My stomach is a balloon animal and my heartbeat is a drumroll. I have been so distracted all day thinking about tonight that I can barely remember how I spent the hours since this morning. Too much time on the beach, my skin now hot to the touch where I forgot to reapply sunscreen or couldn't reach — the backs of my arms; between my shoulder blades; my chest. Even my cheeks are red, despite the factor fifty I rubbed in at least three times. I hope it will fade into a tan but for now at least it hides the intensity with which I blush in the presence of a beautiful older woman.
I know I have mommy issues. That is not a secret.
When I get to Dive on the Lake at seven thirty-two — how am I late when this is all I've been waiting for? — Lou is already there. Her hat is gone, replaced by a claw clip holding her long hair off her face, and she has added a denim shirt tied at her waist, the cuffs rolled up to her elbows. She's reclining in a chair at the edge of the deck, her face tilted up to the sun, holding her glasses by the arm.
"Hi," I say when I reach her. She slowly opens her eyes, like a cat. A smile blossoms on her lips. She returns her glasses to her nose and stands, a fluid movement, opening her arms for a hug. I wasn't expecting that; my nerves tick into overdrive when she pulls me against her and I catch her scent and it turns my knees to jelly. She smells like a summer garden. It does something to my insides.
"Charlotte," she says. My full name has often been reserved for punishment but it sounds like a treat coming from her, the letters remolded by her tongue. I don't bother to tell her that I'm Charlie. It doesn't matter.
"This place is great." I survey the deck, which juts out over the water for an uninterrupted view of the lake and a great spot for watching the journey of the sun throughout the day. "Do I get a drink at the bar or is it table service?"
"You sit. I've started a tab and Mike will be over in a minute." She sits, her hand falling to the stem of her wine glass. "When Harry sold the cabin, I didn't think I'd see any of you again. It was a bit of a shock finding you in the garden this morning."
"Sorry. When I saw no-one was in, I couldn't resist. I spent a lot of time on that swing when I was a kid." I make myself comfortable and let my hair down from its ponytail to protect my neck from the sun at my back. It's been tied up too long though, and I have to run my hands through it several times to lessen the kink.
"I can imagine." With a slight smile, she says, "I only moved in ... almost eight years ago, now, so I missed all the wild years but I heard plenty of stories from the guy who owned my house before me."
I flush and have to look away. She has an intense gaze. "Oh yeah? Nothing too embarrassing I hope."
"Something about the place being taken over by a pack of feral children all summer long?"
A snort escapes me. "Yeah, that sounds about right." I hold up a hand like a confession and say, "Former feral child, at your service."
Mike comes over as promised and takes my order — I want to be sophisticated, to mirror Lou with a glass of wine, but it isn't for me so I ask for a vodka lime soda and Lou asks him for a bottle of whatever she just finished.
"Where were you before?" I ask. "Fisher's kind of a random place to move to."
"I've always been here," she says, dabbing at the lipstick print she has left on the rim of her glass. "Fisher, born and raised. We used to be in town but I wanted more privacy and more lake. The lake house came on the market at the right time."
"Oh, so you're a proper townie."
She bows her head and says, "I am indeed."
Mike returns with our drinks. As far as I can tell, we're the only people getting table service. Townie perks, I guess. "You must know everyone here. I've never been out of season but it must be pretty quiet."
"It's nice. Peaceful. We're a resort town, we get it, but it's a relief when it gets to October and we can breathe out. Everyone just kind of ... does their own thing, you know? There's this huge swell in the summer and things get pretty crazy, but give it a couple of weeks and it'll be back to normal." She takes me in as she takes a large sip of her wine and pulls her lips between her teeth. "So, it's been a while since any of your family was here. Your parents were good to me, and your aunts and uncles. I should have kept in touch. What brings you back?"
I blow out a long breath. Swig my drink and relish in the crispness, the coldness, the sharpness of the lime. "It's a long story."
Lou lets one of her hands drift out to the side. "We've got all night."
It turns out not to be that long a story after all. I have no reason to lie to this woman so I tell her the truth. Okay, a slightly less unhinged version of it — I understand how ridiculous I'd sound if I told her that I'm trying to chase the happiness I last had when I was eighteen and surrounded by people who loved me. I try to sound like less of a loser but ... I am. I keep fucking losing.
