The Thousand Mile Love Story

by Natalie Vivien

  “I’m having pizza delivered,” she said, then, sniffling and taking another tissue from her pocket. “I thought everyone would like that.”

  And then she began to cry again.

  Robin didn’t even have to ask where Jill kept the wine. She strode purposefully toward the kitchen as Tiffany sat on the edge of the couch next to Jill and put an arm about the woman’s shoulders. Jill leaned against Tiffany and sighed out, closing her eyes.

  “I thought I’d spend the rest of my life with her,” she said quietly, gulping down air. “I was so stupid.”

  “Best to talk about it, darlin’, let out all those feelings,” said Tiffany, pushing her sunglasses up to the top of her head and over her bandana as she squeezed Jill’s shoulders. She amended hastily: “but you don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

  “If I don’t, I’m going to ruin this road trip,” said Jill ruefully, rolling her eyes as she sniffled again, rubbing the tissue over her eyelids, making the mascara run a little under them.

  Andee sat down on the white plush rug in front of the couch, crossing her legs in front of her as she leaned back on her hands, biting her lip. “Jillie, you never ruin anything,” she said softly. “You’re always the one who helps us.”

  “I think that’s the thing,” said Jill, gazing down at the tissue in her lap. “Leila said that I always care about everything and everyone else more than her. She said that I have my fingers in everyone else’s pie. Is that from a nursery rhyme or something?” she asked, glancing up at Andee. “Shouldn’t I know that? I mean, she taught kindergarten, for God’s sake, maybe I should know if it’s from a nursery rhyme or not. Maybe she’s right. Maybe I have no clue. Maybe I’ve spent all of this time just…assuming she’d stay with me. I didn’t treat her as precious, you know?” Jill hiccupped as she sobbed, burying her face in Tiffany’s shoulder as the red-head rubbed her arm harder, fiercer, holding her with a tightness that only Tiffany could manage.

  “Jill, you’re the most amazing woman I’ve ever met in my life,” said Robin calmly as she came from the industrial looking kitchen with two bottles of red and white wine and four wine glasses.

  “Maybe I wasn’t an amazing partner,” said Jill quietly, swallowing her tears long enough to take a glass from Robin’s outstretched hand and hold it with shaking fingers as Robin poured red wine into it.

  Tiffany took her own wine glass and pointed to the white wine bottle which Robin obligingly filled it with. “What did she say when she…left?” Tiffany asked quietly, drinking the wine in one gulp and going back to holding Jill tightly. It seemed that Tiffany was the only thing currently holding the woman up, for Jill sat slumped in the couch, like she was about to fall over.

  And then Jill said, in the saddest, smallest voice possible: “That she’d met someone.”

  “Oh my God,” whispered Andee, almost dropping the full glass of red wine that Robin was handing her. Miraculously, she managed to keep hold of it, and only a single drop of red wine spilled out onto the immaculately white rug.

  “Okay, Robin, we need a little more wine over here,” said Tiffany, holding out her empty glass as Robin stared at Jill, biting her lip.

  “Another teacher,” continued Jill, her voice soft and subdued, like she was reading a list of things to get at the grocery store, not telling the details on how her partner of almost ten years left her. “She said that they’d been meeting up everyday in the teacher’s lounge for lunch, that they understood each other. That she loved her.” Jill lifted up her eyes to the three silent women. They were filled with tears. “That she didn’t love me anymore.”

  “I’m bringing out the big guns,” Robin muttered and took the wine bottles back to the kitchen as Tiffany finally scooched Jill over and settled herself off the couch arm, still holding tightly to Jill.

  “Andee, be a dear and go find Jillie some more tissues?” asked Tiffany, looking pointedly at Andee .

  Andee tilted back the glass of red wine and drank the whole thing in one gulp, too. She got to her feet, nodding muzzily as Jill mopped at her eyes again.

  “They’re in the bathroom cabinet,” she said helpfully through her tears.

  To get to the bathroom, you had to go through the kitchen, the kitchen where Robin was currently scavenging through the fridge for beer. Andee didn’t even think of it until she and Robin were in the kitchen.

  Alone.

  And together.

  “Poor Jillie,” said Robin, slapping a six-pack of cans up onto the counter before she shoved the fridge door shut with her hip and leaned against it, running a long-fingered hand through her hair. She watched Andee across the butcher block in the center of the kitchen, and Andee watched her, eyeing the swinging door over her shoulder as if it was a means of escape.

