by Anna Burke
“Do you enjoy that?”
“Tasting wine? Yes. I do.”
“I detect a hint of cherries,” Lillian said, mimicking Ivy’s earlier words.
“Can’t you?”
“Years of clinic cleaning products have ruined my nose.”
“I told you the other day. I like nice things.” Ivy poured their wine as she spoke, and Lillian felt her eyes on her bare shoulders.
A warm loaf of bread soon joined them, and she drizzled olive oil into a small dish, watching Ivy do the same. The oil clung to Ivy’s lips. She wanted to lick it off, pushing Ivy back in her chair and straddling her lap, and she also wanted to toss a glass of red wine onto Ivy’s spotless white blouse to prove a point. Neither were appropriate behavior for a restaurant. Instead, she studied the vegetarian side of the menu without seeing it.
She’d chosen this restaurant because while it served delicious food in a classy environment, the cost of most plates amounted to the price of the symphony tickets. Ivy could not outspend her. She had not, however, anticipated the wine list. Naively she’d assumed they’d drink by the glass. The bottle sat between them, taunting her.
Let it go, she tried to tell herself. So what if she’s rich? It’s not like you’re dating her. You’re just . . .
What the hell were they doing?
“Ivy—”
“Thank you. For inviting me out.” Ivy reached her hand across the table, and she took it, thrilling at the touch despite herself. “Can we just enjoy this? For now?”
She weighed Ivy’s words and what they might mean. This. This was the two of them, not fighting, for the first time in years. This was the heat building from within the fragile cage of her chest and spreading through her body whenever Ivy touched her. This was the memory of disaster.
Keep it light.
“Okay,” she said, squeezing Ivy’s hand.
Ivy’s answering smile lit the table with its glow.
• • •
The theater chairs, though cushioned, were threadbare, and the metal frame dug into Ivy’s seat bones where the stuffing was thinnest. She adjusted her coat on the back of her chair to better support her spine. Around them, a crowd of mostly older people shuffled and flipped through the glossy pages of their programs. Lillian perused hers, too, and Ivy studied her profile. The clean line of her jaw; the curve of her forehead; the slight bump in her nose, which would have been an imperfection if it hadn’t accented the cheekbones that ran parallel.
“I’ve waited years to hear this Rachmaninoff concerto performed,” Lillian said. If she was aware of Ivy’s scrutiny, she didn’t show it.
“What’s special about it?”
“You’ll see. Or hear, rather.”
Three hours of music. Already her body protested the uncomfortable chair and the slightly sour smell of the older man on her other side.
“I should take you to Carnegie Hall,” she said, trying and failing not to compare the two venues in her mind.
“Portland’s an easier commute than New York City.”
“True, but New York—”
The lights dimmed, cutting her off. The susurrus of paper and voices stilled. Lillian leaned forward slightly in her seat, and Ivy draped her arm around the back of Lillian’s chair, damning the armrest both for cutting into her hip and for separating them. As the orchestra began tuning their instruments to the conductor’s baton and the music swelled to fill the hall, it occurred to her that while she had been dragged to symphonies and plays and other cultural events as a child, hating the long hours sitting still, Lillian’s family would not have had subscriptions to theaters. This was a thing Lillian had decided to do for herself as an adult, not because her parents thought it looked good for the family, but because she loved it.
Of all the things to spend her money on.
Then again, as the notes of the first piece electrified the air and Lillian’s lips parted in expectation, perhaps she’d denied symphonies their due. The chords that watching Lillian struck in her were worthy of whatever dead genius the musicians on stage brought back to life with bow and horn and reed.
Lillian leaned back into her arm when the second movement started. She stroked the bare skin of Lillian’s shoulder with her thumb. In school, they’d competed for everything, even going so far as to try to best each other in the gym. She remembered watching Lillian lift and taking note of the weight so she could up her game. Those days seemed far away here in the theater. They could be anyone. Two women, out on a date, who perhaps met for the first time over a dating app, or at work. They could put the past behind them.
