Falling for Hope (5 page)

And Amy had discovered only this
morning that, during one of the “off again” periods of Hope and Melissa’s rocky
relationship, Melissa and
Chris
had possibly dated.
 
Lindsey had shared this suspicion with Amy,
and Amy thought it made sense, considering Chris’s angry reaction to Hope and
Amy’s new relationship.

Amy hadn’t seen Chris since that
afternoon, when the woman retreated to her bedroom—with her new girlfriend,
whose name Amy couldn’t remember, in tow.
 
Hours had passed, but Chris still hadn’t emerged.
 
If there was one thing Chris loved almost as
much as she loved ladies, it was food.
 
So it was very unlike Chris to miss dinner.

But she wasn’t here.

“Penny for your thoughts?” asked
Hope, and when Amy glanced sidelong at her now, the easy smile blossomed over
her handsome face.
 
Amy studied Hope for
a long moment before returning the smile, albeit a little weakly.
 
She’d been in love with Hope for the entire
span of the five years they’d known one another.
 
Amy loved everything about Hope, from her open smile to her
unruly black hair (that was usually pointed in a thousand different
directions), to her long fingers and softly muscled arms.
 
These were things that Amy had felt
incredibly guilty for noticing before, since Hope had been involved with
Melissa, but now she allowed herself to fully gaze at Hope, even as Hope
grinned at her, tossing a bit of hair out of her eyes and squeezing Amy’s
hand.
 

In front of the fire, Irene grabbed
Lindsey around the waist, drawing her wife down and onto her lap.
 
Lindsey made a few protesting noises, but
she was laughing too hard, and she put her arms around Irene, pushing her
fingers through her wife’s short, brunette hair as she kissed her playfully on
the cheek.
 
Irene chuckled while they
held one another tightly.
 
Amy had never
felt jealous of Irene and Lindsey’s relationship; it filled her with comfort,
knowing that there were at least two people in the world who shared the kind of
love that people wrote stories about.
 
Amy had always hoped that she’d get a shot at that kind of love someday,
too.
 
Irene and Lindsey had been
together for fifteen years, and they were still so in love that it made Amy’s
heart hurt a little, sometimes, watching them.

But as Hope squeezed her hand
again, Amy wondered if, perhaps, they might have a chance at that kind of love
themselves.

Amy returned the squeeze and
sighed.
 
“I was just thinking about
Chris,” she murmured, clearing her throat.
 
“Wondering if she was hungry…”

Hope’s eyes darkened, and she
glanced at the fire, mouth curling down again.
 
“I wish she wasn’t so bullheaded.
 
But she wouldn’t be Chris if she wasn’t.” She laughed a little, though
her words sounded hollow.
 
“I’ll take
her some food later, see if we can’t get this mess sorted out.”

Amy wondered whether Hope knew what
Lindsey had suggested to her, that Chris and Melissa had had a
relationship.
 
Regardless, now was
probably not the time to ask.

“Everyone grab a stick and the
wiener of your choice,” said Lindsey, pecking Irene one more time on the cheek
before rising and waving to the plates of dogs and the sticks set in front of
the fire.
 
She made an elaborate show of
gesturing to the plate of hot dogs.
 
“These are for the meat eaters.”
 
She imitated Vanna White as she moved her hand over the plate of veggie
dogs.
 
“And these are for the
vegetarians.”

“And vegans,” said Aspen
helpfully.
 
She was curled up on the
couch, very close to Shirley, Amy noticed.
 
When Shirley, who had gone on vehement tirades in the past about how people
were born to eat meat, glanced lovingly over to Aspen instead of arguing with
her that veganism was for cows, not humans, that clinched it.
 
They were starting a relationship, too.

“I think we should tell ghost
stories,” said Cole, eyes sparkling as she got up, took a veggie dog and
speared it a bit more violently than necessary on her stick.
 
She brandished the stick in front of her and
waved it before Hope’s nose.
 
“And the
second-in-command ghost storyteller should go first.”

