“Huh,” Susan muttered, obviously surprised.
“
Mamacita
. She’s buff!” Ray whispered to Kerry. “And she’s young!”
“Hey, is that the Popsicle Lady?” Colleen had come up on the other side and poked Kerry. “Certainly looks different than I remember her.”
“Be nice, guys.” Kerry tore her eyes from the dark-haired woman with some effort. “She’s my boss, remember, okay?” She was aware of Dar’s moving closer, and she lifted her gaze to greet the older woman with a smile.
“Hey.”
Dar had reached them, and she gave the group a civilized nod before she let her eyes meet Kerry’s. “Morning.”
Kerry smiled in reflex. “It sure is that. Dar, this is…”
“Susan Barnes, Ray Ramirez, and Colleen McPherson,” Dar interrupted quietly, giving Susan and Ray a polite nod and inclining her head towards Colleen. “You’re at Barnett, correct?”
They all blinked and Colleen looked uncharacteristically rattled. “Um, yeah. I don’t think we’ve met, but I’ve seen you at the bank once or twice.”
“Over the tape stream incident,” Dar replied crisply. “I remember.” She turned to Susan and Ray who were frankly gawking at her. “I don’t believe we’ve spoken since you transitioned, but I hear things are settling down there.”
“Everything’s all right, yes,” Ray answered a little stiffly.
A faint, wry expression crossed Dar’s face and she backed off a step.
“Well, I’ve got some painting to do.” She gave Kerry a nod and a ghost of a wink before she turned and headed for the small group of people assigned to help paint the side of the building. “Later, Kerry,” she called over her shoulder, giving her a casual wave.
“Well, color me plaid,” Colleen blurted, giving Kerry a look. “I surely didn’t expect her to remember me, that’s a fact.”
Kerry watched the tall figure walking away, her snug jeans and T-shirt showing off her lithely muscular body to admirably good effect. “She does a lot of amazing things,” she said. “She’s certainly surprised me these last few weeks.”
Susan let out a low whistle. “I don’t remember her being that…um, she’s different than I remember,” the programmer muttered.
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“Me, too. She sure looks different in that than she did in a suit,” Colleen agreed. She looked at Kerry, who was regarding the grass thoughtfully. “Well, we’re the garbage detail, right?” She handed around bags. “Let’s break up—
you guys want to get that side of the yard, and we’ll get this side?”
“Sure.” Susan shook her bag open. “Let’s see who finishes first.”
Kerry let her body work mechanically as she and Colleen scoured the schoolyard, picking up cans, bottles, and other, more sinister debris. Her mind roamed all over, but chiefly settled on the tall figure perched on a ladder, one leg swung over the top as she neatly covered part of a wall with a color most kindly called puke green. Quite a few people were painting, but to Kerry’s eyes, no one could come close to Dar’s casual grace with a paintbrush, and the easy balance she had on the ladder was obvious.
“Why do they pick such a disgusting color for a school?” she commented to Colleen.
“Well, it wasn’t that upchuck brown or Pepto Bismol pink, so I guess we should consider ourselves lucky,” Colleen replied, watching Kerry’s eyes with a quickly stifled grin. “You stuck on the paint or the painter?” Kerry scowled at her and went back to her trash picking in silence. “Just kidding, Ker,” her friend apologized. “If it’s any consolation, you’re not the only one looking.”
Huh?
Kerry glanced around furtively, and realized Colleen had a point.
More than one set of eyes were fastened on that tall, lanky figure and she experienced an odd spurt of relief and resentment so strong it nearly made her sneeze. She rubbed her nose in irritation. “Jesus. I think I’m coming down with something.”
Colleen picked up a crushed can and dropped it into Kerry’s bag.
“Nothing a nice tall glass of Florida juice wouldn’t cure, I’m guessing.” She patted Kerry on the hip and continued searching, leaving her friend to stand sputtering in the sun.
They worked all morning, finishing up the garbage detail and moving to work inside the building, peeling old posters off the walls and removing broken furniture from classrooms that had seen hard use. Many of the desks had gang slogans carved into them, and Kerry found herself shaking her head as she traced the many angry statements written in rough letters in the aged wood. “Jesus.” She exhaled. “What are we teaching these kids here? The worst thing I remember seeing when I was in school was rhymes about underpants.”
She was working so hard she barely heard the call for lunch until Ray came trotting in, his hair held back with a bright red bandana to get her. “Hey,
chica
, lunch time.”