Morning. The sun waking her in her bed in the Ithaca house, bright on her white quilt. Lillian, stirring, her hair dark against the pale blue sheets, and panic rising in Ivy’s chest to meet her.
“Ivy?” Confusion in Lillian’s voice, as if she couldn’t quite believe she’d woken up in Ivy’s bed—could not believe what that implied. “Are you okay?”
Not confusion, then. Concern. She realized her hands were wrapped tightly around her bare knees, her body hunched around the raw thing that had taken up residence in her chest. She wasn’t even hungover. That, at least, would have provided her with an excuse as to why Lillian Lee was in her bed, and might even have wiped her memory of the night before. Of how good it had felt to touch her, to kiss her, and how Lillian’s hands had broken something open inside Ivy.
“Get the fuck out of my house, Lee.”
Lillian’s expression flashed from shock to hurt to bitter resentment, and then, at last, into hatred. She gathered her clothes and pulled them on, jamming her hat over her tousled hair and glaring at Ivy the whole time, as if there were no words to encompass the depth of her rage. And there weren’t words. Not for that, and not for the way Ivy was crumbling.
Things could have been so different. Her palm cupped Lillian’s shoulder, all smooth skin and rounded muscle and heat. What if she’d asked her to stay? If, instead of kicking her out and spending the day screaming into her pillow, she’d made them coffee and sat on her couch with Lillian’s head in her lap while rare Ithaca sunlight glinted off the snow?
These seats really were desperately uncomfortable. They hit every pressure point in her body. She thought of the pills in her purse and wished she could take one—or three. It was the nerve pain, she told herself, and not the pain of memory. I am not the person I was then.
And yet, how different was she, really? Hadn’t she run away from Colorado rather than face the reality of her condition, just as she’d pushed Lillian away when confronted with the magnitude of everything her feelings for Lillian represented?
Fate’s a real bitch. She’d run from one monster into the jaws of another. This monster, however, smelled like jasmine and had just put her hand on Ivy’s thigh.
“Here it comes,” Lillian said as the orchestra stilled in preparation for the next piece.
Piano chords filled the theater, striding up and down the minor scale. She could tell Lillian was holding her breath, and she nodded sharply as the strings joined in a rising torrent. Ivy watched her. Her eyes were closed, and she swayed a little with the music as her fingers shifted on Ivy’s leg. She’s playing along, she realized as she timed the movement of Lillian’s fingers to the piano notes.
The music swelled and ebbed, guided by the pianist, and the notes seemed to hover in the air, plucking strings in her chest. Then they tumbled back into the dramatic rhythm of the concerto as the horns announced their presence.
Intermission surprised her. She could have remained like that for days, her eyes on Lillian, the pain in her body singing along with the notes. The brightening light in the theater felt like an affront. Lillian exhaled slowly, and her lips curled into a private smile.
“Worth the wait?” Ivy asked her.
“Yes.”
She’d meant the music, but the way Lillian said yes, heavy with bliss, reminded her of the night they’d spent on the island, and she wondered if Lillian, too, was thinking about was
ted time.
“What did you think?” Lillian asked.
“It was . . .powerful.”
“Isn’t it? I remember the first time I heard it. I didn’t know anything about composers—who I was supposed to know and what I was supposed to think, and I found the sheet music for “Concerto No. 2 in C Minor” in a practice room and pulled it up on my phone.” Lillian blushed and glanced away. “I sound like such a nerd.”
“You’ve always been a nerd. It’s cute.”
“Shut up.”
“So, you listened to it, and then what?”
“I felt like the piece was mine. Like it spoke to me. And if you make fun of me for that, Ivy Holden, I will murder you right here.”
She laced her fingers through Lillian’s. “I won’t.”
Truth be told, the piece was Lillian’s, and would be linked indelibly with her in Ivy’s mind for the rest of her life.
“Did you like it? I know classical isn’t your thing.”
