Falling for Hope (3 page)

Amy watched in surprise as the back of Hope’s neck
flushed red.

“What can I do you for, Irene?”
Hope grumbled.

Irene, laughing, jerked her thumb behind her,
indicating the hallway.
 
“Unfortunately,
we’ve sprung a leak,” she said, with a wry twist to her mouth.
 
“Do you want to come check it out?”

“Shit,” muttered Hope, running her
hands through her hair (which did little to tame its messy—and, to Amy’s eyes,
adorable—state).
 

“Don’t worry about it.
 
I’m right behind you,” Amy promised, and
Hope nodded, letting herself out of the room, shutting the door behind
her.
 
Amy could hear Hope’s and Irene’s
voices fading away as they walked down the hallway.

Exhaling, Amy sat on the edge of
the bed for a long moment, remembering Hope’s embrace, listening to the thunder
and rain outside, feeling excitement and worry tangle together within her.

---

“Morning, sunshine!
 
You’re the last one up, so you’re on breakfast dishes duty,” said
Lindsey, mouth poised in a tight, no-nonsense smile as Amy wandered, dazed,
into the kitchen.
 
Amy made a mock
salute but grinned as she opened the fridge door and stared at the bounty that
the women had assembled to nourish themselves for the week at the cabin.

Though each woman was charged with bringing a list
of provisions, most everyone brought surprises, too, and the food was available
to anyone who craved it, unless it was marked.
 
There were a few six-packs of premium beer on the top shelf, along with
the more generic stuff.
 
All of the
premium cans had “THIS IS THE BEER OF CHRIS HANDS OFF” Sharpied across
them.
 
Typical.
 
Amy chuckled a little and shook her head as
she reached for a cup of strawberry yogurt.
 

“…we’ll patch the roof when the rain lets up a
little,” said Hope, walking into the kitchen with Irene and Chris.
 
The three resident butches leaned against the
counters in unison as Hope
thumped
her tool chest down.
 
“I should have some tar in the garage,” she
added thoughtfully, while Chris stretched overhead, yawning with her mouth open
wide.
 
Chris had had a bit too much to
drink last night, as evidenced by her heavy-eyed frown.
 
Most mornings, Chris was more cheerful than
a cartoon—except for the morning after the women first arrived at the
cabin.
 
It was her traditional night of
celebration.
 

“The only reason I’m helping you patch that hole is
that I want to impress my new girlfriend,” Chris said, yawning hugely
again.
 
Amy pressed her hand to her
mouth to suppress her own yawn.
 
“I
gotta show her how completely awesome I am,” said Chris, hooking her thumb
toward herself as she leaned backwards on her elbows against the granite,
flipping a sweep of blonde hair out of her eyes.
 
Most of her hair was carefully teased up, save for a dashing
cowlick that she purposefully styled in front of one eye.
 

“Chris, you’re always so generous with your time and
valuable skills,” Hope deadpanned, as Irene chuckled and Chris scowled.
 
Irene’s short brunette hair was plastered to
her skull and neck, and Hope was soaked.
 
Chris was the only dry one, which made Amy think that Irene and Hope had
probably been looking at the roof while Chris watched them, offering helpful
advice, from the safety of the porch.

“So, what do you guys think of her?” asked Chris
then, bending toward Lindsey and Amy.
 
She was waggling her eyebrows.
 

“Your new lady?” asked Lindsey, crossing her arms and
casting her eyes heavenward.
 
“Aren’t
you a little old for her, Chris?”

“What?” asked Chris, spreading her arms and
shrugging, which meant that, yes, she was
absolutely
too old for
her.
 
“She’s a college kid!”

“You’re thirty-five,” said Lindsey, brow raised.
 

“I’m still maturing,” Chris quipped, as Irene and
Hope snorted, muting their laughter in steaming coffee cups.
 

“I think she’s very nice,” said Amy, trying to
remember if she’d even spoken two words to Chris’s new girlfriend last
night.
 
She couldn’t remember her
name.
 
Was it Clarice?
 
Clara?
 
Claudia?
 
It started with
cl
,
she thought.

“Hey, you know, I’m not like you guys,” said Chris,
jutting her chin out at Lindsey, and, by proxy, Irene.
 
“You guys have been together—what is it
now?
 
A million years?
 
Makes me nauseated.”
 
She grinned good-naturedly.

“Fifteen years,” said Irene, setting her coffee cup
down and gazing at her wife with shining eyes.
 
Lindsey’s smile was pure love as she took Irene’s empty coffee cup from
her, reached across the counter, and kissed her lightly on the lips.

“Yeah, see, this is why I can’t be like you guys,”
said Chris, shaking her head and spreading her hands.
 
“I would get so bored!
 
Look at you.
 
You’re still
moon-eyed for each other after fifteen years.
 
Fifteen
days
, and I’m already bored stiff.”
 
She yawned again, shuffled toward the
coffeemaker.
 
“Melissa always told
me—”
 
She stopped mid-sentence,
realizing what she’d said.
 
The kitchen
grew quiet.

Hope cleared her throat.

“Look,” she said gently.
 
“This is the first summer party without Melissa here.
 
That’s hard.
 
But we can’t keep avoiding the elephant in the room, okay?
 
Melissa would have hated that.”

Chris’s jaw clenched as she set the coffee cup down
on the counter with a
clink
.
 

“Melissa’s gone,” said Hope quietly, pressing her
hands against the counter and staring down at them.
 
“She was an amazing woman, and we all miss her.
 
But we’ve been in mourning for six months.”
 
She looked up as she said this, looked up
and directly into Amy’s eyes, searching, hopeful.
 
“And now it’s time for us to continue living, and by living,
celebrate her life.”