“Oh, sorry.” Kerry put down her bag and dusted off her hands, pulling her shirt away from her body as she followed him outside to catch some air. It was warm, and the newly cut grass over which they were walking smelled pungent and green in the sun; she was glad she’d remembered to cover her recent sunburn with lotion.
The other workers were gathering under a spreading tree where tables had been set up, and pizza was being distributed along with cans of soda. She tagged along after Ray and joined Colleen and Susan as they picked up their slices, then glanced around for a cool spot to sit down in. Trees scattered in isolated oases of shade across the grass, and Kerry spotted a familiar,
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conspicuously lone figure reclining underneath one of them. Everyone was just as conspicuously avoiding her, so Kerry bowed to her inner desires and knew where she was going to head. She poked Colleen. “C’mon, I’m going to go keep my boss company, since no one else here wants to.”
To her credit, Colleen neither rolled her eyes nor chuckled. She merely nodded agreeably and started towards the tree with Kerry, sipping from her can of Sprite as she walked. Susan and Ray hesitated, then sighed, and followed along, giving Dar wary looks as they closed in on the tree.
The executive was chewing her pizza slowly and gave them a moderately welcoming look in return as they came closer, before letting her attention turn to Kerry. “How’d the cleanup go?” She let her gaze travel up the blonde woman’s body until twin blue eyes reached her face and their eyes met.
Her attention thus distracted, Kerry almost tripped on a root. “Um…”
She recovered and took a seat in the grass next to her boss. “Pretty good, I guess. How’s the painting coming along?”
“Haven’t fallen off the ladder yet,” Dar remarked, leaning on one elbow and extending her long legs. “I’m sure everyone’s disappointed.”
“Tch.” Kerry frowned. “No one wants to see you fall off a ladder, Dar.
You could break a leg!”
Dar gave her a droll look and took a bite of her pizza. “You obviously don’t know your co-workers as well as I do.” She cocked an eyebrow at the Associated folks. “Present company excepted, of course.”
They settled in a circle around her and started eating in silence, until Susan, giving the others a furtive look, started a technical discussion, getting into programming concepts with Dar that were beyond the other three.
Kerry let out a tiny sigh of relief and reminded herself to thank Susan later. The atmosphere had definitely been getting stilted, and she felt herself losing patience with both the wary dislike coming from her friends and the icy reserve of her boss.
Dar had spatters of paint up and down her long frame, and a spot of it was above her right eyebrow. Kerry found herself having a very rough time not reaching over to wipe it off. Instead, she sighed and settled herself again, her back just touching the edges of Dar’s pants legs. She concentrated on her pizza, picking off the pepperoni and chewing it before she took a bite from the small part of the slice, then almost choking on it as she felt a gentle nudge against her back. She stopped chewing, then felt it again, and darted a glance at the reclining Dar.
“No, that wouldn’t make sense,” Dar’s low voice was saying. “They’d have to modularize it.” Then for just a second, those blue eyes wandered casually over and met hers, and a tiny glint appeared.
“I don’t know,” Susan replied. “They want to do it as one huge executable. I think they’re crazy.”
“We’re going to get more pizza. You want some?” Colleen asked as she and Ray got up. Her offer went to everyone, and she even shyly glanced at Dar. The executive gave her a smile. “No thanks, none for me.”
“I’ll go, too.” Susan got up and joined them. “Be right back.”
They trooped off, leaving Dar and Kerry alone under the tree. A soft 224
Melissa Good
breeze came through, blowing the green grass around them and rustling the leaves overhead. Kerry finally gave in to her desires and reached over, rubbing the paint off Dar’s eyebrow. “Jesus, you look like a demented Dalmatian.”
Dar grinned sardonically. “I did it on purpose. I thought it might break the ice with your buddies. Y’know I’ve been in boardrooms during a hostile takeover that were friendlier.”
Kerry sighed. “Sorry.”
“Hey, don’t worry about it.” Dar chuckled. “I’m used to it, believe me.”
She picked off a piece of sausage and nibbled it. “Besides, it’s a worthy cause.
This place is a mess.”
Kerry glanced over to where her friends were headed back. “Yeah, I know. It scares me, how filled with hate these kids are.” She smiled as Ray sat back down. “I see they’re switching to vegetables now.”
“Uh huh.” he agreed cheerfully as Colleen and Susan also sat down, giving both Dar and Kerry brief smiles.
