Under a falling star, p.16
Under a Falling Star, page 16
And now we’re back to thinking about Austen. Great. Resolutely, she opened the first moving box and started unpacking it, just to have something to do.
Chapter 17
When Dee realized she had been staring at the same column of numbers for at least ten minutes, she shoved away the keyboard tray, making it snap back with a satisfying crash. She kicked one of the now-empty moving boxes in her home office out of the way and marched downstairs.
Coffee. More coffee. That’s what she needed. Better make it decaf, a voice in her head said. She already felt restless enough without the caffeine overdose.
While the coffee machine ground the beans, she rifled through the fridge and the kitchen cabinets but found she wasn’t hungry. With the coffee mug in hand, she wandered over to the living room.
No blinking light on the phone that lay on the couch.
Of course not. It was barely nine on a Sunday, so the rest of Portland, including Austen, was probably still asleep—and maybe not alone. No. Austen wasn’t the kind to jump into bed with someone on the first date; she knew that. But no matter how often she told herself that, the thought of Austen with the stranger from the gym kept popping into her head.
When the phone rang, she jumped and nearly dropped her mug. Coffee spilled over, burning her fingers. “Dammit!” She wanted to ignore the ringing but then decided otherwise when she saw the name on the display. “Good morning.”
“What’s wrong?” Austen asked. “You sound strange.”
“It’s nothing. Just burned myself when I spilled my coffee.”
Austen let out a dramatic sigh. “Can’t leave you alone, can I?”
“It’s my fourth cup, and I managed to drink the other three without any accidents, thank you very much.”
“Let me guess. You’ve already been up for hours, getting some work done.”
“Something like that,” Dee said. No way she would admit that she’d mostly stared at her computer screen without really seeing it, wondering whether Austen was up yet—and whether she was sleeping alone. “And you?”
“I just got up not too long ago.”
The mug in her hand forgotten, Dee settled on the couch. “Long night?” she asked, trying to sound casual, as if she weren’t digging for information.
“Not really.”
What did that mean? “Did you come home early because your date didn’t go well?”
“No, I didn’t,” Austen said but didn’t elaborate.
Why was it so hard to get any information about her date out of Austen? Usually, she was much more talkative.
“And what are you doing with yourself today?” Dee asked. Any plans that included a certain woman from the gym?
“I don’t know yet. What about you?”
“I was thinking about doing something outdoors. I’m developing cabin fever.” Oh, is that what they’re calling it now? If she was honest with herself, she knew it wasn’t Portland’s spring gloom that affected her mood.
Austen laughed. “You? I thought the office was your natural habitat.”
Dee didn’t want her to think she was no fun at all. “I used to be the outdoorsy type.”
“What happened?”
Dee shrugged, nearly spilling more of her coffee. “Life.”
“Work, you mean.”
“Yes.”
“So how did you spend your Sundays before discovering your love of spreadsheets, contracts, and other paperwork?” Austen asked.
Dee thought back to her college days, when she’d been young and energetic enough to stay up all night, studying to keep her straight As, and then able to get up early to go hiking the next morning. “Hiking, mostly. There’s nothing more relaxing than hiking through the forest, with the birds singing around you, and then settling down in some idyllic spot for a picnic.” She was almost embarrassed to admit it but told herself Austen wouldn’t judge her.
“Sounds great. Let’s go.”
“Now? It’s only the end of March and—”
“Is there a law that forbids hiking in March?”
“No, of course there isn’t.” Dee put the mug down on the floor and jumped up. “All right. Give me half an hour to throw a few things together for a picnic, and I’ll come pick you up.”
“Why don’t I pick you up?”
“Because I’m the hiking expert who knows where we’ll be going, and that means I get to drive.” Grinning at that unbeatable argument, she hurried up the winding staircase to get changed. “Oh, Austen? What are you wearing?”
Silence filtered through the line. “Uh…”
Dee laughed. “Get your mind out of the gutter, woman!”
“I’m not… I wasn’t thinking…in that direction.”
“Whatever you say. So, what are you wearing?”
“Jeans and one of my father’s old Marine Corps sweatshirts.”
A mental image of figure-hugging jeans, covered by a sweatshirt that hung down nearly to her knees, formed in Dee’s mind’s eye. Too cute. “That won’t do,” she said, almost regretfully.
Austen huffed. “I know. This sweatshirt isn’t fit to be worn in public.”
“That’s not what I meant. Jeans and a sweatshirt don’t make good hiking clothes. Cotton soaks up moisture and takes forever to dry.”
“So what should I wear?” Austen asked.
Dee’s visual imagination, already in overdrive, had a few suggestions, but she swallowed them unsaid. “Multiple layers. Synthetics, wool, fleece—whatever you have, other than cotton.”
“Got it. Thanks.”
“Good.” One-handedly, Dee struggled out of her sweatpants. “See you in half an hour.”
* * *
“Whose crazy idea was this?” Austen’s voice echoed off the steep cliff wall to their left.
Dee laughed and slowed a little to allow her to catch up. “Yours.”
“Going hiking with someone whose legs are twice as long as mine… What the heck was I thinking?”