“Here, here,” said Irene softly, lifting up her
coffee cup.

Chris poured herself some more coffee, silent.

Hope glanced out the window, at the dripping trees
and clearing sky.
 
“I think the rain
stopped,” she said then, voice low.
 
“Will you guys help me with the roof?”

When Chris and Irene and Hope had gone outside,
Lindsey took a paper towel and scrubbed hard at the already clean countertop,
breathing out a sigh.
 
Amy found a
spoon, opened her cup of yogurt, and sat down at the table, crossing her legs
beneath her.

“Chris was Melissa’s best friend,” said Lindsey,
then, approaching Amy with the damp paper towel in her hands.
 
She sat down beside Amy and looked into her
eyes, holding her gaze.
 
“Irene told me
what happened, Amy.
 
She told me about
you and Hope.” The lithe woman bent her head gracefully as she stared at the
tabletop.
 
“It’s good, really good.
 
It’s been a long time coming, right?
 
And I’m really happy for you both.
 
But I wanted you to know…”
 
She swallowed.
 
“When Chris finds out, she’s going to be…”
 
She bit her lip, glanced up.
 
“Well.
 
You know how Chris gets.”

Amy went cold, head to toe.
 
She placed the spoon in her yogurt cup and
pushed it away from her.
 
“Chris…Chris
wouldn’t.
 
She won’t care.
 
She’s with a different woman every few
days,” said Amy helplessly.
 
“How can
she judge?”

“You don’t understand,” said Lindsey, shaking her
head.
 
Then, more quietly, she murmured,
“We think she had a thing for Melissa.”

---

The only time Amy had ever see Chris in a serious
mood was during Melissa’s funeral.

The friends had remained at the edge of the grave
after the coffin was lowered into the ground.
 
It was winter, and the snow was piled around them, the silence and hush
of the morning broken only by a few sniffles and the crunch of snow beneath
restless boots.
 
Everyone was lined up,
arms around the shoulders of the women next to her, on either side.
 
It was the only way, Amy knew, that she’d
been able to keep standing.
 
No one ever
expects to bury one of their dearest friends.
 

She was numb, stunned, shocked.

They had all brought flowers, and each woman tossed
in a bouquet without saying anything, the silence broken only by the dull
thumps
of the stems and blossoms against the hard coffin lid.
 
The last one to throw flowers down was
Chris, and Amy remembered Chris struggling for a moment, jaw clenched, eyes
tightly squeezed shut.
 

When Chris opened her eyes, Amy realized the woman
was crying.

She’d never seen Chris cry before.
 
Chris joked about
everything
.
 
When Chris’s own mother passed away, she’d
quipped in a group email that Satan would finally be given a run for his money
down in hell.
 
She didn’t take anything
seriously, no matter how solemn the circumstances.
 
Amy had doubted whether she ever
could
take anything
seriously.

And now here she was, openly weeping.

Granted, so was everyone else.
 
But on that cold, unforgiving morning, as
Chris threw down the final flowers, as they whispered their goodbyes to
Melissa, as the women turned to go, Amy—who had been standing next to
Chris—paused.

“Are you all right?” she asked her.
 
Chris shook her head, motioned for her,
silently, to go on, and Amy had turned, following Hope and the others back down
the shoveled pathway to the row of cars.
 

And when she reached her own car, Amy glanced back
to see Chris still lingering by the grave, looking surprisingly small in her
black wool coat as she stared down into the hole carved out of the earth, as if
it had just taken something precious from her.

---

“I’m not saying Melissa cheated on Hope,” said
Lindsey hurriedly, as Amy shook herself out of the memory.
 
“I’m saying that I think something happened
between them when Hope and Melissa were separated.
 
That they might have started dating.
 
They would have wanted to keep it quiet in our group, you
know.”
 
Lindsey scratched at an
imaginary dirty spot on the table.
 
“I
think that Chris was more attached to Melissa than she ever let on.
 
She was very loyal to Melissa.
 
I think…she loved her.
 
And she’s going to be so angry if she
thinks…”
 
With a sigh, Lindsey shrugged,
leaning back in the chair.
 
“I mean,
maybe I’m making something out of nothing,” she said, mouth curved into a small
frown, “but I don’t want you to get hurt because of Chris’s hot head, Amy.”

Amy leaned back in her chair, too, no longer hungry
for her breakfast.
 
“Thank you,” she
said, gulping down air.

“I’m serious.”
 
Lindsey’s voice was gentle.
 
“I
know how long you’ve been pining for Hope.”

Startled, Amy stared at Lindsey, but Lindsey only
shrugged and sighed again.
 
“Irene and I
both knew.
 
It was obvious to us, but I
don’t think it was, or is, to the others.
 
We saw it in the little things, mostly: glances you gave her.
 
Words you said and didn’t say.
 
And we had confirmation that Hope felt the
same way about you.”
 
Lindsey
smiled.
 
“Hope tells Irene everything.
 
And Irene, of course, tells me.”

Amy felt strange and very small as she sat on the
kitchen chair, feeling the wicker press into the backs of her legs.
 
“It’s odd,” she said then, voice soft.
 
“I’ve wanted this for so long, and then it
happened…”
 
She stared down at her
hands, loosely clasped in her lap.
 
“I’m
afraid.
 
I’m terrified that I’m going to
screw it up, or maybe we’re not meant to be together, after all,
or…really…”
 
She chuckled, shook her
head.
 
“I’m afraid of a billion
things.
 
But it feels so right, Lindsey.
 
No matter what, I’ll always have last
night.
 
I don’t know what’s going to
happen in the next few days....”
 
At a
loss for words, she looked up at the woman beside her, searching her face.