The All You Can Dream Buffet (24 page)

To drown her thoughts, she slapped her iPhone into the dock. Florence and the Machine poured out, “Kiss with a Fist.” “What kind of music do you like?”

He settled the washed mushrooms on the counter and dried his hands. “I’m just your basic boring guy. Little bit of everything. Hip-hop and rock. You’re probably much cooler than me, seeing as how you’ve been living in New York City and all.” A slow sideways glance. “And you grew up in San Francisco, right?”

She glanced her own sideways way. “Are you teasing me?”

“Would I do a thing like that?”

“You might be trying to cheer me up.”

“Maybe.” He brushed her elbow with his own. “Is it working?”

She nudged the place where Liam lived and found it less raw. “Yes.”

“Good.” Neatly, he sliced the mushrooms. “I like you, Ruby.”

“I bet you say that to all the girls.”

“Well, I do. But it’s not usually true.” He settled a mushroom slice on the back of her hand. “I can be myself with you.”

She laughed and popped the mushroom into her mouth. “I’m not sure whether that’s a good or bad thing.”

“You’re stuck now.”

“Am I?”

He nodded, those eyes glinting with summer flashes. “You like me, too.”

Why would I give you anything but this?

Sorry to be out of touch, friends, and sorry for all the worry! All is well, just had some technical problems.

Pippin987

We were so worried!

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It was impossible to speed while dragging the trailer, but Ginny came close. As she drove through the mountains and into Washington State toward Oregon, she gunned it as hard as she could, fleeing the idiotic spectacle of herself kissing a stranger.

“Kissing” him didn’t even begin to describe it, really—she’d flung herself at him, rubbing against him like a cat in heat.

Tears stung her eyes as the scene played itself out over and over and over again. Tears of humiliation, tears of longing, but, mostly, tears of fury.

If Matthew had not been so mean-spirited as to withhold all sex, she wouldn’t have been in this position in the first place. She would never have driven alone across the country, inviting trouble and attention. She wouldn’t have been tempted by the craggy voice and tender kiss of another man.

She wouldn’t be so horny right now that her skin was about to combust all by itself. They would find her car at the side of the road, her body a pile of ashes in the seat.

Everything she’d been thinking spilled out, as if that kiss had knocked down all the walls she’d built around herself. She was furious with her husband. Furious with him for getting her pregnant in the first place so she had to quit school—and it had been calculating on his part. He hadn’t wanted her to go to Wichita, to be on campus with all those other boys.
He kept pestering her to transfer to community college. She swore he’d put a hole in a condom to make sure she didn’t run away.

Or maybe that was too mean. Maybe it had been an accident, but that didn’t change what happened. She’d dropped out of school, just like he wanted. She had her baby, her darling Christie, and that part she wouldn’t trade for all the money in the world, but when she suggested that the baby could go to day care and Ginny could go to school part-time, Matthew had thrown a fit.

And then—
then!
—he stopped having any kind of sex with her at all, refused to go to counseling, refused to try medication or even to satisfy her ever, and expected her to take it.

Which she—doormat of the century—had done.

Crossing over a bridge, she slammed her hand on the wheel again. “Why have I been such a wimp? Why did I let him do that? Why did I let my friends treat me like I’d done something wrong when the blog did so well? I made that blog!”

Willow leaned forward and licked her ear.

“I know. I’m not mad at you. I’m really mad at myself.”

But all of that evaporated as she found herself, at last, driving along the Columbia River. It was as different from the mountains as the mountains were different from the plains, but just as beautiful, maybe even more so. It was lush and green and … quiet-seeming as any landscape she’d yet seen. It eased her, that green, that shining water beneath a sky filled with puffy gray clouds.

She stopped at a campground on the banks of the river. It was fairly full and boasted a little store at the center with—she gave a silent cheer—Wi-Fi. She picked up some fresh bread and made a supper of a grilled cheese sandwich, which she ate sitting in her camp chair, looking up at the bluffs.

I am never going back to Kansas.

The thought was so clear and direct and whole that she knew it was true.

“I am never going back to Kansas,” she said aloud, and laughed, feeling as buoyant as if she were a suddenly untethered balloon, as if she could float up into that gray sky and never look back.

It made her dizzy.

Never going back. Never, never, never.

Willow sat watching the river, alert for stray lambs that might need rescue, and looked up at Ginny’s laughter. Her tail swept across the dirt.
I’m happy if you’re happy.

Ginny carried her glass and plate inside, hearing the faint sound of old-fashioned music again. Her ghostly music. “Thanks,” she said aloud.

No one said, “You’re welcome,” but it was in the air, dancing on the music.

She sat down at the laptop, realizing that the past couple of days without Internet were the longest she’d gone without being connected in years. It was weirdly liberating, but she was also craving contact. Desperately.

The first note she wrote was to Matthew.

For a long moment she stared at the screen, nudging her heart and liver and belly to see how they felt about this. She remembered, in a flood, all the small humiliations of the past twelve years. His rejection of her, his annoyance when she walked around in her underwear—or, God forbid, naked. His fury at her when she had joined him in the shower that last time, shoving her away in utter disgust.

She thought of how it felt to drive this trailer, to make herself meals, to continue the important parts of her life now—her dog and her friends and her work—even when she wasn’t at home.

Last, she thought of the blasting, burning fury of her desire this morning, a normal response to a normal stimulus, the
healthy response of a healthy woman who wanted to have a normal sex life like a normal forty-something. Tears stung again.

But instead of
send,
she hit
save.

Courage fail.

The next step was to get a blog posted quickly, using the materials she had at hand—that incredible view and her camera. She scrolled upward to read the comments from the last post, the one she’d written from Utah, before the fire.

Ginny answered every one in turn, a laborious task, since there were more than two hundred, some of them repeats as
people returned and posted again after she didn’t show up this morning.

Toward the end was a post from Ruby:
Just heard from our darling Ginny, my dears. She’s had some technical issues, but she’ll be back online very soon. Don’t worry about her. In the meantime, come talk to me at my blog. We’re partying at Lavender’s farm.

The very last comment was from Just Jack. It said,
What about a microwave cake? Peach, maybe.

She took a breath, her memory flashing back to that kiss—which shamed and aroused her in equal measures. How foolish she was!

To distract herself, she set about dumping the black and gray water in her tanks and refilling the freshwater tanks, grateful there were facilities here for it. Afterward, she showered the nasty task away, made a cup of tea for her still-tender belly, and returned to her email.

Amid the floods of spam and blog-related mail were three that caught her eye. The first was from the backblogger in Boise.

Ginny didn’t blame her, but it was a blow nonetheless. She clicked on the next email, from Ruby.