The Touch of a Woman (18 page)

After briskly drying off, she donned a thick terry robe, retrieved her cell phone from the kitchen counter and returned to her bedroom.

Only one person could help sort her feelings. One person who’d been part of her life for thirty years, who knew her secrets and dreams. Who had the guts to tell her to go for it—or that she’d lost her mind.

Her last words to Roxanne had been hurled with hurt and frustration. She’d never meant to cut her off forever.

Her anxiety grew by the third ring and she braced for voice mail.

“Ellis?” Her friend’s excitement was unmistakable.

“Oh, Roxanne…it is so, so good to hear your voice. I’ve missed you like crazy.”

“Me too, sweetie. I think about you all the time.”

Ellis relaxed instantly amidst a wave of relief. “I’m so sorry for all the things I said when you were getting on the plane that day. It wasn’t your fault.”

“I know that. It was hard not to call you as soon as I got home, but I figured you needed some space. I knew you’d call when you were ready. Besides, I’ve been keeping up with you through Jeremy.”

Her heart warmed so much she thought she might cry.

For the next half hour, they caught up on the major details of their lives—Ellis’s move to Sacramento and her new job, Roxanne’s recent decision to become chief information officer at one of the state’s largest health care companies.

“You’d actually leave the dot-com merry-go-round?”

“In a heartbeat. That next bubble…it’s out there. I can feel it. And this whole house of cards is going to come crashing down again. Besides, I’m sick of things like not being able to be there when my best friend needs me because I have a trade show halfway around the world. But first, I have a ton of vacation days. There’s a beach out there with my name on it.”

“You deserve that,” Ellis said, feeling six months’ worth of anguish fall away. It was good to talk to Roxanne again, especially to hear her own up to her shortcomings about not being there for her. “Where’s your new job located? Will you have to move?”

“Their headquarters is in Walnut Creek. That’s a killer commute, so I’ll probably sell my house and rent something on that side of the Bay.”

“That’s barely an hour from here! We can start meeting for lunch again.” Her excitement waned as she remembered her work schedule. “Except I’m just an office grunt now. Something tells me they aren’t going to let me run off for a four-hour lunch.”

“We’ll figure something out. Like I said, it’s time for me to shift my priorities. Enough of these twenty-something programming geeks. I need some
real
people in my life.”

“I’m so happy for you, Roxanne.”

Her whole reason for reaching out had been to rekindle their friendship so she could pick Roxanne’s brain about Summer. Instead, she found herself rediscovering what it meant to
be
a friend. Roxanne was in the mood to celebrate, and deserved to focus on herself right now.

Besides, it wasn’t advice she needed as far as Summer was concerned—it was approval. Or so she’d thought. A completely bogus proposition. At forty-eight years old, she hardly needed permission for anything.

Ellis stood before her bathroom mirror, alternately dangling a diamond earring from one ear and a gold hoop from the other. Her cell phone lay on the counter, its speaker activated. “Honey, I can’t hear you. It sounds like you’re standing in traffic.”

“I’m waiting for a bus,” Jonathan shouted back. “I need to get to the library. I’ve got a paper due next week.”

“Oh, Jonathan. It’s Saturday night. You should be out with your friends.” There was such a thing as being too conscientious, she thought, and it described him to a T.

“Stanford isn’t just any university, Mom. All my friends are busting their butts too.”

Comments like that were why Jeremy and Allison found their brother pretentious at times. But he was right about Stanford. They had no idea how hard he had to work to stand out in a sea of overachievers.

“Any word yet on law school, honey? I thought they’d decide by now. People have to make plans.”

“A couple of my friends got rejection letters last week, so I should hear something soon.”

“But
you
didn’t get one. We should take that as a good sign. I don’t tell you often enough—”

“Here’s my bus, Mom. Gotta go.”

“…how proud I am of you,” she said to her dead phone. At least he’d finally returned her call.

Jonathan’s single-minded quest to get into Stanford Law School had sustained him through their tragedy, but she worried sometimes about his emotional well-being. Political differences aside, he was detached from the family in a way that disturbed her. Once he got his letter—no matter what it said—she would insist he come for a weekend visit. Just the two of them.