Everyone knew the first-in-command
was Chris, but no one mentioned that as they inched closer to the fire, popping
uncooked marshmallows into their mouths or spearing hot dogs on sticks.
 
Hope cleared her throat and tilted her head
to the side thoughtfully.

“Well,” she said, moving toward the
edge of her rocker and leaning forward—she had still, to Amy’s delight, not let
go of her hand—“did I ever tell you guys about the lesbian zombie from Mars?”

“Heard it!” called Irene,
laughing.
 
Lindsey rolled her eyes and
shook her head, brandishing her stick in Hope’s direction.

“No zombies,” she called out.
 
“Stick to ghosts or whatever, but no
zombies!”

“Well, what about the headless
horsewoman?” asked Hope.
 
“That’s sort
of a ghost.”

“Heard it!” called Aspen, poking a
veggie dog on a stick.
 

“Tough crowd,” said Hope, with a
laugh.
 
“Okay, then.”
 
With a final squeeze, she slid her hand from
Amy’s grasp and cracked her knuckles, leaning back as the rocker creaked
ominously.
 
“Have I ever told you the
story of the flesh-eating crawler that lives on this mountain?”

“That sounds like a zombie to me,
Hope,” said Irene, grinning over her shoulder as she snaked her arm around
Lindsey’s waist and drew her wife closer.
 
“I have to protect my lovely spouse’s ears from anything
zombie-related.
 
She gets nightmares!”

“I do not,” said Lindsey, softly
poking Irene in the arm.
 
“I just think
they’re gross.”

“They’re supposed to be gross,”
Aspen piped up, blowing out the little flame that had erupted on her veggie
dog.
 
Amy watched as Shirley stepped
forward and tentatively placed her plump arm around Aspen’s shoulders.
 
The slighter woman glanced up at Shirley
with a wide grin, craning her neck to kiss her softly on the mouth.
 
Shirley’s long red hair was pulled back into
a ponytail and crushed under a baseball cap that shielded the rest of the kiss
from view as Amy glanced discreetly away, smiling to herself.

“I have a true story I could tell,”
said Amy, then.
 
As the other women
looked toward her, she grinned at them, folding her hands in her lap.
 
“If anyone would like to hear it.”

“A true story?” asked Cole
dubiously, spearing three marshmallows above her hot dog on the stick.
 
“Yeah, right.”

“No, no, it’s true,” said Amy,
cocking her head as she lowered her voice, clearing her throat.
 
“There used to be panthers in these woods,”
she said then, voice almost a growl.
 
“Over a hundred years ago, people had to wander beneath the trees with
shotguns
,
because if you were caught without a weapon in the woods, you were dead.
 
The panthers,” she said, standing, crouching
low and twisting her hands into claws, “were as big as a wolf, but—unlike a
wolf—they traveled from tree branch to tree branch.
 
They came at you from overhead,” she said quietly.
 
The rest of the woman had grown silent, the
hiss of the fire punctuating Amy’s words.
 
“They stalked you, and they screamed before they struck.
 
The thing about their screams?”
 
Her words were almost a whisper now.
 
“They were like a woman’s
scream—high-pitched and eerie.
 
And you
heard the scream before you saw the panther, because you never saw a panther
until it was falling out of the treetops, falling on top of you, ” she said,
her voice rising a little as she straightened, her right brow raised.
 
“Once, there was a woman who needed to
journey up the mountain to reach her home.
 
It was night, and she couldn’t wait until morning.
 
She couldn’t afford to hire a man to come
with her, and she didn’t own a gun.
 
So
she took the fastest horse she could find, and she began to race up the
mountain, toward the summit.
 
The horse
knew that there were panthers in the woods, so it balked at the slightest
shadow.
 
The woman could sit the horse
pretty well, but not well enough.
 
So
she lost her seat, and the horse ran away through the dark.
 
Now it was only that woman, with her
knapsack, alone in the silent woods.
 
But the woods didn’t stay silent for long,” whispered Amy, sitting back
down in her rocker.
 
