Page 20 of Our Secret Summer

“Great. I’ve opened that bottle of white you bought, if you want some.” With that, Dylan turned on her heel and, barefoot, her jeans shorts seemingly shrinking by the minute, sauntered off. Raffo couldn’t look away if she tried.

“As promised,” Dylan said after dinner. “I’ll show you some ofmywork now.”

Raffo knotted her eyebrows together. Had Dylan secretly been painting? Or taken up a craft like crocheting?

“Let me just get my laptop. It took a while for me to cobble it together.” Dylan shot up, a wild kind of energy about her all of a sudden.

As Raffo cleared the dishes, it slowly came back to her. That long conversation they’d had a few days ago, when she’d basically told Dylan all about her past and present traumas. Dylan’s work. Advertising campaigns.

When Raffo looked at Dylan, she didn’t see a woman ready for retirement, although lounging in her Big Bear house seemed to agree with her. But for how long could a person, realistically, do that? It was probably different for everyone.

Raffo grabbed the bottle of wine from the fridge on her way back to the deck and generously refilled their glasses.

She enjoyed the silence of her surroundings as she waited, the lowering sun across the lake, and the general sense of peace that was impossible to find in Los Angeles. Unwittingly, her mind drifted to Mia. What was she doing? Making her divine tamales for Ophelia? Luckily, Dylan waltzed onto the deck, laptop in hand.

“We did a lot of movie promotion work, as you can imagine. My second agency had an exclusivity contract with one of the big studios. There were a few years when all I worked on were movies.”

“Sounds thrilling.” Raffo meant it. She’d grown up in Los Angeles and it was easy enough to be jaded about the movie business, and all it entailed, but Raffo had always thought it special. After her mother died, Raffo often fled to their neighborhood theater just to get away from the house and her demanding father and useless brothers.

“Especially when working on this.” Dylan flipped open her laptop and showed Raffo the screen. On it was a poster forSweet Tomorrowstarring Ida Burton.

“Oh my god.” This movie had been made long before Ida came out of the closet—when she’d still been fake-married to a gay male movie star—but Raffo had seen it many times nonetheless. “Did the ad agency people get to go to the premiere? Did you meet Ida?”

“I was in my late twenties when we did this. Maybe my boss got some perks, I don’t remember, but I certainly didn’t.” Dylan sat there beaming, obviously proud of the work she’d once done.

She showed Raffo some more of the campaigns she’d worked on, some of which Raffo remembered seeing at the time of launch—especially a few of the queer-oriented ones.

They made Raffo think of the Rainbow Shelter. One day, if the weather in Big Bear turned, and they weren’t subjected to this glorious—and, admittedly, somewhat sensuous—sunshine every day, they should watchGimme Sheltertogether—the movie about Justine Blackburn and the Rainbow Shelter.

“I’m impressed,” Raffo said, after Dylan’s slideshow.

“Thank you.” Unlike Raffo, Dylan had no problem accepting a compliment.

“I can’t read your thoughts, obviously, but from where I’m sitting, and from what I can see, you’re so not ready to retire.”

“I’m not,” Dylan confirmed. “I wasn’t planning to, either. I just wanted to make a change. Be creative again instead of talking about business and pitches and financial projections all the time. Seeing my old work again only reinforces that.”

“Maybe selling this place is a small price to pay for that.” Raffo could say this with confidence because nothing was worth more to her than being creative—no material possession, no matter how lovely the house and the lake attached to it—could ever be.

“Maybe,” Dylan said on a sigh.

“Alternatively, you could get a business loan,” Raffo offered. “Or refinance your properties.”

“No,” Dylan stated firmly. “Either I finance my new agency with my own money or I don’t do it. I’m not going into debt. Not after what happened.”

Or I could give you a loan, Raffo thought, but quickly quashed the idea. Dylan hadn’t even told her son about her bad investment, which probably didn’t make her the type of person to accept a loan from her son’s best friend. Besides, Raffo had to buy a house for herself—by herself—in LA’s lethal real estate market.

“You’ll figure it out, Raffo said instead. “Despite what happened, you’re a smart woman.”

“I don’t feel so smart right now.” Dylan’s earlier confidence seemed to plummet.

“Smart people do dumb things all the time. It’s called being human.”

“What’s the last dumb thing you did?” Dylan asked before taking a large sip of wine.

“Me?” Raffo shook her head. “Agree to an open relationship.”

“No.” Dylan’s tone was firm. “That doesn’t count. Mia broke up with you. That’s not on you.”

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