Romeo Fails (13 page)

“I was thinking about you all night,” Sarah murmured as she kissed Dorsey’s neck, her hands on Dorsey’s breasts. Time was passing all too quickly. Dorsey pulled Sarah back up to taste her lips once again.

They heard Goodman’s voice from the far end of the hall.

“Dorse?” he called inquiringly. She pulled out of another brain-melting kiss just long enough to call back a semi-strangled “We’ll be right there, Good.” During that brief moment Sarah managed to get the top button of Dorsey’s jeans undone and the zipper halfway down.

“Stop,” she hissed at Sarah while her brother answered with an “Okay.” Sarah hooked the tip of her index finger under the waistband of Dorsey’s panties and fixed her with a penetrating gaze.

“Stop?” she whispered. They both were breathing heavily.

“We have to stop,” Dorsey gasped. “This has to stop. They’re right out there, for God’s sake.”

Did she want to get caught, Dorsey wondered. Sarah seemed to consider her words for a moment, then sighed. She leaned in to trace Dorsey’s lower lip with the tip of her tongue, then kissed her softly and quickly one last time.

“Fine,” she said and reluctantly peeled herself off Dorsey. She pulled Dorsey to her feet, where she just naturally seemed to fit into Sarah’s arms.

“Don’t you have to pee?” Dorsey asked, her hands not missing the opportunity to cup Sarah’s tight ass.

“Nah, that was just an excuse to get you alone and put my hand down your pants.”

“Your hand’s not down—oh, oh my God…no, stop, Sarah. Stop.”

Dorsey was halfway laughing and all the way turned on, but she had to make Sarah stop. Getting caught was not an option. Even if that was what Sarah consciously or subconsciously wanted, Dorsey could think of several less embarrassing ways to break the news to Maggie. She determinedly pulled away and got her jeans zipped up.

She ran her hands through her hair and hoped it wasn’t looking too crazy. Sarah, smiling to herself, stepped into the restroom to check hers in the mirror. Dorsey would have liked to go in there and splash some cold water on her face, but she didn’t dare delay any longer. She quickly straightened out the papers on the couch, then did several deep inhales, trying to regain her composure.

She followed a still grinning Sarah down the hall back into the store where Maggie and Good awaited them. The four of them said their goodbyes, then the other two women left in Sarah’s VW, while Dorsey drove slowly to the community center.

Remembering all the while that she had meant to break it off with Sarah. End it before things got messy. Before she got hurt. Or Maggie… Instead, things seemed to be escalating at a dizzying pace.

She could still feel Sarah’s lips on hers. Feel Sarah’s hands on her skin—and her hands on Sarah’s. At a red light, she looked at herself in her rearview mirror. Her reflection bit its lip and looked confused.

* * *

With the kids out of school, the indoor pool at the community center was pretty packed, but luckily they had a few lanes roped off for adult lap swimmers. Dorsey tuned out the noise and the other people and concentrated on getting into the Zen of her mile-long swim. Afterward, feeling tired but contented from the workout, she pulled herself from the pool and headed for the women’s locker room to change back into street clothes. She would shower at home, as usual. Showering in the locker room was simply too tiresome. The reaction to her even using a locker in there had ranged from a glacial chill to “righteous” outrage. The last time she’d attempted a shower, a young mother who’d been a year behind her in school had actually clapped her hands over the eyes of her six-year-old daughter when Dorsey had stepped out, modestly wrapped in a beach towel. Apparently, even just seeing a lesbian in the locker room was enough to scar the child forever.

Well, she told herself, they might have run her out of the showers, but she would not let them run her out of the pool. Goddammit, she was as much a part of this town as they were. Larue’s Swingtime Hardware had helped raise the money that had built the community center and had contributed some of the building materials.

As usual, when she entered the locker room, all conversation stopped for a second, then resumed. At the end of her row of lockers, three young girls were chattering like birds—Wild Child Mariah, the preacher’s daughter, and two of her high school buddies, Jimalene White the reigning Fair Queen (daughter of proud parents Jim and—you guessed it—Alene White) and Kelly Blankenship, the bank manager’s daughter.

