . . .”

“Sue-Ann.  Quit.”

The wine and the softness of her hands nearly made me fall asleep, but I didn’t want to sleep through any of this.

“Gina?”

“What, baby?”

“Do, um, do you think we’ll ever get to do this again?  I mean, if we couldn’t, I think I’d have to kill myself.”

“Me, too.”

She started giving me a foot massage, kneading the balls of my foot and twirling each toe gently.  I realized I was moaning and opened my eyes.  I looked in Gina’s eyes; she was looking in mine.  I looked at my feet and gasped.

“God, Gina, you’ve made my feet so gorgeous I want to have sex with
myself
.” 

“Can ah watch?” she smiled.

“You can help,” I told her, and we ended up doing the same thing we had done earlier, but different.  You want details, go rent a video.

I woke up early the next morning and realized that it was the happiest morning of my life.  Gina was curled up beside me, breathing softly in sleep, her thigh touching mine under the covers.  We had turned the air conditioning on high and had kept each other warm throughout the night.  I stole out of bed, dressed, and looked in the cabin’s small kitchen.  Gina had stocked it almost for a siege, and by the time she woke up and joined me with a sleepy smile, I had strips of crisp bacon and a scrambled cheese omelet already sitting at the table and I was working on getting the last pancake out of the skillet.  And coffee, natch, but if I hadn’t said it, would you have known?

We didn’t say much as we ate, just smiled at each other shyly every once in a while.  Finally, on our second coffee, I said, “I don’t want to leave, but I have to get back and feed the horses.”

“Krista’s feedin for you this weekend,” she said.  “So you’re stayin here with me.”

“What, you called her?”

“You didn’t think ah was goin to let mah horses starve, didja?”

“What time do we have to check out?” I asked.

“That would be Monday,” she said.  “Ah guess ah should have told you that this was our girls’
weekend
out.”

After we ate, we cleared the table and did the dishes.  We sat down in a sofa made of small logs and large cushions, our bare feet touching on the one footstool.  Gina smoked, I watched.  Then she went into the bedroom and came out with a couple of shopping bags with carrying straps.  “For you,” she said.  “Sorry ah didn’t have tahm to wrap em.”

“But it’s not my birthday yet,” I said.

“But ah missed all your other birthdays,” she smiled.

“You hated me on all my other birthdays,” I reminded her.

“Ah don’t now.”

From the first bag I pulled out a complete hiking outfit from L. L Bean, complete with lace-up, high-topped boots that were remarkably light.  From the other, smaller bag I extracted a two-piece swim suit and leather beach sandals.

“Ah hope they’re your sahz,” she said.

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Then get dressed.  We’re goin on a canoe rahd.”

Gina had already rented a canoe from the office and it was waiting for us at the dock.  Neither Gina nor I had much experience paddling, so our ride started out as a zigzag adventure.  After a while, though, we made it across the small Cypress Lake and into the almost pristine Okachokeme River, bordered by cypress trees festooned with Spanish moss.  Always cosmetically prepared, Gina produced a bottle of suntan lotion and applied it to both of us.  It was a lazy ride, both of us too intent on our paddling or our steering to do much talking.  We were just enjoying the moment and each other’s company, pointing out a leaping bass and a small flock of storks.  We made small talk, of course, but just trivial stuff about Benny Benedict or maybe going out to visit The Creeper sometime, as Gina still hadn’t met him.  Yet as we turned to go back to the lodge, I could tell that Gina’s mood was turning darker.  Her answers to my casual questions were answered in monosyllables and she kept her eyes on the bottom of the canoe.  It was such a switch from earlier in the morning that I had no idea what to say to her.  We paddled back into Cypress Lake before she looked up, took a deep breath, and began to speak.