Tricky Wisdom: Year I Read online

  “I know, and they do, and they’ll be fine with this. I just wish…I’ve known how I’ve felt since I was thirteen. I should have told them before now.”

  Olivia patted my shoulder then quickly moved it away. “Wait. You’ve never had a girlfriend?”

  I shook my head.

  “So how exactly are you planning to convince this Taylor fool that you’re the perfect person for her? What experience do you have being in a relationship with someone?”

  I took a deep breath. Olivia was right. This was the dumbest plan ever. Maybe I should march in there and confess everything to Taylor. My mind took me away in a scenario full of sunshine and slow motion running, imagining the woman of my dreams crashing into my arms and sealing our feelings with a kiss. That would be so perfect. “You’re right,” I said, my head still hidden behind my hands. Emerging, I sighed. “I should tell her how I feel. Get my feelings out there and…” I shrugged. “Take a risk.”

  “You could have come to this conclusion before we left Boston.”

  “Sorry.”

  Olivia shook her head and pulled her textbook for Human Genetics from her backpack. Our ride in the plane, and on the bus was silent except for the occasional banter on the weather, seating arrangements, and some displeased words about my bag of donuts. I refused to share any with her after she scorned the existence of yellow icing.

  

  “Darcy!” My mother squealed when we arrived, gathering me in her arms. “My baby.”

  “Mom,” I whined into her shoulder as she squeezed me tightly.

  “And this must be your girlfriend?” she said, launching herself at Olivia and wrapping her in a fierce bear hug.

  “Wait. You know about Olivia?”

  “Of course, dear. I can read that subtext lingo stuff.”

  “Subtext lingo stuff?” I raised my eyebrows.

  “Well, you see, honey, when you called, Olivia came up more and more. Your father and I have always known that the fairer sex was your preference, and so I assumed something was going on, but you were too worried to tell us.”

  My jaw hovered somewhere near the floor as my mother so casually informed me that, yes, she and dad knew I was gay, and by the way, we think you have a crush on your roommate.

  “So, anyway, after Taylor came out with that darling woman, Charli, we finally figured it out.”

  I cautiously said, “What?”

  “That you two must have experimented as teenagers. We asked her about it and she denied it, of course, but she mentioned Olivia and you two might be…you know…experimenting all on your own.”

  Olivia looked green.

  I felt nauseous and woozy. I’m pretty sure coming out shouldn’t happen in a very public bus terminal with a woman that could barely stand you pretending to be my girlfriend.

  Messy.

  “Right. Mom. Can we get home now?”

  “Of course. I’ve got you both set up in your room.”

  “Oh, I don’t think—”

  “Nonsense,” Mom cut Olivia off. “I’m no prude. Why, Darcy’s father and I had quite the pre-marital affair.”

  I slapped my hand over my eyes. This was going from bad to worse.

  “Come. Come,” my mother called as she disappeared in the direction of the parking lot.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, rounding on Olivia. “I should never have dragged you into this.”

  “No, you shouldn’t have, but I shouldn’t have let you bribe me into this either. I’m afraid that for now, we’re stuck together.”

  I grimaced.

  “Take my hand.”

  I stared at her for a heartbeat. “What?”

  “My hand. Hold it.”

  “Seriously?”

  With a frustrated noise, she snatched my hand and yanked me closer to her. “Come along, sweetheart.”

  Chapter Four

  Sleeping next to a woman was something I had experienced before. Taylor and I had many sleepovers as we grew up. Of course, now my mother probably imagined them as sordid experiments. Oh, how I wished that were the case.

  Sleeping next to Olivia, however, was freaking me out. Since we left the bus station, she had held my hand, touched me casually on the arm and leg, and had smiled. Olivia didn’t do smiling unless I’d done something particularly stupid, or she was doing that cruel evil grin thing. She was unnerving me with all this nice.

  “Stop fidgeting, for God’s sake,” she snapped at me through the dark.

  “Sorry, I can’t help it.”

  “Pining for your childhood sweetheart again?”

  “No, wondering if you’re going to murder me in my sleep.” There was a long pause. “God, you’re not, are you?”

  “It would certainly make my life easier.”