  But no. They had to face this.

  “You know Tiffany asked you to go so that she could work her magic,” said Robin, folding her arms and putting her head to the side, just like a bird, watching Andee. “She’s probably in there saying the perfect thing right now to calm her down. You know Tiff.”

  “Yeah,” whispered Andee, watching Robin, so tense she was liable to leap ten feet into the air if Robin made any sudden movement.

  “Look,” she said then, surprised to find herself talking, and to—of all people—Robin. “We can’t keep going on like this.”

  “This?” asked Robin sharply, glancing back at Andee then, one brow up. “What is this? May I point out,” she said then, pushing off from the fridge to take two steps toward Andee before she stopped, leaned on the butcher’s block, her eyes flashing. “May I point out,” she repeated softly, brows up as she watched Andee, “that I have been nothing but polite to you.”

  “Yes. You have been,” said Andee, muttering the words through a clenched jaw. “You’ve been very…nice. But coming on this trip…” She clenched her fists so hard that her fingernails pressed against her palms sharply.

  “Isn’t Jill the one we should be worrying about right now?” asked Robin, then. The words came out cold enough to make Andee shiver. And she did, glanced down at the floor before swallowing, lifting her head to meet Robin’s gaze. Robin grabbed the six-pack of beer, brushed past Andee angrily, and then the doors were swinging and Andee was alone in the kitchen.

  She wandered into the bathroom, found the metal box of tissue and lifted it up woodenly, but it was actually just a tissue box cover on top of the box of tissues, and then Andee shut the bathroom door, dropped the lid on the toilet and sat down on it, numb.

  But Andee rallied. She stood, glanced at herself in the mirror—she’d definitely looked worse—and carried the tissue box cover and the box of tissues out of the bathroom, through the kitchen and into the living room where Jill and Tiffany sat beside each other, but Tiffany was no longer holding Jill up, and all three of the women were opening their cans of beer and drinking.

  Jill tossed one to Andee with a watery smile, which Andee actually managed to catch as she sat down and handed her the tissue box.

  “You know?” said Jill, after taking another sip from the can, leaning back against the couch as she visibly relaxed. “This road trip could not have seriously come at a better time. Spending all those days on the open road with my best friends…I’ll get a new perspective. Get a new lease on life. You know, this is the kind of soul awakening stuff that people make documentaries about. Or write memoirs about!” She raised her can of beer, and Andee could tell that Jill was already drunk, but at least it was a slightly happier version of the Jill than Andee had last seen. “Who knows? Maybe I’ll get my groove back or something and come back and sweep Leila off her feet. I mean, I love her.” Her shoulders sagged as she stared down at the can of beer, clasped in two hands on her lap. “Maybe I can,” she muttered quietly.

  “I’ll drink to getting your groove back and to having you be happy, Jillie,” said Tiff firmly, raising her can of beer. Robin raised hers, too, seated on the other end of the couch, and Andee lifted up hers from where she sat, cro
ss-legged on the too-white rug.

  Robin was very carefully not looking at her as they all took a sip of beer. And maybe that was just as well.

  The doorbell rang.

  “Ah,” said Jill, standing unsteadily and pointing her finger to the heavens. “And what wound was there that could not be cured by pizza!” And she promptly fell back against the couch.

  Andee thought that there were a heck of a lot of wounds that pizza could not, in fact, cure. But kept it to herself.

  ---

  Three air mattresses on the living room floor.

  “I’m sorry about this, ladies,” Jill slurred, dropping a blanket instead of handing it to Robin as she’d intended. “I just don’t have any other rooms…you know how small this condo is. Was. I mean, it still is…”

  Andee was only buzzed, not drunk. But if she’d known she’d be sharing the same room as Robin—albeit a very big one—she would have gotten smashed.

  Tiffany, however, was pretty smashed, and was already sound asleep on one of the air mattresses, one of her trim little legs poking out from beneath the white sheets, and snoring like a nasal strip commercial.

  Jill saluted the last two women standing and trooped, wobbling, toward her bedroom where she quietly shut the door behind her.

  Andee and Robin were now, unfortunately, alone.

  “I’ll take whichever air mattress you don’t want,” said Robin graciously, holding the blanket that Jill had dropped in front of her and running a hand through her hair before she yawned hugely. Robin didn’t even look marginally buzzed. Andee tried to think back, tried to remember how many beers she’d had.