When I'm done — and my drink is too, my empty glass whisked away by Mike and swiftly replaced with another of the same — Lou gives me a sympathetic smile and she says, "This is your happy place."
"It is. It really is. Literally all my good memories are tied to Fisher. Is that ridiculous? Nearly two and a half decades on this planet and all my joy is tied up in eighteen years' worth of summer vacations. I know I've had great days since then — there are bits of college I enjoyed and I've taken some pretty cool trips with my friends but if you say to me, hey, what do you think when I say happiness, this is what comes to mind."
"We do have a tendency to romanticize the past. Especially childhood. It's so far removed, and it's a time of less responsibility. Smaller fears. Less worry and anxiety. In the moment, sadness lingers but give it time and it's the good times you'll remember. "
"Damn, Lou." I choke on a laugh. "That's a bit deep."
She chuckles and looks down at her glass. "Sorry. That tends to happen a couple of drinks in." She sets the glass on the table and laces her fingers together over her stomach, leaning back in her seat. I notice how long her fingers are, a couple of delicate silver rings on each hand. None on her ring finger, not even a dent or a hint of a tan.
"Don't tell me you're a therapist," I joke. I can feel my shoulders loosening, my stomach undoing its knots. Thank god for alcohol.
"God, no." Her laugh is bright, the sound sunshine would make if I could tap into the secrets of the universe to hear its beams. "I teach piano. Most of my human interaction is with sixth graders and I do not try to apply any sort of logic to their brains."
"I always wanted to learn piano," I muse, stretching out my hands on the table. "I tried once when I was ten. Couldn't get my head around my hands doing two different things. My mind wasn't made for that kind of fuckery."
Lou rests her elbows on the table. "It's not so hard. You have to build up to it."
"Reckon I could learn in the next two weeks?"
She purses her lips. "I do like a challenge."
"Oh yeah?" I cock my head at her. "You could teach me to tickle the ivories by the time I leave?"
"Where are you going when you leave?" Her index finger taps her bottom lip, those eyes searching me as though my answers lie in my face.
"I haven't decided yet."
She leans back in her seat. "Then I suppose that deadline has some flexibility."
The fluttering is back. I swallow hard to dislodge the butterflies but they're stubborn. I resort to drowning them in vodka.
"How dextrous are you?"
"That depends."
"On what?"
I take a sip. "What dextrous means."
"Handy. Agile. Nimble-fingered." She wiggles her fingers at me and takes a drink.
"Well, I've had three girlfriends and no complaints," I say.
I would pay good money to replay Lou's reaction. It's her turn to blush, her freckles disappearing when her cheeks redden, and she chokes on her mouthful of wine. It goes everywhere.
"Oh, god. God, I'm so sorry, Charlotte, I've sprayed all over you."
I don't mind, I think. I manage not to say it but our eyes meet and I'm sure she must be thinking the same. She must have heard what she said and seen the look on my face and put two and two together because she laughs. She covers her face and she laughs and it's a beautiful sound and I don't wipe away the flecks of wine on my arm.
When she recovers, she takes a centering breath and finishes off the last of her wine and props her chin in her hand. "I can teach you," she says, suddenly serious.
It takes everything in me to steady my voice when I say, "I'll hold you to that."
*
We talk for hours.
I didn't think it would be so easy but the vodka lime soda is the perfect social lubricant and Lou is easy to talk to, and every time I look away from her my gaze wanders back. She is magnetic. I could listen to her talk all night, sharing the memories she has of my family: my parents and uncles and aunts welcoming her into the fold when she first moved in, halfway through the summer that I was seventeen. When I was on a boat with Ashley and Connor, Lou was drinking with my parents. When I was catching a tan on the beach, she was reading in the garden with Aunt Willa. When I was ignoring my youngest brother, he was kissing Lou's daughter in a tree house.
"What!" I cry out when she lets that one slip. "No way. Nolan?"
She's glassy-eyed now, loose lips pulled into a wide grin as she nods. "Yup. They must've been, what, twelve? It was sweet. They were so innocent."
"Wow. Nolan never mentioned having a crush on Issy," I say. She's still a blur in my memories, a miniature of her mom who existed on my periphery. I guess that's why I can never think of where my little brother was when I was off with the three musketeers — he was busy making out with the girl next door.
"It was a summer fling. They were children. You guys never came back. What was there to mention?" Lou shrugs.