“Yeah, I’m sure it’s just because of my longer legs that you can’t keep up. Not because of all the chocolate you eat.” By now, she’d found out that Austen wasn’t the vain type. She didn’t seem concerned with being a pound or two over her ideal weight, so teasing her should be okay.
Austen caught up with her on the narrow path and raised her voice to be heard over the gurgling creek to their right. “Are you calling me fat?”
Dee let her gaze trail over Austen’s fairly new-looking pair of hiking pants and the fleece zip top that peeked out from under her open Windbreaker. “No,” she said, now completely serious. She liked her just the way she was.
“Thanks. I think.”
They continued their hike in companionable silence. The trail climbed higher, leading them away from the creek and deeper into the lush forest. It wasn’t raining for a change, and the late-March sun peeked through the branches of moss-covered trees.
Austen touched a dew-hung fern as they walked past. “This feels like we’re a million miles away from the city. Like a scene from a fairytale.”
“Yeah.” Even though Dee wouldn’t have chosen the same words to describe how it felt to be here, she had to agree. During the last few years, she hadn’t taken any time off to go hiking and had nearly forgotten how beautiful this trail was. Coming here had definitely been a good idea. The restlessness that had plagued her all week had disappeared. She extended her hand to help Austen over a couple of slippery rocks. “Careful. There’s poison oak over there.”
Austen gripped her hand, the warmth of her skin mingling with Dee’s. “Ugh. They don’t have that in fairytales.”
Dee chuckled. “Maybe they should. Would make them more interesting.”
Once they were past the rocks, Austen let go.
Dee instantly missed her warmth. After they had crossed another wooden footbridge over a fast-flowing creek, she paused to take off her backpack and drink some of the water she’d brought. “So,” she said when she handed Austen the second bottle, “how was your date?” She thought she did a reasonably good job at sounding interested, but not too interested. She’d waited in vain for Austen to bring up her date during the drive to Eagle Creek.
Austen took a sip of water, then another before screwing the cap back on and handing the bottle back.
Christ, she’s taking forever to answer a simple question.
“It was nice,” Austen finally said without looking at her.
Nice? Was that a polite way of saying it had been boring as hell? Or had it really been nice? She hadn’t known this girl talk thing was so complicated, but then again, she’d never had a girl friend who was not a girlfriend.
Austen didn’t elaborate.
Dee fidgeted with the strap of her backpack as they continued their hike. Why was Austen so tight-lipped about her date? Weren’t women supposed to talk about this stuff with their friends? After a few minutes, she couldn’t take it anymore. “What does she do for a living?”
“She’s a project manager for a dot-com,” Austen said.
Ha! COO beats project manager. Not that it was a competition, of course. “Will you see each other again?” she asked as nonchalantly as possible. This was just a friendly conversation. Friends took an interest in each other’s love life, right?
“I’m not sure yet,” Austen said. “I liked her, but we don’t have much in common, and there wasn’t any chemistry.”
“No spark?”
“No spark.”
Unlike between you and me. Dee banned the thought from her mind. She was Austen’s friend, nothing else. Just because she’d never been friends with a woman she was attracted to didn’t mean she couldn’t be. Right? She was an adult and a professional, after all, not a teenager enslaved to her hormones.
“Maybe it’s a good thing,” Austen said as she paused to adjust her backpack.
Secretly, Dee thought so too. “Why’s that?”
“By now, I probably forgot what to do with a woman.” Austen lowered her voice, even though they were alone in the forest, only the birds keeping them company.
Too cute. “So it’s been a while for you, huh?”
“You could say that. Three years, two months, and fourteen days. But who’s counting?”
Dee stumbled over a root and grabbed hold of the cable line attached to the cliff wall to avoid tumbling down to the gorge floor.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. It’s just…wow.” There was no way no one had expressed interest in a woman like Austen for over three years. Portland’s lesbians couldn’t be that blind, could they? “Were you busy with your career, or…?”
“I’m a secretary—”
“Administrative assistant,” Dee said.
They grinned at each other.
“Administrative assistants don’t work seventeen-hour days to climb the career ladder.”
“So if it wasn’t the job that kept you from dating, that means your ex did a number on you.”
“Guess you could say that. After Brenda, I wasn’t exactly in a hurry to get involved with anyone else.”
Dee bent a low-hanging branch away from the path and held it until Austen had slipped past. “Haven’t you ever heard that the best way to get over someone is to get under someone?”
Austen flicked water from another branch on her. “I think that’s more your style than mine.”
“Yeah, you know me. I’m Attila, so making conquests is in my blood.” It wasn’t really. She hadn’t even kissed a woman—well, other than Austen—in almost a year. Jesus, has it really been that long? Maybe she should put more effort into going out and meeting women, but the truth was that she enjoyed hiking with Austen much more than going to a club to pick up some stranger.
The path in front of them dropped down to an overlook. They stepped up to a cable fence. Below them, a waterfall splashed over the canyon wall and poured into a bowl-shaped basin thirty-five feet below.
“Beautiful,” Austen whispered, barely audible over the roar of the waterfall.
