Surprise! I thought I'd get this update out ASAP, before I am back on the road with who knows how much time to write.
I just couldn't revisit that last scene in the locker room, it makes me way too angry. I hope you're ok with that.
Thank you all for still reading, and commenting, and hopefully enjoying this story. There will be more to come.
I knew you were trouble when you walked in. It had been one of the most exhausting, and frustrating few weeks I had since I moved here. I looked up from staring blindly at my beer as I heard you demanding tequila, holding up three fingers, and slamming each shot back one at a time like they were water. Yours was the voice that haunted me in dreams, and sometimes in the silence of my empty lab after hours, and from the dark corners of bars, like this one, when I was too exhausted to keep your apparition at bay. Wild Side West was the very last place on earth I expected to see you in the flesh, suddenly turning my world on its head, making me wonder if you were real, or if I had summoned a hallucination of you from the well of loneliness, out of sheer longing. It had been just about a year since I kissed you goodbye at the airport in Toronto, and almost that long since we had spoken. I missed you everyday with an ache, like an amputee with a phantom limb.
The difference between you and the you in my dreams was that you looked older than the last time I saw you, and thinner, and sadder. Your hair was longer too, brushing up against your shoulders in cascade of dirty reddish blonde, that I assumed was your natural color. Gone was some of the bravado and the swagger that I loved so much. It wasn't just that you looked exhausted, but worn thin in a way that made me want to cry. Suddenly, I found myself on my feet, and free-falling along with the bottom of my stomach, and my heart.
Trouble
San Francisco had been possibly the best and worst decision of my life. I loved my new position at the Mt. Sinai Institute of Forensic Studies in a way I had only dreamed of loving my job in the past. Forensic science has always been my passion. To be working with some of the best and brightest minds in my field, as well as having the tools and the resources, as well as the encouragement of my superiors to pursue my research, not to mention forensic anomalies we run across in the field, has been thrilling! Even the morgue here is a state of the art, well lit, spacious working environment, a far cry from my cramped old lab back in Canada. And now, after only a year, I have found myself up for a promotion.
While my career flourished, my personal life has been practically nonexistent. Its been difficult to meet anyone outside of the people I see at work every day. While a few of my colleagues have genuinely begun to become my friends, I miss my old life back home in Toronto. Sometimes I even miss Lisa.
Spring came early here, with a glimmer of sun, and the blooming of rhododendrons, and a rash of rape-murder cases that washed up on the beach under the Golden Gate Bridge, keeping my team, and me working overtime for weeks. I had given my entire team the weekend off, and closed down the lab a bit early this afternoon in hopes of getting a fresh look at the evidence first thing on Monday morning, assuming nothing new and urgent popped up in the interim. And so I found myself drinking beer, at my favorite lesbian neighborhood bar with its cozy, dimly lit atmosphere, it's dark wood interior, it's obligatory pool table and dart board, and it's beautiful, unexpected, garden out back. And now, I found myself clutching my beer as if my life depended on it, standing at the shoulder of the woman I left behind.
Trouble
"Hey." I said softly, placing my hand gently on your shoulder.
You flinched, and turned sharply, looking up at me with eyes that were the color of Lake Erie in winter.
"Holly." You breathed out in a somewhat wary tone, "What are you doing here?" You scowled at me and made a familiar gesture with your hands. Suddenly, I was back in Toronto, on a cold, wet, fall day, having just crossed under the police tape to go look at some bones.
I couldn't help myself, I laughed, and tilted my head quizzically at you.
"No Gail, I think that's my line." I smirked.
"I live here." You replied with a nonchalant shrug.
"Ok, that's definitely my line." I pursed my lips and peered at you over the top of my glasses. "Gail, seriously, what's going on?"
Just over a year ago when I asked you to move out here with me, you told me that you had begun the process of adopting an eight year old girl, and that whether or not it went through, you were a Peck, and the TOPD would always be your home.