She goes to drain the dregs of her wine only to find the glass empty and when I look up, I'm surprised to see that we're the only people left. There's a chill in the air now, the sun long gone. The lake is beautiful after dark, when the only illumination comes from string lights in the trees of half the properties along the shore and the pale lights at the end of each dock.
"Shit, what time is it?" My head is light and blurry. I blink and squint at my cell phone's too bright screen and it takes a moment to process that it's ten fifty-two. "Oh my god, it's nearly eleven!"
"You know what they say about time," Lou says. "Fun, flying, all that jazz. We should get going. They close at eleven and Mike's been trying to catch my eye for the last fifteen minutes." She seeks him out and a moment later he's at our table presenting her with the bill, and before I've even processed the thought to move to find my purse, she's waving me off. "Don't you dare even think about trying to pay, Charlotte. It's on me."
"Thank you." My stomach gurgles, reminding me that I haven't eaten since a mediocre dinner at six o'clock, when I finished the remains of my fruit and grabbed a cream cheese bagel from Cafe Au Late. I'm ravenous all of a sudden, too much alcohol swimming around in my empty stomach.
When Mike returns with Lou's card, she steadies herself with the back of her chair as she stands and I wonder if she's more of a lightweight than she seems. But she has polished off a whole bottle to herself over the last three and a half hours, in addition to the drink she was nursing when I got here.
"I don't know about you, but I could really do with something to eat," she says.
"Me too. I don't drink much usually. I'll wake up with a hangover if I don't get some carbs in me soon," I say. "I think I have some cookies in my hotel room."
Lou looks over her shoulder at me. "I have pizza at home."
"Are you bragging or is that an invitation?"
"What do you think?"
"I don't know," I say, even though I do, because I want her to say it out loud.
"I'm asking if you would like to come over and share a pizza with me." She enunciates each word like I'm stupid, but there's a playfulness in her gaze. I catch up to her so we're walking side by side and I say, "That would be perfect."
"Come on then. Jules said she'd give me a lift back if it was before eleven." She twists her wrist to check her watch. It's been a while since I last saw anyone wearing an analog watch, so strangely transfixed by the slim silver band that I almost trip over a loose slab in the sidewalk. Lou has catlike reflexes. Her hand whips out, catches my elbow.
We reach the unmarked door next to Cafe Au Late at ten fifty-nine. The woman who served me this morning, with the thick chestnut-brown curls, comes out within ten seconds and tuts at Lou.
"You do like to cut it fine," she says, her demeanor switching when she spots me. "Oh! I know you." She points. "I served you this morning."
"Best peanut butter coffee I ever tasted," I said.
Julia beams. Lou scowls, disdain dripping from her voice when she says, "Peanut butter coffee? You're a heathen, Jules."
"A heathen who is about to drive you home, so maybe watch your mouth, huh?" Julia unlocks a station wagon and I slip into the backseat. Lou's cabin may only be a mile away but it takes five minutes to drive there down the dark, unlit road that takes us half a mile beyond our destination before a hairpin turn leads us back to Ponderosa Way.
Lou's porch light is on. It gives off a warm yellow glow that invites us in, a homely feel about the place before I've even stepped inside. Julia drives off once the front door is open. I follow Lou inside, and I smell her. Other people's houses have a distinct smell and hers is a match: that comforting floral scent of her perfume over something else. Wood, perhaps, from the logs stacked outside. She must burn them during winter.
"Wow." The word comes out on the edge of my breath.
It's funny how two places with the exact same layout can produce such different results. The blueprint is the same as the cabin I grew up loving but it's unrecognizable. Lou's home exudes warmth, from the wood-framed artwork on the walls and the bowls of potpourri on the sideboard to the mismatched blanket-covered sofas in the living room that we walk through to the kitchen, where her window seat overlooking the garden is dotted with cushions. There's a picture-perfect stack of books on a side table; the small table in the open-plan kitchen shows signs of life. A sheet of paper once folded into thirds lies on top of a torn envelope. A half-drunk mug of something once hot on top of a crumb-specked plate leftover from a previous meal. Her shoes — flip-flops and sandals and sneakers — are lined up neatly by the back door. The kitchen counter is clean, empty except for a roll of paper towels, a punnet of red grapes, and a dish into which she drops her house key with a clashing chime of metal on ceramic.