She let it rock
once, creaking in the quiet.
 
“The
scream came through the trees toward this woman, who began to run, sprinting up
the mountain on foot.”
 
Amy rocked
again.
 
The chair creaked louder and longer.

“What happened then?” asked Aspen
quietly.
 
Amy stared up seriously at the
gathered women, folding her hands in her lap.

“Well, that’s just it,” she
murmured.
 
“We don’t know.
 
The woman disappeared.
 
Vanished.
 
Was it a panther that got her, or the mountain itself?
 
Did she get lost, or did she get
mauled?
 
All we know is that on stormy
nights like this, you can still hear a woman screaming if you listen very, very
closely…”

Silence fell over the group as they
stilled and listened.

Outside, another crack of lightning
lit up the sky, and thunder made the cabin shake.

Every single woman—including
Amy—jumped.

Laughter cut the tension, Hope
leaning back in her chair and chuckling as the rest of the women continued to
roast their dinners, Cole trotting to the kitchen for the hot dog buns.
 

Throughout all of the ghost stories
told that night, and despite the alluring scent of delicious fire-cooked food,
Chris failed to make an appearance.

---

“Oh, my cheeks hurt from smiling,
and my stomach hurts from laughing,” said Amy, grinning at Hope as they shut
the door to the bedroom behind them.
 
Rain pattered the roof overhead, though the thunder and lightning seemed
to have moved off for the night.

“I look forward to this week every
year so much, I can’t stand it,” Hope confessed, pulling off her socks and
tossing them into the small dirty clothes pile.
 
Her pants followed suit, and Amy felt a small blush begin to
creep across her face.
 
“I mean, we all
hang out all year, you know?
 
But up
here, it’s different.
 
It’s better.
 
We’re freer.
 
We’re who we were meant to be, you know?”
 
Hope peeled the shirt over her head and
turned around.

“Yeah,” said Amy quietly,
swallowing.

In the dull light of the one small
lamp, Hope’s body was outlined, illuminated.
 
And as the taller woman stepped forward, wrapping long fingers around
the curve at Amy’s waist, Amy felt her heart beating so hard that it was all
she could feel, all she could hear, drowning out the sound of the deluge
outside.
 
Here, in the warmth of the
cabin, Hope’s mouth pressed down upon hers, and Amy wrapped her arms around
Hope’s neck.

“You know,” Hope whispered, “I’ve
been giving it some thought.
 
I think
it’d be best if I talked to Chris when I was calm and clear-headed, and I know
how to get that way…
 
I’m going to go
for a hike tomorrow,” said Hope quietly, letting her mouth slide down to Amy’s
neck, as Amy shivered against her.

“A hike?” asked Amy, voice
weak.
 
Hope began to tug at her shirt.

“I just need to sort my thoughts,
after everything with…”
 
Hope paused for
a moment, and the word stood clearly between them:
Chris
.
 
“I’ll be gone really early.
 
I’ll be gone when you wake,” said Hope,
tugging at Amy’s shirt again, dislodging it from the waistband of her jeans.
 
“But I’ll return around noon.
 
If the storm’s over, we can have a
picnic.
 
It’ll be romantic,” Hope
whispered, as Amy shivered again beneath her kisses.

“You’d hike in the storm?” asked
Amy, gasping as cool air washed over her skin when Hope at last pulled her
shirt over her head.

“I hike in the rain.
 
I hike in the sunshine…
 
Hiking’s good for my soul,” said Hope,
grinning, pausing and gazing into Amy’s eyes.
 
“I’ll be back at noon.
 
I
promise.”

“Okay,” Amy whispered, almost
forgetting what they were talking about as Hope’s mouth closed over her own
again.

There was no more need for words
that night.

---

When Amy woke, Hope wasn’t beside
her in the bed.
 
For a long moment, she
struggled to remember the conversation of the previous night and sat up,
holding the sheet against her chest as she stared at the space Hope had kept
warm.
 
Amy placed her palm against the
sheet now; it was cold.