Sea Glass Inn (14 page)

She had grown steadily more downhearted as more people arrived.

Her grooms had come first, the night before, with friends and family to fill the three finished rooms. A stream of wedding guests had been descending on the inn since breakfast. Mel had lain awake for hours last night, too aware of Pam in the room right across the hall, and had faced a new and unexpected kind of loneliness.

She had finished decorating. She had organized the wedding and served breakfast and cleaned the inn as much as she could. All she had left to do was step back and watch the wedding as an outsider.

She braced her hand on the wall next to the window and watched a couple of guests wander through her yard. She had planned to run the inn on her own, to be an observer of other people’s holidays and special events. She had expected it to be enough, but the more she watched the wedding preparations and listened to the joy and laughter in the voices around her, the more she filled with regret and longed to be part of life and not merely a bystander. She sighed and took a sip of her drink. One night with guests and she was already having second thoughts about running the inn. Not a good start to her new career.

At times over the past weeks, Mel had been lonely, scared, unsure, but she had pushed through as she’d discovered the strength and determination to do what had seemed impossible at first. With Pam’s help, as she brought the warmth of another human and a dog into the empty house, and Danny’s, as he worked alongside her or sent support through texts and calls. But now, work on the inn didn’t have to be all-consuming. It didn’t have to keep her away from people, from her new community. She couldn’t use it as an excuse to avoid new relationships any longer. The intense loneliness she felt while surrounded by happy people, by people in love, was threatening to drown her. She could either give in and live miserable and alone—with only her imagination to keep her company—or she could get to work and rebuild her personal life. Just like she had rebuilt the inn.

“Hey.” Mel turned away from the window at the sound of Pam’s voice. She walked to the center of the studio and turned slowly.

“You’ve done a great job in here. It’s beautiful.”

“Thank you,” Mel said. She was only happy to see Pam because she was feeling lonely and ambivalent about her role as innkeeper.

And because Pam was the only familiar face around. Her response to Pam was in no way related to the sleepless night Mel had spent listening for the sound of Pam moving around in the room next to hers. Or to her fantasies about Pam touching her, soothing her anxiety about the day ahead, calming her mingled hope and fear as she shifted focus from renovating the inn to creating the life she really wanted.

She had imagined Pam’s hands on her, refusing to let her slip into darkness, forcing her to move through her emotions until they burst forth into something new and hopeful.

“Sorry I left so early this morning, but I needed to spend a couple of hours in the gallery today. Inventory.”

“That’s okay,” Mel said. She was sure Pam had left to avoid eating breakfast with a table full of strangers. She still didn’t understand the reasons behind Pam’s emotions, but she was learning to read them.

Her intensity, her need for beauty and quiet. The way her breath grew shallow when there was too much noise or chaos around her, and her long exhale when she was at peace again. “Can you stay for the ceremony?”

“Yes, and I had an idea for decorating the area where it’ll take place. You know that old wooden boat in the garage? I thought we could put it in the small garden where the fountain will eventually go.

It’ll look interesting with the nets and floats you’ve put out there, sort of like they’re getting married on a desert island.” Pam pointed at the glass Mel held. “What’s that?”

“Punch.”

Mel tightened her grip as Pam slipped the glass from her hand and took a drink. “Jesus,” Pam said with a cough. “This is the punch?”

“Well, it also has some scotch in it,” Mel said, taking her glass back. “And no actual punch.”

Pam laughed. “You keep managing to surprise me. But, seriously, you don’t have anything to worry about. Today will be great. They’ll be happy and they’ll tell all their friends. Your inn will be
the
place for commitment ceremonies in the Northwest.”

Mel gave Pam a smile, but she could feel its weakness without needing a mirror to check it. She didn’t want to admit that she was more worried about today being a success than a failure. Her guests understood the rough state of her inn, and they seemed pleased with their rooms and the yard. Judging by the short time it had taken for breakfast to be consumed, Mel’s experiments with Pam and Danny as guinea pigs had been successful. She had planned the ceremony and reception down to the last detail, and she was confident the day would go well. But she wasn’t convinced she could face an inn full of guests every day for years to come unless she made the effort to fill her own life with the kind of love she wanted. She wouldn’t have Walter’s advice or a box full of expensive tools to help her through this project.