"I love your place. It feels ... cozy," I say. The color scheme is warm, unlike the neutral and vaguely nautical theme Uncle Harry kept next door. Here, the wooden floor is deep brown and the rugs dotted around are thick and fluffy; the kitchen is done in forest green but it doesn't feel dark or oppressive.
"Thank you." Lou undoes her sandals and leaves them in a line next to the rest of her shoes so I follow suit, toeing off my sneakers. They look so tatty next to her leather sandals. Everything I've seen so far screams money and taste and I yearn to know how. There's no way a piano teacher with a kid at college can live like this. I'm halfway through inventing shady backstories when Lou holds up a box of pizza pockets, her eyebrows asking if it's okay. I nod. She slides a couple onto a tray in the oven and sinks onto the deep sofa that backs up against the counter. I do the same.
"I'm not much of a cook," she says.
"Me neither."
"I make an effort when Issy's here or I have company, but..." She trails off, running a hand through her hair. No snags. Couldn't be me. "Next time you come over I'll have real food."
I like that she's already envisaging a next time, though I feel awkward all of a sudden. Like I'm imposing. I swanned into town without a plan and now I'm drunk in my old neighbor's kitchen and she is fucking gorgeous and my head is spinning.
It's eleven thirty by the time the pizza pockets are ready and I am salivating over every hot, cheesy mouthful. This has got to be, objectively, one of the unsexiest foods to eat but I'm too hungry to care, even when I burn my tongue on the sauce inside that must be the temperature of the fucking sun.
"I take it Julia is Riley's mom, right?" I ask as I wait for my food to cool down. Lou must have lost all sensation in her mouth because she's eating without pause. When she lets out a groan of satisfaction, my heart buckles.
"Mmhmm, Jules really hit copy paste when she popped that kid out." Lou dabs at a stringy bit of cheese that glues itself to her chin. "Danny didn't even get a look in." Her eyes meet mine and she says, "Like you and your mom."
My index finger goes to my nose, to the bump in the bridge I share with my mom.
"If I didn't know better, I could've thought you were Grace when I saw you this morning."
I splutter a laugh. "You would never catch my mom dead on a tire swing."
"Exactly. So I knew it couldn't be her, so I thought maybe I was seeing things, and then I remembered that somewhere amidst all those sons of hers was a daughter."
"All those sons," I repeat. It makes me chuckle. Mom is very much a boy mom. Not in a toxic, girl hating way. She just didn't really know how to deal with me as a kid so I always got lumped in with my brothers; I grew up as a tomboy and at school I became one of the boys and half the girls hated me for it. Until hatred turned to teasing and catty comments behind my back once they decided it meant I was a lesbian, rumors I vehemently denied until they slapped me in the face with their truth.
"Your family is very boy heavy," Lou says.
"Tell me about it. I always wondered what it would've been like if I'd had a sister growing up. Half the reason I used to love coming here, I think, is 'cause it was a chance to hang out with girls my age."
"What about school?"
I snort. "School sucked. After, like, fifth grade, anyway. Half the girls hated me because I was weird, in their words, and the other half hated me because they thought I was going to spy on them in the changing room. And, okay, my math isn't the best because I did have a small clique of fellow outcasts."
Lou raises her eyebrows at me. "Did you ... have a reputation for changing room spying or something?"
"No! They picked up on my queerness before I did and used it against me. I didn't give a shit about them." I take a mammoth bite of my pizza pocket right as my stomach yowls.
"Teenagers can be horrible creatures."
"Don't you have one of your own?"
"And sometimes she can be a horrible creature!" She laughs and shakes her head and says, "No, that's not fair of me. Issy's a good girl. She made it through high school with her head under the radar. I think she figured she had a target on her back."
"How come?"
She touches her hair and says, "She's a redhead. She's a space nerd. She's quiet and studious and sensitive. That's all ammunition to high school bullies."
"Mmm. Where is she now?"
"College in New Hampshire, studying Astronomy." Lou's face transforms as pride takes over.
"Whoa. Smart kids. She sounds like a star student," I joke. Lou's grin cracks wider.
"She is. She really is. I couldn't be prouder."
When I next check the time, it's just past midnight and I can't stop yawning. The pizza pocket has sobered me up but the act of digesting it is making me incredibly weary and if I'm going to get home in one piece, I need to leave right now.
"This has been really great," I say, hands on my knees. "Thank you — I really appreciate it. Glad you caught me trespassing."