“I know,” she heard Mariah say to the other two, apparently picking up where their conversation had left off. “My dad’s an asshole like that too. He made me do a bunch of yard work this morning, can you believe it? Check this out—I scratched the shit out of my arm picking up brush in the backyard.”

Dorsey ignored them as she finished toweling off, then threw on her jeans and T-shirt over her wet bathing suit. Their talk died to whispers, though, as she pulled out her flip-flops and backpack, then closed her locker door. With an inward sigh, she hoped the whispering and giggles did not mean their teenage venom was about to be directed at her.

“Hey, Dorsey, how’s it going?” a voice asked over snickering in the background.

Dorsey turned to see the Wild Child standing there buck naked, dripping wet, hand on hip, her perfect seventeen-year-old body looking taut and perky except for a nasty scratch on her arm. She was halfway down the row of lockers, still a safe six feet from Dorsey, who coolly met her gaze and held it for a very long five seconds. Then, ignoring her completely, Dorsey glanced over at the other two, now silent.

“Hey, Kelly,” she said pleasantly, “how’s your dad?”

The hardware store and the Larue family were longtime customers of Mr. Blankenship’s bank. The whole town knew he was currently in the hospital in Grover having gall bladder surgery.

“Oh, uh, fine,” the girl said, coloring slightly and blinking in confusion at this unexpected turn of events.

Dorsey stuck her feet in her flip-flops, taking her time, then spoke to the third teenager, who’d been in the store with her mother not long ago buying a fancy coffeemaker. Jimalene gruffly affirmed the purchase was still satisfactory while failing to make eye contact and fidgeting with the handle on the door of her locker. Mariah was having a hard time holding her pose but didn’t know what else to do. Dorsey picked up her backpack and walked out slowly, back ramrod straight. As the locker room door closed behind her, a gale of recriminations and bitchiness erupted from within as the Wild Child yelled at the other two for failing to support her. Score one for dignity and maturity, Dorsey thought, smiling to herself.

Great tits, though.

Chapter Seven

Ragged white clouds sailed through the midnight sky, alternately obscuring and revealing the moon. The promised rain had arrived late in the afternoon with violent thundershowers soaking the fields and the town. Dorsey emerged from her workshop to discover the rain had finally stopped. She’d made good progress on the dining room table she was building from scratch. An idea for the table had blossomed in her brain on the way home from the pool. She’d been so inspired she’d gone straight to the workshop without even bothering to shower off the chlorine. The table wasn’t done yet, but she was already thinking ahead to the chairs that would accompany it. The dilapidated set of six matching chairs she’d picked up cheap at an estate sale would eventually form a cohesive unit with the table—each piece similar, but subtly different in such a way that a person’s eye would be led from one to another only to come full circle and start the pattern again. This was one of her more ambitious projects, both in size and concept. She had no idea where the table and chairs would go once she finished the project, but that day’s sale of the rocking chair to Dr. Melba was encouraging. Maybe her friend with the design store in Chicago would call.

And maybe not, she thought realistically. Still, she felt happy with the progress she’d made on the table that night. Seeing her artistic vision emerge from the wood was the most fulfilling thing she knew. She always felt refreshed and renewed after working in the shop, which technically belonged to all three of the Larue siblings. But she was the only one who really used the space and the tools. As much as she sometimes detested her life in Romeo Falls, she knew she could never leave the shop behind. Even if she could physically move the big heavy tools somewhere, where could she possibly keep them when she could barely afford an apartment for herself, let alone workshop space? It was a puzzle without an answer and a never-ending source of frustration.

She stretched, taking a deep breath of the rain-cleansed air and took a moment to admire the few stars that were visible amongst the clouds rushing above. Except for the breeze rustling the treetops and the dripping of rainwater from the leaves, all was quiet. The house was dark too, except for the kitchen light Goodman had left on for her. He was generally in bed by ten and back at the store no later than six. Shaw must have gone to bed too, she thought as she locked up the workshop and walked through the wet backyard toward the side door of the house, trying her best to avoid the bigger puddles.

A strange sound caught her attention. She paused, listening intently. There it was again. Coming from the front of the house. Not so much strange as out of place. It sounded like something small, but hard, hitting the roof, like the very first piece of pea-sized hail. She checked the sky again. Nope, not hailing in the backyard, so she seriously doubted it was in the front. Normally, she wouldn’t have thought twice about it, but with all the weird things happening in town recently, she was feeling a little jumpy. Especially all by herself, outside, at midnight. Something pinged off one of the windows.