  “You’d have to get a new roommate,” I said.

  Another pause. “You have a point.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Now stay still and sleep.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Grinning to myself in the dark, and feeling a lot calmer about Olivia’s return to form, I let my dreams carry me to Neverland and beyond. My dreams were lovely. In them, a warm summer breeze wisped lazily through the morning air. It smelled fresh. Like vanilla. In the distance, I could see a woman in a summer dress silhouetted in the early light. She was facing away from me, hands to the side and capturing the breeze and the soft dandelion fuzz floating on the wind. I wrapped my hands around her, inhaling vanilla and jasmine. Smiling, I pressed my face into her neck and dropped open-mouthed kisses there. She sighed and tilted her head. I had never felt lighter, happier, or more in love.

  Then an alarm tore me from my dream. Or it should have.

  I woke to find the woman in my dreams still in my arms and smelling like vanilla. Fuzzy with sleep, I frowned. Blinking my eyes, I tried to focus, and then there was a sharp pinch on my hand.

  “Ow!” I squealed and jumped away from the woman I was curled around, and more than freaked out because she was real.

  “Serves you right for taking advantage of me,” Olivia snapped as she hastily got out of bed.

  “Olivia?” My eyes rushed wide open. “Oh, my God!” I had been wrapped around the woman, rather intimately, I realized as the cool morning air hit my legs. Legs that had been intertwined with hers. My arm had been wrapped around her waist before she pinched it. I looked at my hand to find a welt forming. “You pinched me.”

  “You groped me.”

  “I did not.”

  “You were kissing my neck!”

  “Oh, God. Was I?”

  Olivia began rummaging through her meticulously packed bag. “Where is the shower in this place? I feel the need to sanitize myself.”

  Dramatic as always. “Down the hall, first left. Hard to miss.” My childhood home was tiny. Upstairs were two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a corner my mother used to worship all things sewing. Downstairs a renovated kitchen took up one entire side of the house and included the dining room. A lounge and entryway filled up the remainder of the space.

  Olivia left the bedroom and I called out after her. “You’d be lucky to have me grope you.”

  She paused and I heard my mother giggling from somewhere in the hall. Oops.

  Olivia turned, taking a moment to acknowledge the mother I couldn’t see and smiled at me. It was weird. Then she said, “Honey, you know how I feel about being intimate under your parents’ roof.” The way she said intimate should have been illegal. My skin buzzed and I began chastising myself for feeling a little turned on by it. Olivia Boyd came with a great big yellow and black hazard sign. I wanted nothing to do with it, and I was tempting fate enough by asking her to pretend to like me. Actually getting her to like me, or for me to like her, was a recipe for disaster.

  “The bitchy black widow would eat me alive,” I muttered to myself as I climbed out of bed when I was left alone.

  “Pardon, dear?”

  “Mom? I…nothing. Good morning.”

  “Morning. How�
�d you sleep?” She looked at the rumpled sheets of my twin bed. Yet another point of complaint from Olivia when she spotted it last night.

  “No. No way. You’re on the floor. I’m not sharing the space the size of a shoebox with you,” she had said.

  Tired and spun out, I didn’t bother arguing and climbed in beside her anyway.

  To mom, I said, “Ah…I slept really well, actually.”

  “And Olivia?”

  I shrugged. “She seemed peaceful enough.” Right up to the moment I began kissing her neck. Suddenly my lips tingled and the sensation of them touching warm scented skin came to mind. I withheld a groan and firmly reminded myself that I disliked Olivia Boyd with passionate intent.

  “Oh, good,” said Mom. “Come downstairs when you’re done. We’ve lots to do today.”

  

  The ‘lots to do’ was an understatement. We shifted the dining space around to fit eight people. Taylor’s parents usually joined our family, but with our girlfriends visiting, we had to locate two more chairs and rearrange some of the furniture. The turkey had been put in the oven at daybreak, Mom and Olivia were attending to the vegetables requiring roasting, and I was stirring the cranberry sauce Mom had put together. It was my job to stand by the stove and monitor it. Olivia and Mom eyed me warily to make sure I didn’t ruin it.