She’d have to do it on her own. Set a goal and learn how to master each step along the way. Make mistakes and try again. And again.

“Now come on,” Pam said, pulling on Mel’s arm. “Let’s go move that boat.”

Pam kept her fingers wrapped around Mel’s biceps as she tugged her toward the garage, to keep her from running off and leaving Pam to drag the boat out on her own. The feel of Mel’s muscles under her hand was just a bonus. Tight and strong, contrasting so enticingly with her silky shirt and the soft, pensive expression she’d worn all day. Pam could picture how well-defined and sexy Mel’s arms would be, braced on either side of Pam’s head before Mel leaned down and…Pam let go of her vision and let go of Mel’s arm when the cluttered garage forced them to walk single file. She was on edge because of all the strangers milling around the inn. She had to distract her mind from wondering why she felt like the strangers had invaded her home. Mel’s place was not her home. She climbed over an old, rusted bicycle and stopped to brush a cobweb out of her hair. “See?” she asked, pointing at the boat that was barely visible under the plastic flowerpots piled on it. “It’s perfect.”

“For what? Kindling?” Mel stepped gingerly over the bike and stood next to Pam.

Pam ignored the sarcasm in Mel’s voice. She stacked the flowerpots on the floor of the garage and picked up one end of the boat to check its weight. “Get the other end,” she said. “It isn’t very heavy.”

Mel moved the bicycle out of the way first, and then she went to her end of the boat. Pam counted to three and lifted. The boat was bulky and awkward to carry through the cluttered garage, but Pam kept her voice cheerful as she called out directions and encouragement as they maneuvered their way into the backyard. She wasn’t about to give up on the vision she had of the boat in the garden. Plus, she wanted to keep Mel occupied.

The last thing Pam wanted to do was sit through a ceremony and watch two people making the kind of commitment she had longed for with Diane. But last night, when the first guests had arrived and transformed the quiet house into a noisy inn filled with strangers, Pam had seen a look of desperation and regret pass over Mel’s face. She knew what Mel was going through, what Pam herself had experienced when she sold her first paintings—the vulnerability and protectiveness as the object she had nursed along in private was suddenly exposed and public. Pam guessed Mel might be feeling as if strangers were rummaging through her underwear drawer.

Pam wanted to focus on getting Mel through her first weekend with guests and avoid examining why she cared so much about Mel’s feelings. Naturally, she and Mel had developed a sort of friendship since they had lived together over the past couple of weeks, even though they rarely socialized and spent most of their time in separate sections of the big house. And just because she found Mel attractive enough that she had spent the night before tossing on Danny’s bed, uncomfortably aware that Mel was right across the hall instead of two floors away, didn’t mean she was getting attached to her. She could walk away from her without a second thought if she wanted to. She had chosen to come back and support Mel today. As a friend and nothing more.

“Careful through here,” Pam said, skirting a pile of gas cans as she stepped out of the garage and onto the driveway.

“Ouch. Can we take a break?” Mel asked as she tripped over a garden hose.

“We’ve only gone a few feet,” Pam complained, but she eased the boat onto the pavement and stretched her back. The boat was heavier than she had expected. When she had imagined the desert island scene, she hadn’t factored in the mechanics of moving the damned thing to its new place. She leaned against the boat and lit a cigarette, nodding toward the gas cans. “Are you planning to burn down the inn for the insurance money?”

“The gas is for the generator,” Mel said as she propped her hip on the boat next to Pam. She wasn’t really telling a lie. She hadn’t thought about dousing the house with gasoline for at least a week now. Not counting this morning. She watched Pam exhale a puff of smoke. She’d been smoking more than usual over the past few days, lighting up every time Mel mentioned the wedding. “Have you ever wanted to get married?”

“What’s the use?” Pam asked. “You can promise whatever you want on the day, but how many people actually keep those promises? The whole commitment thing just isn’t for me.”