Dorsey crept silently toward the front of the house, keeping to the shadows. At the corner, she knelt down and carefully peeked around.

It was Sarah. Dorsey suddenly found it hard to breathe. What was Sarah doing on her front lawn at midnight, throwing pebbles at an unlit second-floor window? And managing to look absolutely gorgeous while doing so?

During first her lengthy swim and then in the workshop, Dorsey had had lots of time to think over their encounter from earlier in the day. Her head adamantly told her she had to break it off and the sooner, the better. But her heart told her otherwise. Damn it, she really liked Sarah. And she couldn’t ignore the undeniable physical attraction between the two of them. “She’ll break your heart,” her head said. “Just one more kiss,” countered her heart. Dorsey was torn, but in the end, pragmatic. Her friendship with Maggie was too important. What was probably, at best, a summer romance was not worth the risk of losing that lifelong friendship.

All of which sounded reasonable, but reason kept flying out the window every time she laid eyes on Sarah. Like now. Her soft, coal-black hair shimmered in the moonlight. The curves of her gorgeous body were accentuated by her close-fitting jeans and Henley shirt. Dorsey knew she’d be a goner once she’d looked into those amazing blue eyes again. How could she stop this thing between them when every cell in her body cried out for Sarah’s touch?

“Dorsey!” Sarah hoarsely whispered into the night, aiming another pebble at the window. Dorsey didn’t want to scare her, but she didn’t see how she could avoid it. She stood up and stepped onto the lawn, ten feet from the other girl.

“Sarah,” she said as quietly.

With a muffled exclamation, Sarah jumped, throwing her remaining fistful of pebbles wildly in the air. She whirled around.

“Sorry, sorry, it’s me, it’s Dorsey,” she said softly, stepping further forward so Sarah could better see her in the dim light from the street.

“Holy crap, you scared me,” Sarah told her, grabbing Dorsey’s forearms tightly.

“What are you doing here?” Dorsey spoke barely above a whisper, to keep from waking her brothers and the neighbors.

“Trying to get your attention, obviously,” Sarah whispered back.

“By throwing rocks at my little brother’s window?”

“That’s your
brother’s
window? Shit. I thought it was yours.”

Dorsey had, in fact, inhabited that second-floor bedroom as a child. In high school, she’d adorned the window with a rainbow sticker and some stained glass decals, which Shaw had never bothered to remove. Dorsey explained this to Sarah as they went in the front door.

“Your brother likes rainbow stickers?” Sarah asked in a whisper, following Dorsey through the dark living room to the kitchen.

“I don’t think it’s ever occurred to him to take them down. Shaw’s kind of different,” she said. Realizing that might have sounded bad, she hastily added, “He’s really smart, though. Way smarter than I am, at least. He knows all about history and geography and stuff like that. I keep telling him he should go on
Jeopardy
, but he just laughs at me.”

“Why?” Sarah said.

“Probably because he’s never even been out of the state or on an airplane. And…well, he’s just different. He’s more of a dreamer than a doer, I guess. Or, I should say, he just has his own way of doing things.”

Dorsey paused at the refrigerator, started to pull out two bottles of beer, then stopped and grabbed a bottle of wine and a corkscrew instead.

“Come on,” Dorsey said, opening a door to the left of the fridge. “And grab two of those wineglasses, will you?”

“Where are you taking me?”

Dorsey flipped a switch, illuminating a carpeted stairwell.

“The basement,” she said. “That’s where my room is. We can talk down there.”

As they went downstairs, Dorsey explained to Sarah how when their mother remarried and moved out, Goodman had taken over the master suite, she had moved down to the finished basement to have some privacy and Shaw took over her old room. She didn’t add that all three of them now had their own bathrooms which greatly helped with domestic harmony. Also helping was the cleaning woman Good had hired to dust, mop and vacuum on a weekly basis. She probably made more cleaning houses than he did with the store, but it was well worth it to him. Good hated housework. Shaw’s part was to take care of the yard and Dorsey was responsible for any repairs and general maintenance. It all worked out pretty smoothly.