  “What! I can cook,” I snapped at them when I was once again assessed in my ability.

  “Omelets. You can cook omelets,” Olivia said.

  “And that other stuff you showed me. And besides, I make a mean omelet. I distinctly remember you groaning with pleasure last time.” Olivia smirked over the potatoes she was dusting with flour while Mom hid a knowing grin. I narrowed my eyes at the pair of them. “The point is,” I said, stomping my foot. “I am more than capable of looking after this jam thing.”

  “Cranberry sauce, dear.” Mom looked at the stove. “And it’s burning.”

  “What?” I whipped around to find it bubbling wildly. Stirring it quickly, I was dismayed to find the bottom was stuck to the pot. “Damn it.”

  “It’s okay, honey. I’ll make some more. Perhaps you could go help your father.”

  “He’s watching TV.”

  “Exactly, dear. Olivia and I have got this.”

  “But…” I blew out a dismayed breath of air. “Fine.” I walked out the kitchen and found my dad in the adjacent room. “Hey,” I said as I flopped onto the couch.

  “Hey.” He gave me a sidelong glance. “You okay there, sweetie?”

  “I’m fine. Who’s playing today?”

  “Lions and Giants, Cowboys and Eagles, and Ravens and Steelers.”

  Dad and I always went for the Lions and Cowboys on Thanksgiving. The third game preference was usually given to the team we disliked least. “Go Ravens then?”

  Dad nodded. “Ravens it is.”

  I heaved out a sigh and watched some of the pre-game show for the Lions and Giants game.

  “What’s cooking?” he asked in his roundabout way of asking what was wrong.

  “I got kicked out, so why don’t you go ask the head chef and her new favorite sous chef.”

  “Sous chef?”

  “Second in charge.”

  “Oh, right.” Dad sipped at his cup of tea. “She seems really nice.”

  “Olivia?” At dad’s nod, I nodded in reply. “Yeah, she is.” I hoped my nose didn’t grow.

  “She a doctor, too?”

  “Yeah, we’re both doing pre-med.”

  Dad nodded again. He was a mechanic working at the mines outside of Virginia, and my mother taught elementary school in Aurora. They had no expectations of me beyond finding steady work. My wish to become a doctor since I was seven stuck with me, though, and they did everything they could to make that a reality. I owed them more than I could ever repay.

  “So, the Mustang needs some lovin’. Let’s go play?”

  I grinned. It would be cold out in the back shed, but my baby had been neglected for months. “Did the manifold arrive?”

  “Yep. Got the head re-bored and found some gaskets off old Tom. He brought them into the shop last week.”

  I smiled at dad and we rugged up in scarfs, gloves and winter coats. Being just south of the Canadian border, late November was chilly at best. The lake down the back gave us a small advantage in temperature. I glanced down the path that led to dad’s private pier and boathouse. They had done well buying this two-acre property back before living on the edge of civilization was popular. They’d been here, nestled between the lake, mountain, and ski resort for four decades.

  Dad caught my attention as he heaved at the large rolling door hiding my baby.

  I quickly pulled off the dust cover and ran my hands over my pride and joy, rusty as she was. Soon, dad and I had the hood open and our arms greasy up to our elbows as we reassembled the manifold and replaced the head.

  “Oh!” Olivia’s voice interrupted us some time later. She stared at me and my greasy arms as I looked up. “You’re filthy.”

  I grinned.

  “Please tell me you don’t plan to be a surgeon?”

  I shook my head as it occurred to me I had no idea what Olivia planned to specialize in either. “I wasn’t planning to be.”

  “Good. Because you’ll ruin your hands with this sort of labor.” She peered under the hood of my car. “What are you two doing?”

  “Making my baby purr.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Dad chuckled. “I gather she hasn’t introduced you to Mavis yet?”

  “Mavis?”

  I walked over to Olivia, who flinched away from me as though greasiness could leap across a two-foot gap. “This,” I said with a proud sweep of my hand. “Is Mavis. My first car. My baby.”

  “It’s…” Olivia frowned at it. “Rusty.”

  “We’re doing the paint job last. Dad’s a mechanic, and he’s been helping me restore her.”