"You're welcome," Lou says, "but I don't know what you think you're doing right now."
"If I don't leave right now, I will fall asleep right here on this couch."
"Why sleep there when there's a perfectly good guest room upstairs?"
I tilt my head at her. Is she asking me to stay the night?
"Listen, it's late." She stands too and we're so close, I realize how tall she is. She must be five ten, easily. Her height suits her. Some people don't know how to carry it; they stoop and bend and try to hide themselves. Not Lou. "I've had far too much to drink to drive you back to your hotel and Julia will be asleep by now, and I really don't like the idea of you walking back alone. Stay the night, borrow a change of clothes if you need to, and I can give you a ride in the morning. Okay?" Her hand is on my shoulder. I lean into it ever so slightly, relishing the pressure.
"Okay."
She gives me a brief tour of the upstairs landing: a room each for her and Issy; a home office with a desk and a comfy chair and more books; a cozy second living room that she calls the snug. The fifth bedroom has become something of a utility room filled with neatly stacked and labeled boxes, a sewing machine on a desk in one corner and a room divider hiding the washing machine and tumble dryer. I spy a yoga mat rolled up in another corner, underneath a wall-mounted television, and my heart skips a beat at the thought of Lou stretching in yoga pants.
"You sew?" I ask.
"Mmhmm. I refuse to be defeated if I find something I like and it doesn't quite fit. Or if I find a dress in a nice pattern that'd make a good skirt."
I can picture her bent over the sewing machine, glasses slipped to the end of her nose as she adds darts to a dress, as she turns an empire waistline into the waistband of a skirt. She's tactile, I can tell that much, a pianist who sews. She likes to use her hands.
She shows me to the spare bedroom, a spacious en suite next to hers. Our rooms share a wall. The window looks over the trees that separate this place from the neighbor to the right and the skylight frames the stars. It's a snapshot of solitude, the lack of light pollution allowing an incredibly clear view of the night sky, and I know I could lie at the end of this bed and stare at that view forever.
"The toilet's fine in here," Lou says, pushing open the door to the en-suite, "but the hot water's playing up so use the main bathroom if you want a shower. You can use any of my stuff that's in there. "
The thought gives me a thrill. I love looking through other people's things, their houses. I want to know what shampoo she uses, want to run my hands through her hair the way she has done so many times tonight. "Thanks," I say. "This is great."
"I use the drawers in here as overflow at the moment so if you need pajamas, there's probably something in there." She waves a hand in the direction of the dresser, on top of which is another bowl of potpourri and one of those hefty coffee table books, an oversized square hardback on the hidden beauty of rural Idaho. Everything in here is so clean, so precise. Like the room has been waiting for visitors ever since she moved in.
"Thanks, Lou. I really appreciate it. I'll see you in the morning."
"Sleep well, hon." She leans in for a hug and I hold onto the moment, lingering as long as I can before she pulls away, her fingertips brushing my wrist as she turns to leave me here with goosebumps spreading up my arm.
It's an upgrade from my hotel, that's for sure. Lou pulls the door shut behind her and my curiosity gets the better of me. I open the drawers, expecting neat rows of folded t-shirts, but it's a free for all in here. As though she tried on every item and threw it into a drawer in frustration. A secret messy side. I love it.
I usually sleep naked but that feels a step too far in a virtual stranger's spare room so I root around until I find a cotton nightdress in the third drawer down and when I take my clothes off, I fold everything into a neat pile. It's uncharacteristic. I don't fold. I throw and hide and shove. But if Lou comes in here tomorrow morning and I'm still asleep, I don't want her to see my underwear and my inside-out shorts. So I leave my clothes in a square on the chair like I'm at the gynecologist and I slide between the sheets in her borrowed pajamas.
You won't believe what happened today, I text to Greg's Gals. It's after eleven for Gaby and Tay, though, and they're early risers. They won't see my message for hours and I don't have the energy to recount my day by text. We'll talk tomorrow. I miss having them down the hall, when I could burst into one of their rooms and sit on their bed and we could just talk. But if I still had that, then I wouldn't be here. I roll onto my side and press my face into the pillowcase. It holds a memory of Lou's perfume. I am very happy to be here.
*
that's it for today's bulk upload of the first five chapters! from now on, there'll be one chapter posted each day for the rest of the month. i hope you're enjoying it so far!