But tonight…tonight was about Summer and the ballet. As instructed, she’d donned her black dress again, this time tightening her bra another notch to create a deeper cleavage. An extra brush of eye shadow, a touch of cologne behind her ears. Her normally straight hair fell in soft curls around her face.

Definitely the diamonds, she decided. They were a tenth anniversary gift from Bruce, though he’d eventually confessed Roxanne had picked them out to save him from making an expensive mistake. Ellis had worn them to the symphony, opera and ballet in San Francisco. Now valued at twelve thousand dollars, they were listed among the financial assets up for grabs once the attorneys worked out a settlement. Why shouldn’t she enjoy them one last time?

After securing them with a firm click, she stepped back to check her overall look. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so beautiful. Certainly not when she’d gone out with Rex.

Summer would be dazzled. That was the whole point.

* * *

“I do love that dress,” Summer said, barely holding back a wolf whistle when Ellis answered her door.

“Wow, look who’s talking.”

The ballet called for something special, and Summer had gone deep into her closet for a dress she’d worn two years ago to a coworker’s wedding. Plum, with a clinging wrap that gathered on her left side and flared into a short flowing skirt.

“And those are the cutest shoes! They almost look like ballet slippers.”

The black leather flats were all she had that qualified as dress shoes. “Yeah, I figured I should go prepared in case one of the dancers gets hurt. ‘Hey you, get in there and plié!’ It’s like those people who wear a player’s jersey to a football game.”

“You never know. Did you take ballet as a little girl?”

Summer laughed. “In the commune?”

“Oh, right.”

“But I had the hots for a dancer when I was at Chico State, so I’ve seen
Swan Lake
a couple of times. It’s beautiful.”

But not like Ellis was beautiful. She’d added soft curls to her usually straight hair and swept it back off her face to show off diamond earrings set in silver. It was that extra bit that Summer appreciated most—not because she cared how Ellis looked, but because Ellis cared about it. She’d clearly put extra thought into looking even more beautiful than when she’d gone to dinner with Rex. Because it was the ballet? Or because it was her? Either way, it made her feel special. This was a real date, and she was ninety percent sure Ellis knew it.

After noticing Ellis’s slender heels, Summer didn’t mess around with trying to park in the city garage four blocks from the theater.

The valet eyed her car scornfully as he prepared her ticket. “A Mazda Three.”

“It’s the prototype for the next generation of abstemious conveyance vehicles,” she said.

“What did you just tell him?” Ellis asked as they strolled toward the entrance.

“That it’s an economy car.”

They bypassed the coat check but took a moment to look around the lobby of the Sacramento Community Center Theater. Summer put on an air of familiarity, pointing out the restrooms, bar and entrance to the box seats. In truth, she’d been to the theater only once—for an Indigo Girls concert. No ballet, no theater, no symphony. She’d quickly get interested in all three if it meant enjoying them with Ellis.

Ellis nodded her approval. “This looks nice. Very modern.”

“It’s not exactly the War Memorial Opera House, but it serves the purpose. And there isn’t a bad seat.”

“You’ve been to the Opera House?”

“Not for a performance. Just a tour.” She decided not to add that the tour had been a field trip over thirty years ago when she was in high school in Hollister.

As they wove through the cocktail crowd toward their assigned entry, Ellis stopped short, coming face to face with a couple she obviously knew. A May-December couple, Summer noted. The woman was a waif, with long blond hair and Margaret Keane eyes. She was bound in a dark red dress that left one shoulder exposed, its collar bone protruding like a garden rake. The gentleman looked to be a good twenty years older, and wore an aged leather bomber jacket with a white shirt and yellow tie. In his hand was a black fedora.

The woman was first to speak. “Ellis! How nice to see you. I’m so excited about tonight. Don’t you just love
Swan Lake
?”

“Marcie.” Ellis greeted her with a light hug, and turned back to Summer. “I’d like you to meet
Vista
’s executive editor, Marcie Wagstaff. And this is our political writer, Rex Brenneman.”