Uh oh.
Kerry sensed collusion.
“So, we were thinking of going over to the Pelican after this and grabbing some dinner,” Susan announced. “You guys want to join us?” Her eyes went to Dar first, then to Kerry, and she made it clear the invitation was to both of them.
Dar’s dark eyebrow crawled up into her hairline. She took a quick look at Kerry’s face, the blank startlement there confirming her suspicion that this was an unplanned event. Tactically, she had no idea what the group was up to, but she had every intention of spending the evening with Kerry regardless.
“Sure,” she replied casually, getting a quick side glance from the blonde woman.
“That sounds fun,” Kerry agreed hastily, wondering what in the world her friends were up to. She looked up as the work supervisor started calling out their names and realized the short lunch break was over. “Back to work, I guess.”
Dar got smoothly to her feet and balled up her napkin and cup. “Later.”
She strode off with a jaunty hitch of her jeans, leaving the rest of them to scramble up and follow her.
Kerry let the others move ahead, and then she was free to grab Colleen and pull her behind a tree. “What in the hell was that about?”
Colleen gave her a startled look. “What was what? It was a dinner invitation, Kerry. Jesus, would you relax?” She shook herself free from the blonde woman’s grasp. “We were just talking, saying how maybe you were right. Maybe we need to give the woman a chance. So, we decided that asking her to have dinner with us was at least a step in that direction. What did you think this was?”
Kerry dropped her gaze, and rubbed her temples. “I-I’m sorry, Col. I…”
“Hey.” The redhead stroked her arm, giving her a concerned look.
“Listen, if this is too much for you, we’ll forget it, okay? I didn’t mean to freak you out.”
Kerry got ahold of herself. “No, no, it’s okay. I just…I guess I feel so self-conscious around you guys because all I hear is Popsicle lady this, and
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Chupacabra
that, and I just don’t…I just want to scream at you, because goddamn it, she’s not like that.”
“Whoa. Whoa.” Colleen glanced around, then took Kerry by the shoulders and gently pushed her back against the tree. “Take it easy. We didn’t know, okay? All we had to go on is what we hear at work, and what everyone else says. You obviously know more about her than we do. I’m sorry, I didn’t know that stuff was getting to you.”
Kerry took a deep breath. “I guess I didn’t know it either,” she admitted.
“I’m not sure what’s with me today. Maybe I’m PMS’ing or something.” She gave the redhead an apologetic look. “Sorry.”
Colleen dropped her hands, a relieved look on her face. “Okay, so we’re still on? I think it’ll be fun. At least if you can give me an idea of something to talk to the damn woman about. Jesus, Kerry, she’s so intense.”
“Yeah.” Kerry started walking towards the school building. “I know.
Um… Well, she likes the ocean, she scuba dives, and she’s been to most of the reefs and stuff around here. You could ask her about that.”
“She likes you,” Colleen said, unexpectedly. “But I don’t think we’ll be asking her about that tonight.”
Kerry stopped and glanced around, feeling the blood flush her face.
“C’mon, Col, lay off that, will you? We’re just friends,” she muttered. “She doesn’t…”
“Kerry.” Colleen put her hands on her friend’s shoulders. “I’ve got no clue if this is a good or a bad thing for you, girl, but don’t sell yourself short in those blue icicle eyes of hers, okay? There’s something cooking in there.”
Kerry shook her head. “Col, you’re wrong,” she stated decisively. “It’s not what you think. We just clicked as friends, and that’s it.”
“You really believe that?” Colleen asked with a quizzical expression.
Do I?
Kerry was briefly silent, then she just shrugged.
The red-haired woman dropped her hands and smiled, shaking her head.
“Whatever you say, lassie.” She gestured for Kerry to precede her. “After you.”
Kerry sighed and shook her head as well, heading off over the grass towards where the work groups were reassembling. She peeked furtively over at the painting section, spotting Dar back up on her ladder. Her boss was just sitting there though, and she realized she was being watched as she walked across the open space.
“Hey, Kerry.”
Kerry turned her head to find the Marketing Admin, Mary Evers, catching up with her. “Oh, hi.”
“We’ve got a bet on,” the woman said. “Did you talk Dar into showing up?”Kerry was aware of Colleen’s cocked ears. “Me?” She didn’t have to dissemble. “No, why? She said it was her turn this year or something.”