  “It.”

  “Pardon?”

  “It’s a car, it can’t have a gender.”

  “Sorry, but Mavis is most definitely a she. Like another woman I know, she’s temperamental, she bites, and it takes a lot of hard work to make her happy.”

  Olivia gave me a suspicious glare. “I hope you didn’t just compare me to your car.”

  Dad chuckled again, the sound drowned out slightly by the wrench he was working with.

  I shrugged. “She has her quirks, but with time and patience, I’m slowly working them out.” That definitely held true for both my car and Olivia. Staring at the hunk of metal in front of me, I said without thinking, “Mavis is beautiful, and one day, she’s going to purr for me.” Smiling, I looked to Olivia to see if she heard me and frowned at the shocked expression on her face. My words echoed back to me and I gasped. “No, I didn’t…umm…” I looked over to my dad. I leaned forward and whispered. “I wasn’t trying to…umm…”

  “To what? Hit on me with a cheesy line?”

  “I wasn’t hitting on you,” I whispered back.

  “Thank God for that.”

  About to retort with a line about how she’d be lucky to have me hit on her, Taylor came screeching into the shed. “Darcy!” she cried and launched herself into my arms. Laughing and squeezing her back as much as I could without imparting grease on her clothes. I said my hello’s into the hair that had covered my face. She pulled back slightly and planted a kiss on my lips. Just like old times.

  Olivia cleared her throat as we smiled at each other. I quickly stepped back, reluctant to let her out of my arms. “Oh. Taylor, this is Olivia. Olivia…Taylor.”

  “Hi,” Taylor said, holding out her hand. Olivia looked at it before tentatively shaking it and inclined her head in greeting. “You’re beautiful,” Taylor added.

  Jealousy tickled my chest. Why couldn’t she say things like that to me?

  “Thank you,” Olivia said. “You’re not as repulsive as I had imagined either.”

  Taylor gasped. “What?”

  Olivia
smiled, diffusing the situation with an action that lit up her eyes. “I’m kidding.”

  Taylor laughed dutifully and seemed happy. “Everyone’s up at the house. Are you going to clean up and join us?” she asked me, looking at the grease.

  I nodded. “I’ll be right up.”

  “Great, I can’t wait for you to meet Charli.”

  I smiled, but my heart twisted and I’m pretty sure my eyes looked lifeless. “Great.”

  Taylor moved off towards the house, leaving me alone with Olivia. “Not repulsive?” I whispered to her.

  Olivia shrugged and we both noticed Taylor stop to wait for her. “Coming?”

  Olivia nodded and leaned in, making me my brace myself. She planted a kiss on my cheek and whispered, “You have grease on your nose. Cute.”

  “I…okay.”

  Blinking, I watched her go, unable to help myself from looking over the jeans she wore, and only noticing Taylor’s curious glare when Olivia turned and caught me staring. I smiled stiffly and quickly turned around with a clearing of my throat.

  “You’ve got it bad,” Dad said.

  “Bad?”

  “You compared your girlfriend to your car. Your pride and joy. The only thing that you’ve been in love with…ever.”

  “I didn’t mean to.”

  “Oh, honey, I think you did. Going to make her purr, huh?”

  God. Death by embarrassment. “Shut up,” I mumbled and began helping him clean up. Tools away, shed closed, and trying not to touch my jacket with my scrubbed, but still greasy, hands. I ran up to the house through the chilly air and barreled through the back door.

  Someone screamed as I hit them with the swinging wood.

  “Sorry!” I yelled quickly, to find I’d hit a stranger. She was now covered in whatever beverage she had been drinking. “Oh, geez. I’m so sorry,” I said, reaching out to try and sweep the drink away from her clothes. Of course, the grease on my hands made the mess worse. I swore.

  “Darcy!”

  “Sorry,” I said to Mom and then again to the woman I assumed was Charli. “I’m so sorry.”

  “What is wrong with you,” Taylor said, sidling in beside her girlfriend. “You just ruined her blouse.”

  I balked a little, unused to hearing Taylor’s annoyed voice directed at me. “I said I was sorry, okay? How was I supposed to know someone was hiding out behind the door?”