Dee gave her a long glance, enjoying the way Austen’s face lit up. Yeah. Beautiful.
After watching the waterfall for a while longer, they sat on moss-covered rocks and stretched out their legs. Dee opened her backpack and handed Austen all but one of the plastic boxes and bowls she’d brought.
Austen peeked into each and hummed her approval. “Wow. You came prepared.”
“Of course. I learned not to go anywhere with you if there’s no food within a one-mile radius.”
Austen didn’t even attempt to protest. “I taught you well. One day, you’ll make someone a great wife.”
Dee wasn’t the marrying kind, but she didn’t find it necessary to point that out right now. They sat in silence, watching the waterfall and sharing the food. It was strangely romantic, Dee mused as she cut an apple into slices and handed Austen her share.
They ate their sandwiches, the apples, and some cheese and grapes while the waterfall roared and birds sang above them.
“What’s in there?” Austen asked after swallowing the last bite of her sandwich.
“In where?”
“In the bowl you’re carefully keeping away from me.”
“Oh, this?” Dee held up the bowl on her lap. “I don’t think you’d be interested. It’s just chocolate m—”
Austen lunged, nearly tumbling onto Dee’s lap, and grabbed the bowl. She opened the lid and bounced up and down on her moss-covered rock. “Chocolate mousse!” She looked as if she was about to dive into the bowl face-first.
“Hold on.” Laughing, Dee handed her a spoon.
Austen slid a spoonful of chocolate mousse into her mouth. Her eyes fluttered shut, and she moaned.
Heat rushed through Dee’s body. She shifted on her rock.
“You want some?” Austen asked after the fourth spoonful.
Dee shook her head. She enjoyed watching Austen devour her favorite vice too much.
After Austen had made short work of the mousse, they put the empty boxes and bowls into the backpack and started back down the path.
“So,” Dee said after a while, “your ex, Brenda… Is that the long story without a happy end that you talked about the other day?”
Austen nodded.
“How about redeeming my rain check and telling me what happened?”
Austen sighed. “Are you sure you want to hear this?”
“That bad?”
“I thought so at the time.”
The pain on Austen’s face made Dee want to pull her into her arms and never let go. “If you’d rather not talk about it…”
“No, it’s fine. I should be over it by now.” Austen hooked both thumbs under the straps of her backpack, as if needing to hold on to something. “Brenda and I met when I was still living in San Diego.”
“Is that where you grew up?”
“I grew up all over…Beaufort, Washington, D.C., Quantico, Hawaii, and several cities in California, but yes, we lived in San Diego the longest. My father still lives there; that is, if he isn’t spending time with his new girlfriend, who lives in Bend.” Austen kicked at a pebble. It bounced along the path and then skidded down the canyon below them, quickly careening out of sight.
“So you ran into Brenda in San Diego…and then?”
Austen snorted. “Ran into is exactly right. I hit her rental car. That’s how we met. Should have been a sign, right? But at first, everything was going great—at least I thought so. Three years ago, while we were opening presents on Christmas Day, she told me that she couldn’t see me anymore. Totally out of the blue.”
“What a bitch. How long had you been dating?”
“Nearly four years.”
Dee stopped walking. “Four years? That’s not dating, Austen—that’s practically a marriage.” None of her relationships had lasted that long. Not even close. “Were you living together?”
Austen paused in the middle of the path too and turned to face her. “Yeah. At least part-time.”
“Part-time?”
“Brenda didn’t live in San Diego year-round. She was a sales rep for a company that made medical equipment, so she had to travel a lot. Well, that was the reason she gave for all the canceled dinners, the phone calls, and the weekends I had to spend alone.”
Oh, no. Dee could tell where this was going. “She was cheating on you?” Gosh, what an idiot.
Austen nodded, her lips compressed into a thin line.
Dee took a step toward her. She reached out a hand as if she could wipe away the pain so obvious on Austen’s face.
Before she could touch her, Austen added, “To be more precise, she cheated on her partner with me.”
“What?”
Austen nodded.
No need to ask if Austen had known. She wasn’t the type of woman who’d get involved with someone who was in a relationship.
“I should have known,” Austen said, staring into the canyon below. “All of the warning signs were there. My friends warned me time and again. But every time I confronted Brenda, she assured me that there was no one but me. I was stupid enough to believe her.”
“It’s not stupid to trust the woman you love.”
“I even gave up a job I loved and moved to Portland for her, leaving all of my friends and my family behind, just because I hoped she would have more time for me if I lived in the city where her company’s headquarters was. If that’s not stupid, I don’t know what is.”
Seeing Austen beat herself up over her girlfriend’s betrayal was hard to take. Now Dee understood why she had reacted so strongly to being lied to. “It’s human. It could have happened to anyone.”
“I bet it wouldn’t have happened to you.”
“No, because I never get involved with anyone.”
Austen said nothing. “Let’s not talk about it anymore. Come on,” she called over her shoulder, already charging down the path as if trying to run from her past.
“Slow down!”
Water dripped down from the cliff wall to their right, making the path slippery.
