Page 18 of Just For Her

Her cat looked back at her, croaked a meow, and sauntered toward the window. Tove remained curled against the side of her couch. Once she swallowed her heart again, it beat with the thunderous ferocity of every bad decision she ever made in her life.

Because she had been so,soclose to making another one.

Was it me, or did we almost kiss?How had this escalated so quickly? Or was that merely Tove’s strange yet wishful thinking? When she met this woman a week ago, she had not thought of her in a romantic light at all. Why would she? There was a problem. Tove was called in to fix it. She saw Kayla’s background as a new girl in town with no family or job lined up and immediately suspected that she might be sniffing for a fat wallet.Wouldn’t be the first time.Tove hadn’t lied about that. Half of the men – and more than one woman – in her family had been in “mutually beneficial” relationships at least once in their lives. It had only increased in frequency in the past ten years. Tove figured she avoided most of the honeypots because not only was she a lesbian, but she was older. Those who even acknowledged her existence weren’t interested in pursuing her.

Yet here was Kayla, asking for reassurance, insisting that she was a new kid caught up in a weird day around Bend.

She said she was embarrassed to be seen as a potential gold digger? Tove was embarrassed to act like a fool the moment her brain registered Kayla was “into girls.”

It had been a long while since she last dated. Even longer since she last hooked up with someone. Her lastrealrelationship was that same twenty years ago when she bought this house.I was living in Salem at the time. When my girlfriend broke up with me, I was so devastated I packed everything up and came back here.She bought a house on a county road. That’s how much she wanted to escape the horror of a heart-wrenching breakup.

No wonder she was acting like this the moment a pretty young woman sat so close to her on her couch. Until a few minutes ago, Kayla was respectfully off-limits. Now?Oh, my God. What am I doing?Tove was the rational one of the family. People came toherbecausetheyhad fucked up their love lives, their jobs, and their children’s futures. She orchestrated the financial side of their scrapes.I write the checks. I make the appointments. I gently chide them to not let it happen again, otherwise their great-grandpa Gustav will roll over in his grave.

What would Gustav say about this, though? She didn’t know, but she could hear her mother’s voice in the back of her head.

“You think you’re immune to the bullshit of outsiders? This family?”Lianne Fredriksson sat her daughter down at their dingy kitchen table more than once. Was it one of the times a stack of cash from a family member tipped precariously on the edge while a pot of cheap spaghetti nearly boiled over on the stove?“No. Remember, we are nothing to them, but the outsiders don’t know that. They think we’re as rich as them, as influential as them.”Although Lianne did not have the Swedish accent of her great-grandfather Hans, she still spoke like him, as if channeling the energy of an immigrant who came to settle in the Central Oregonian high desert and establish a problematic legacy.“We are in the worst position. We are not our cousins, but we’re not free like the outsiders. We are the patsies and the grunts. We serve Uncle Gustav’s spoiled children. That line was drawn before I was born. You don’t know how much has changed since I was a girl…”

Kayla rustled beside Tove. She smelled like the freshly fallen rain of spring. Or maybe it was the freshly bloomed flowers of May.Honeysuckle and gardenias.Like the kind growing in Grandma Greta’s garden in downtown Frederik, a house now listed on the national registry of historic places.

A woman like Kayla should be the epitome of off-limits. She was an outsider. She was too young for Tove, who had resigned herself to lesbian spinsterhood. And not only had they barely known each other for a total of three hours, but she was here under precarious circumstances.Thomas hit her with his car, for God’s sake.“Just a tap,” everyone claimed, but it had been enough to possibly injure the poor woman. On top of that? She came in here clearly gunning for some medical help! What was Tove doing, entertaining inappropriate thoughts about those blushing round cheeks, that silky fine hair and those damnable legs poking out from the quiltshe made?

It was like Kayla was served up on a platter. Dark. Snow. Power outage. Eyelashes longer than Tove’s dry spell.

Lips smoothed in pink gloss and nails to match.

I’m such a sucker for a femme.Tove didn’t ascribe herself to either masculine or feminine, but she knew what she liked on her couch – and Kayla was it.

Don’t. Just don’t.Tove had a reputation to maintain. One that had served her well in this family so far.

“Tove?”

That voice was arsenic to Tove’s soul.

Kayla leaned in toward her. For the most infuriating second, Tove swore that her guest was about to kiss her.No, no, that’s my wishful thinking, nothing more.Kayla was certainly cute enough to kiss that night. Yet they barely knew each other. They were so different. These were extenuating circumstances.Kill. Me.The last time Tove felt this level of desire, she had a one-night stand while attending an accounting conference in Denver. It was the kind of last-minute fling that only happened in the movies – and Tove had been forty-six. That wasn’t her longest dry spell, either. Most of her thirties and forties had been spent in this house, in this town, doing what her family required to keep treading water. There was no time for dating, not that Bend overflowed with women looking for someone like her.

So of course she thought Kayla was coming on to her. Deep down, Tove was as pathetic as some of the men in her family.A pretty girl looks in our direction, and we die. We give up everything for them.That had been Cousin Oskar’s marriage before he lost his license and his wife. That was Thomas in a nutshell. He may have waited until his late thirties to get married for the first time, but he picked a heckuva doozy in Polly, the model from San Diego.

“I should give you some privacy.” Tove flung back the blanket and swore she was about to get up. “Bathroom’s right there.” She pointed behind her. “Have a good night.”

“What? It’s so early!”

“I’ve gotta get up early, yes.”

“But…” A hand landed on Tove’s arm. “Leaving me here in the dark? In a house I’ve never been in before?” Was that a pout in her voice? Was shethatworried about it?I can’t deal with this right now.Tove’s lonely heart almost shattered to hear Kayla express such sudden fright. “Please don’t.”

Tove settled back onto her couch. “It’s not a good idea.” She whispered that before realizing it wasn’t relegated to her mind.

“What?”

“Nothing. I didn’t say anything.”

Kayla’s head cocked in the dark. “Is everything okay? I’m sorry to intrude upon your life like this. I honestly didn’t know this would happen.”

“Oh, I don’t think you conspired to dump a foot of snow on us in an hour.” That’s how fast the snow was coming down, anyway. “I’m not used to having overnight guests. I’m usually alone here.”

Kayla leaned against the back of the couch, but she was never more than a few inches away from Tove, who was keenly aware of the hand still on her arm. “You’ve been alone for a while, huh?”

Either Kayla wasgoodat this, or Tove had exposed too much of her soul to a female stranger. “I… that’s none of your… I mean…”

---