You shrugged and pointed at the bartender, and then pointed at our glasses, smiled, and gave her a thumbs up. Not a moment later, two more full pint glasses appeared in front of us.
"I don't know about you, but I definitely need more alcohol." You replied with an insincere smile.
Trouble
"We need to talk." I insisted, as I found myself steering you once again, inexplicably, by the elbow, out the back door, down the stairs, and into the back of the garden where we came to sit at a table under an arbor full of fairy lights. Seeing you in this setting made me want to laugh, and cry at the same time.
"Gail..." I began.
You looked up at me, and then looked away, nervously rolling your beer glass between the palms of your hands.
"Gail, what happened? Why are you here?" Something had to be terribly wrong. I tried to contain my panic, but I knew my voice was sharper than I meant it to be, and full of the concern I could feel building in my chest.
"Well Holly," You licked your lips, looked up, and replied in a fake surgery voice, "I heard that San Francisco was full of lesbians who left everything behind to start a new life, so I thought, why not?"
"Gail, that's not..." I replied, sharply feeling your well aimed blow to my heart.
"What? Not fair? It seems to have worked out well for you." You shot back bitterly.
I sighed, ignored the sting from your barb, and tried again. Replying softly, I looked you in the eye, "I did ask you to come with me."
You scoffed and picked up your beer. "Yeah. Only because you knew I couldn't do it then."
"That's not true." My weak defense came as you huffed at me.
"Just how long have you been here? And why didn't you call me?" I persisted.
"About three weeks." You licked your lips and continued, "And ya know Holly, not everything is about you."
I know I must have looked as confused, and hurt as I felt, because you sighed, put down your beer and said, "You really don't know, do you?"
I scowled and shook my head. There was, honestly, so much I didn't know. And I regretted it. I regretted it because maybe, just maybe, things could have been different.
"Let's just say, that even though I know that I have always been a disappointment to my parents," you shook your head, closed your eyes, huffed, and brashly went on, "But who knew that I would be the one to put my brother in jail, ruin my parent's careers, and take down the entire family legacy."
"Wait... Wait... What?!" I exclaimed, shaking my head in disbelief. As I reached out across the table to touch your arm, you recoiled.
"You see Holly, this," you smiled ironically, "this is exactly why I didn't call you."
"What do you mean?" I could feel the tears forming behind the knot of my eyebrows.
"I can't always be the sad, broken little girl you have to take care of and put back together." You replied with an annoyed look.
"Gail..." I did reach out and placed my hand on her arm this time. "You're not... that's not how..."
"No!" You firmly stated, "It's been more than a year, and I couldn't just show up on your doorstep expecting..."
There was a zing in my chest that felt distinctly like hope.
"Expecting?" I needed to know.
You closed your eyes, took a deep breath, and bit your lower lip.
"Expecting what, Gail?" I demanded.
"I mean... I... I don't even know..." you faltered and looked at me with unshed tears sparkling in your eyes, "I'm sure that you must be with someone..."
"I'm not." I barely managed around the lump forming in my throat, "I'm not seeing anyone."
"You're not?" You whispered.
"No." I whispered back, as my heart threatened to leap from my chest.
"Oh." You exhaled as if you had been holding your breath.
The air between us had become charged and heavy.
"I miss you." I admitted in a barely audible voice.
You breached the table so quickly, in one swift movement, to land squarely in my lap, your hands balling up the collar of my shirt, and your lips burning into mine in the best way possible. My hands found their way underneath your sweater, grasping desperately at the skin of your back, pulling you in closer as my tongue sought yours. I'm not sure who made that ridiculous low moaning noise, but it may have been me. One of your hands tangled its self in my hair as you shifted to straddle my legs and stroked my face gently with the other. I heard myself whimper as we pulled apart gasping for air, still holding on. As you leaned back in to kiss me with all of the tender longing that matched the feelings I could no longer contain, you murmured into my lips, "Holly, take me home."
Trouble Trouble Trouble