So this was the infamous Rex Brenneman, oozing masculinity in his unconventional attire. Clearly a man who cared a great deal about his persona. Summer couldn’t help watching their reactions to seeing one another.

“And this is my neighbor, Summer Winslow.”

Ouch!
Yes, they happened to live near one another. And they’d shared a ride to the ballet because it was good for the environment.

Summer smiled blankly as the three of them exchanged chitchat, and then mumbled a polite “Nice to meet you” in response to theirs when they parted. If there was one good thing about that particular humiliation, it was that Rex and Marcie had no idea she’d just been kneecapped. For that matter, she wasn’t sure Ellis was aware of it either.

Ellis waited until they reached their seat to break the awkward silence. “Summer, I’m sorry. I was so shocked to see both of them, I just froze. And obviously I said something idiotic.”

“It wasn’t idiotic. I
am
your neighbor.”

“You’re more than my neighbor. You know that, don’t you?” She put her hand on Summer’s forearm and leaned close enough to share her perfume. “You’re my friend, and…and you mean a lot to me. I just didn’t feel like telling them that.”

Summer hadn’t exactly expected a
True Romance
confession, though being introduced as a friend instead of a neighbor shouldn’t have been so difficult. At least Ellis realized how awful it had sounded. At this point there was nothing to be gained from making her feel worse about what she’d done.

She laid her hand on top of Ellis’s. “It’s okay. In case you haven’t noticed, you mean a lot to me too. And I get to pat myself on the back because you’re here with me instead of Indiana Jones.”

Ellis laughed. “No, no. It’s a trilby, not a fedora. Not sure quite what he’s going for. London Jones, maybe.”

Summer knew. He wanted women to think he had swash in his buckle.

The theater lights flashed to call the curtain and they took their last few minutes to scan the Playbill for information on the ballet company.

All the while, Summer grappled with a nagging doubt, one she couldn’t keep to herself a moment longer. “Ellis, does this feel like a date to you? Whatever you say is fine. I just need to know so I can get my head around it.”

The lights went down, shushing the crowd, and a high-pitched woodwind melody pierced the quiet hall.

For a moment it seemed Ellis would hide beneath the music, deferring her response until her silence ultimately put the question to rest. But then her hand fell over the armrest into Summer’s lap, and their fingers intertwined.

* * *

The moment the performance ended, Ellis shrugged into her knee-length coat and buried her hands in her pockets. She had no idea where Marcie and Rex were sitting. It was one thing to hold hands in a darkened theater, and quite another to walk out that way and increase the risk of being seen.

It wasn’t shame or embarrassment about being out with a woman—she told herself that over and over—but a desire to keep parts of her personal life private. She simply wasn’t interested in talking to anyone about her relationship with Summer. Certainly not before she knew what to say.

“I hope you enjoyed that,” Summer said. “I sure did.”

“It was lovely.”

What the performance lacked in grandness, it made up for in intimacy. It was nearly flawless, and Ellis was impressed by the Sacramento audience’s show of appreciation. She and Bruce had been members of the Dancer’s Circle for the San Francisco Ballet, a five-thousand-dollar annual gift. She’d noted in the program that she could guarantee box seats here at the Community Center Theater for the season for a few hundred dollars. If only she had a few hundred dollars.

Summer returned from handing her ticket to the valet. “I have to admit I don’t make myself get out to a lot of shows or performances downtown, but I’m always glad when I do.”

“We can do this anytime as far as I’m concerned.” While Ellis had enjoyed the program thoroughly, the significance of the evening was never far from her thoughts. She was officially almost in a lesbian relationship. Summer had given her a golden chance to back out—
whatever you say is fine
—and she’d made the decision to set aside her qualms.

In all her rumination about dating a woman, she’d imagined it happening within the confines of River Woods. Not in public and not where people from work would see them together.

And definitely not where she’d have to explain herself to her children.

That was messed up. If she couldn’t bring herself to show Summer affection in public, she had no business getting involved with her in the first place. Yet she wasn’t ready to make that decision. Summer was fun, interesting. And appealing in a way Ellis hadn’t experienced with another woman.