“Shh.” Heedless of the older man to her left grumbling to his wife about the temperature of the room, she leaned in and brushed Lillian’s lips with hers in a kiss that tasted like the sweet, lingering notes of the concerto.
“It wasn’t bad,” she said when she pulled away. Then, because the inadequacy of the statement hung in the air between them, she added, “It was beautiful.”
She took advantage of the intermission to use the bathroom. Ensconced safely in a stall, she opened her purse and pulled out the small bottle of water she kept for emergencies like this and popped two gabapentin. Who cared if it made her drowsy? The alternative was intolerable. Her body thrummed with pain. She knew the signs. If she didn’t stop it now, she’d soon be incapacitated, and there was still half a concert to go.
And after that?
Exiting the stall, she saw her reflection in the mirror. The makeup she’d applied to hide the dark circles beneath her eyes had faded. Opening her purse again, she dabbed on a little more concealer. The night was only getting started.
• • •
Music hummed in her veins as she drove. Ivy had her head tilted back on the seat, and the light from passing cars lit her in alternating flashes of white and red. She looked tired—more tired than the lateness of the hour called for. Shadows limned her eyes beneath the brush of lash against cheek.
“Are you okay?”
Ivy smiled with her eyes closed. “I’m trying to remember how that piece you like goes.”
Lillian sang a few bars, and Ivy joined in, picking it up quickly.
“I like that part there, where it goes up and down. Can you play it?”
“On the piano?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s been a while, but yes.”
“Will you play it for me?”
“I don’t have a piano.”
“Someday then.”
Someday implied a future where she and Ivy were close enough to allow for such things, and she wasn’t sure she was ready to think about any day beyond this one and possibly the next where Ivy was concerned. But the quiet plea in Ivy’s voice tugged at the tangled emotions she felt whenever she looked at the woman in her passenger seat, and so, in a voice as quiet as Ivy’s, she agreed. “Someday.”
The drive passed in a companionable silence after that. Ivy did not slide her hand between Lillian’s legs as she had on the way into Portland. Instead, she linked their fingers together on the armrest and let the simple contact say what Lillian felt sure neither of them was willing to put into words. Ivy’s hand was warm, and the pressure of her fingers as the road unspooled beneath the headlights grounded her. She walked Ivy to her door in the safety of that silence, and when Ivy glanced over her shoulder, holding the door open, she stepped inside.
Darwin greeted them with Jack Russell enthusiasm, circling and barking before jumping into Ivy’s arms. Ivy let him lick her face, then encouraged him outside to do his business. While they waited for him to return, she asked, “Can I get you a glass of wine? Or tea?”
She sounded almost shy.
“Tea would be wonderful.”
Lillian shrugged out of her coat and gazed around the house. Ivy flicked the lights on as they entered while Darwin skittered at their heels and smelled of snow. Warm pine floors and large windows overlooked the dark river; a cozy living room with woodstove and fireplace opened into a small but well-appointed kitchen; tasteful landscape paintings hung on cream-colored walls; and a lobster pot swung by the coat rack, disturbed by the coat Ivy tossed over a hook. In short, it was a quintessential Maine cottage, and she was surprised at its simplicity.
“Nice place.”
“I know.” Ivy put the kettle on and tossed her blazer over the back of a kitchen chair. “I’d buy it in a heartbeat if it was for sale.”
“The view of the river must be spectacular in the daylight.”
Ivy looked up from the stove. Stay and find out, her eyes seemed to say, but the unspoken invitation reminded Lillian of another morning years and miles past. She hugged her bare arms, feeling the chill. The flirtation in Ivy’s gaze faded into concern.
“Are you cold? I can lend you a sweater. Or grab you a throw.”
“I saw one on the back of the couch. I can get it.”
“Not that one, unless you want to choke on a cloud of Darwin. Hang on.” Ivy left the kettle to its own devices and opened a cupboard in the adjacent living room, pulling out a light gray blanket. “Here.”
