Would it taste like heaven? Or would it be more primal and taste more like a nectar she desperately needed to survive?
“Janice?”
Carla was looking at her, obviously having said something.
“Hm?”
“You okay?”
“I was just amazed that you remembered all that.”
“I always found your interests a bit fascinating,” she said. “You were so different from Maurine. You were…deeper. More introspective. And you thought about things a lot. Big things. Like why we exist and what does it all mean. I remember one time, we were lying out under the stars back behind Grandma Betty’s house, and Maurine had gone in for something, and you told me the universe was infinite. That it went on forever.” She smiled and moved her gaze from the poster back to her. “I didn’t sleep peacefully for weeks after that.”
“What?” Janice laughed. “Why?”
“Because knowing that scared me to death. How could something just go on and on and never end without anything beyond it or outside of it? Meaning that there is nothing else. Nothing. Just fucking space. The concept of that, of realizing that there probably isn’t a God, not as we perceive or understand God to be, scared me. It still does.”
Janice just stared at her, awed by the way her mind worked.
“You had thoughts like that then?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I didn’t know,” she said. “I wish I had.” A brief flash of memory came, and she saw Carla lying next to her on a blanket out under the stars. She was smiling and pointing at the sky. “I remember now,” she said. “We used to lie out under the sky a lot during the summer months. You loved it. And you would beg Maurine and me to go out with you. I even started calling you Stargazer.”
Carla seemed touched. “Yes.”
“Why did we stop doing that?”
“You guys grew up. Moved on to bigger and better things.”
She crossed to the drafting table and once again changed topics. “What’s this? You paint, too? Now, that I didn’t know.”
“Just ceramics mostly. It relaxes me.”
She knelt to examine the knight she’d been working on.
“There’s a lot of detail. Looks pretty tedious.”
“It is.”
“That relaxes you?” She straightened.
“Believe it or not.”
“Must be the focus,” she said, moving on to the books on her bookshelves. “Probably takes a lot of that to paint so intricately. But I’m sure that’s what keeps your mind off other things.”
She was still so observant. Insightful. “It does.”
She turned to face her. “Do you have anything finished you can show me?”
“Sure.” She led her back into the living room and into the adjoining dining room. She used it as a den and furnished it with two large leather chairs flanked by end tables, a coffee table, and numerous shelves where she had a lot of her work displayed. She switched on the lamps and Carla went straight for the shelves and examined her completed chess sets.
“These are incredible,” she said. “Can I pick them up?”
“Sure.”
She held up piece after piece, examining the details of the hand carved ceramics.
“What a difference,” she said. “From the white to this. You must get such a rush when you finish one. To see all that color and shine and the absolute perfection in detail. I can see why you like doing this so much. You’re very good.”
“Thanks.” She was a little overwhelmed at her admiration. She was a little overwhelmed at everything.
Carla smiled at her. “There’s so much more to you than I ever realized. Where have you been hiding all these years? And more importantly, why have you been hiding?”
“I—”
“It doesn’t matter. I know now and I plan on exploring all of your layers.” Her eyes danced and Janice swooned. “If that’s okay with you, that is.”
Her mind once again failed her, overloaded with both panic and excitement. She said what she’d already said a few times before. The only word she could think of and possibly mutter coherently.
“Sure.”
Chapter Nine
Carla ran the towel through her hair one last time before she finger-combed it in front of the bathroom mirror. The shower had felt wonderful after the long, hot day, most of which she’d spent in the sun with Erica and her boys. It was late, and though she’d arrived at Janice’s exhausted, she now felt refreshed and for some reason seemed to have the elusive energy that had been evading her, and she knew she wouldn’t be able to settle down to sleep anytime soon.
She finished with her hair and rolled her two favorite colognes on her wrists and neck. Their scents were both unisex and meant to be worn alone. But she’d found, by accidentally applying one over the other one crazy morning getting ready for work, that she liked them best combined.
Why am I putting them on now when I’ll be going to bed soon?
She studied her reflection, curious at both the newly present energy and her choice to put on the cologne. Any answers, however, were quickly ignored as she focused on her gray cotton shorts and matching soft gray bra. They were a sleep set she’d bought at a popular lingerie store, and she wore them every night. But given her circumstances at Maurine’s, where anyone could walk in at any moment, she’d thought it best to wear a T-shirt over the bra. Now, with Janice, she did the same, but she wasn’t happy with the way it looked. She picked at it, then fingered her hair again and then caught herself and sighed.
Why am I so worried about how I look?
And, for that matter, how good I smell when I’ve just stepped out of the shower?
The reason, she was reluctant to admit, was probably still sitting in the living room where she’d left her and probably still looking girl-next-door gorgeous in a worn, paint-stained pair of blue jeans and a body-hugging T-shirt.
Yes, she’d noticed. She’d always thought Janice beautiful, so that wasn’t anything new. But that had been before, when she’d seen Janice through a filter, like a thick screen on a window. A screen that long-time family friendship had erected, a screen she’d never been aware was even there. That screen had kept her from seeing the details, the layers, and the depth of this woman.
Now that filter was dissipating, and with every blink of her eyes, she was seeing more and more. And what she was seeing was leaving her mesmerized.
Her jaded attitude toward love and relationships didn’t seem to be stopping her. Nor did the very real possibility that Janice was straight, like she’d always known her to be, thereby dampening any notions that she was somehow suddenly feeling otherwise for Carla.
All she could think about was the way Janice had looked at her in the church. Under the tree. And tonight, on the porch. There was something there. Something different. Something more.
Maybe Janice was seeing her differently now too.
Oh God, what a thought.
She killed the light, needing to move, to walk, to go. She padded into the living room intending to tell Janice good night so she could go to bed and feign an attempt to read until her eyes could no longer remain open. But that idea went right out the window when she entered from the hallway.