Mel heard the bitterness in Pam’s voice, saw it in the way she flung her cigarette down and crushed it out with her shoe. She should have guessed Pam wouldn’t be the type to settle down. She probably had plenty of women trying to get her to commit to a relationship when all she wanted was to date whomever she chose. Pam hadn’t seemed to go out while she had been living at the inn, but on the few occasions Mel had run into her in town, she had been obviously flirting with someone. Always a different someone, and never anyone Mel recognized as local.

Pam sighed and picked up the cigarette butt she had ground out.

She tossed it in one of the ashtrays she had stashed around the inn.

“I can’t imagine you’d want to get married again, after what your husband did. And now that you finally have a chance to play the field.”

“Of course not,” Mel said. Of course she didn’t want to get married again. Commit to someone and give up her identity to be part of a couple. Allow another person to lead her on and give her the illusion of forever. Mel couldn’t figure out why Pam’s vehemence about marriage left her so sad or why she felt even worse when she claimed she felt the same.

Pam nudged her with an elbow. “You have so much to experience, so many women to date, you won’t have time to settle down.”

“You’re right,” Mel agreed with a weak laugh. Her anxiety was to be expected. She was used to her quiet life in the inn with Pam, but she’d need to start meeting women, dating, if she wanted to find companionship and love. She was being pushed out of her comfort zone, or what barely qualified as one. But after all the effort she’d put into the inn, it might be able to repay her in more ways than the financial. Most of her clientele would be people with similar interests as hers—a love of the ocean and travel and being outdoors.

She wouldn’t have to go out and meet women when she’d hopefully have plenty of them knocking on her front door. At least one of them should be able to push Pam out of her dreams. “And if the inn is successful, I’ll have a steady stream of women to meet.”

“Yes, you will,” Pam said, her voice quiet. She paused and then stepped away from Mel. “The ceremony will be starting soon. Let’s get this boat in place.”

Mel sat next to Pam in the back row of chairs as the grooms recited vows under the trellis she had made and decorated.

She hadn’t been convinced of Pam’s vision for what she had seen as an ugly, spider-covered piece of junk until she saw the boat in place.

Pam had draped it with netting and glass floats that matched those on Mel’s trellis. Suddenly the garden had been transformed into a grotto by the sea, with a magical quality that added to the otherworldly feel of the ceremony. As she watched the two men exchange the vows they had written, Mel really did feel as if she had been transported out of everyday life—where not everyone would approve of or accept the love she was witnessing—and into a world where only love mattered.

The differences between this ceremony and her own wedding were enormous. Hers had been formal, traditional, officially sanctioned. She had loved the planning involved. Her days had been filled with lists and meetings, decisions and structure. Yes, she had dated women and experimented with lesbian life while in college.

But she had loved Richard in some ways and had been convinced she could make a conventional marriage work. Her friends had done it.

One of her sisters had done it. Give up the experiments and youthful flings and settle into the life everyone expected of her. And for a few years Mel had been able to keep pretending she was satisfied and fulfilled. Especially after Danny was born. Until she had a meeting with his second-grade teacher. And she had been hit hard with the realization that what she had seen as a choice was really a matter of a nature she couldn’t deny.

Mel watched the two grooms kiss and then turn to accept the congratulations from their guests in an informal receiving line. She had been irritated to have guests in the inn. Scared, intimidated, full of doubts. But the truth was, she was jealous. Strangers had come into her home. They had arranged to have this most intimate of ceremonies in her backyard, had eagerly insisted she attend, had been so excited to share their happiness. And all she could feel was envy because she wished she had been married, body and soul, to someone she really loved.

But she had given up her chance when she married Richard, and again when she told him about her crush on Danny’s teacher.

They had decided to remain married for their families, for Danny.

She might have declared to Pam that she didn’t want to get married again, but she wanted…
something
. A lover, a friend. She wanted to make up for lost time. To finally get it right, without giving up the self-sufficiency and strength she had found on her own. She had been raised to believe in the expected route from dating to love to marriage, but she wasn’t sure what love would look like this time around. She’d have to invent a new paradigm, forge her own way. The thought was exciting. And scary as hell.