“Thanks. I should have brought a cardigan. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
That wasn’t entirely true. She’d been thinking about how she looked in the dress, and what Ivy would think of her, and the heat those thoughts generated had rendered a cardigan obsolete in that moment. Now, however, she shivered as Ivy draped the blanket over her shoulders. The night they’d spent on the island had been unplanned, an accident she could write off as poor weather and poorer judgment. If she spent the night again, she’d have no such excuse.
And she wanted an excuse. Desperately.
The blanket was sinfully soft. Cashmere, no doubt, or some other expensive fiber. It slid over her skin and warmed her immediately.
“What kind of tea would you like?” Ivy asked as she stepped back.
“What do you have?”
“Honestly I don’t even know.” Warm kitchen lamplight backlit her blond hair as she peered into a cabinet.
Lillian made her way over and immediately understood the problem. Tea lined several of the small shelves, profuse to the point of excess and lovely in their little tins.
“Why do you have so much tea?”
“My mother sent it as a housewarming thing.”
“Did she buy out a shop?”
“She probably went online and just selected one of everything. I don’t even know what half of these taste like.”
“You haven’t tried them?”
“I like tea, but not that much. It would take me a month to try just half.”
“You could open Ivy’s Tea Salon.” This close, she was once more aware of the smell of Ivy’s shampoo, delicate and floral, and beneath that the heady musk that clung to her skin.
“You sure you don’t mean Poison Ivy’s Tea Salon?”
“You weren’t that poisonous tonight.”
“There’s still time.” Ivy turned to face her and reclined against the counter, grinning.
“Not much. It’s almost morning, technically.” The microwave clock read 11:45, but her body felt buzzed and awake and her fingers itched to undo the buttons of Ivy’s blouse.
The kettle’s shriek started low and rose as they ignored it, until Ivy huffed and snatched it off the burner. Freed from the spell of Ivy’s eyes, Lillian selected a sachet of a rose and strawberry herbal blend and dropped it in the blue ceramic mug beside Ivy’s, which contained a sachet of ginger. The aromas blended surprisingly well as the hot water suffused the dried leaves.
“Want to sit? I promise this couch is more comfortable than the one on Rabbit.
”
She did not particularly want to sit, especially after that flash of memory, but the tea smelled heavenly, and she wasn’t clear on the best way to segue into the positions her mind had helpfully conjured. Shrugging her assent, she entered the living room.
The couch was indeed a significant improvement. She sank into one corner while Ivy took the other, leaving an uncomfortable gap between them that Darwin was quick to occupy. She loosed a silent thank you prayer for dogs and searched for something to say.
“Do you miss Colorado?”
Ivy toyed with the edge of the tea sachet before answering. “Yes.”
“What do you miss?”
“The mountains, mostly. My house. Friends, of course, and I liked my old clinic.”
“Then why leave?” She was genuinely curious this time, and not angry. Something about Ivy’s sudden appearance in her life felt wrong—not because she resented it, but because Ivy was clearly hiding something, and whatever it was felt connected to the circles beneath her eyes.
“It was time for a change. How did you end up here, anyway? You’re a specialist. You could have gone somewhere with better pay.”
Another evasion. She let it go for now and took Ivy’s bait.
“What makes you think Seal Cove doesn’t pay well?”
“It’s a small practice on the coast of Maine, not a referral hospital in Portland.”
“Morgan was here. Besides. Not everything is about money.”
She’d been offered positions elsewhere. They’d offered significantly higher starting rates, but she’d been unable to accept in the end. Staying near her moms, where she could care for them and they for her, was ultimately more important, and Morgan was a known entity. After vet school, where Ivy had made her feel like she didn’t belong, that had been too tempting to turn down.
“Just Morgan?”
Was that jealousy in Ivy’s voice?
“I value my friends.”
“Clearly, since you live with so many of them.”
“Just because—”
“Were you and Morgan ever a thing?”
The question stunned her. “Morgan? As in Morgan Donovan?”