  “Andee…” Robin prompted gently, and Andee crashed back to earth, slightly confused, but mostly realizing she needed to choose an air mattress.

  She threw her blanket on the one to the right of Tiff, sitting down on the edge as it bowed out beneath her lanky limbs.

  “Do you, uh, want to use the bathroom first?” asked Robin, unzipping her backpack and fishing around inside for a toothbrush.

  “No, I don’t want to use the bathroom first,” said Andee calmly, evenly, slurring her words only a little as her face became heated. “And you need to stop with the considerate act.”

  Robin’s eyebrows went up as she zipped the backpack shut slowly, toothbrush dangling from her fingers. “Considerate act?” she repeated, grinning.

  Maybe it was the way that that Robin found her words amusing, maybe it was the fact that perhaps Andee had had one beer too many, but she crawled around Tiffany’s air mattress toward Robin and confronted the woman head on, on her knees, as the other woman was. Robin glanced at her, one brow up, her mouth quirked to the side as she stared at Andee, Andee who was balling her fists and breathing heavily. Andee who was close enough to kiss.

  “You don’t give a single shit about me,” said Andee then, heaving out the words like she’d wanted to for ten years. “And you never did.”

  She wobbled a little, on her knees, and Robin reached out before Andee could react, the woman steadying her with soft, warm palms along her bare arms. Andee shivered in her tank top, Robin’s skin against hers, and then silently cursed herself for shivering at all. Robin’s touch should be incapable of doing anything to her! She should be invincible!

  “I did,” said Robin then, softly, quietly. Andee opened her eyes. Robin worked her jaw as she stared down at Andee, close enough to her that Andee could smell the mint on Robin’s breath from her after beer gum, close enough that if Andee leaned forward, if only a little, and angled her chin up just right, she would be able to capture Robin’s mouth with her own, wrapping her arms around Robin’s neck and squeezing her long form against Andee’s own, and…

  “I did care about you,” Robin whispered, and then she rose, and she went through the kitchen, leaving the swinging doors moving in her wake, like hands waving goodbye.

  Andee waited until she got beneath the sheet on her air mattress before she let one single, fat tear squeeze its way out of her eyes and run down her nose to plunk quietly on the pillow.

  She didn’t have The Dream, that night.

  But she did dream about the kiss that never was.

  ---

  “Rise and shine, ladies! And don’t forget your flip-flops, because it’s warm out there!”

  Andee cracked her eyes open blearily just in time to squint them shut again as the reverberations and pain-filled clash of an honest-to-goodness gong filled the living room.

  “If I get my hands on whatever smart ass rang that,” came Tiff’s gravelly tones from her air mattress, “some poor son of a bitch is going to meet their maker today.”

  “Love you, too, Tiff!” Jill practically sang before hitting the gong again.

  “My, my, my.” Andee could hear Robin’s chuckle, and felt herself tense beneath the covers before she realized that the sound of it was actually coming from the kitchen. “We seem pretty chipper this morning,” Robin told Jill, presumably, from the sound of china against countertop, handing the woman a cup of coffee.

  “I had the best sleep of my life. You know, I feel completely energized, new lease on life, the whole nine yards,” said Jill, and took a quick sip from the coffee cup as Andee sat up on her elbows, squinting as she glanced in the direction of the kitchen. The swinging doors were propped open, and the most delicious smells were emanating from within.

  Robin stood at the stove, griddle in her hand, spatula in the other.

  Andee inhaled deeply, her stomach making mutinous sounds of starvation within her. She knew that delicious aroma anywhere.

  Robin was making her famous flapjacks.

  “I feel that this road trip is exactly what I need,” said Jill, putting her elbows on the counter as she inhaled the scent of the flapjacks with a blissful look on her face. “I’ll decide what I’m going to do when I get back, when I have my head on my shoulders again. Right now, I’m just grateful that the most amazing women in the world are with me. Things are looking better,” she said softly, glancing over her shoulder at Tiff and Andee who were yawning and stretching on their air mattresses.

  “Everything’s always better in the morning,” said Tiff resolutely, then, but she wasn’t looking at Jill when she said it—she was staring at Andee with one brow raised, as if to say: “see? You survived the first day!”

  Andee sighed and shook her head, getting up and stretching again as Tiff rose unsteadily to her feet, shoving her toes into her pink flamingo slippers (only Tiffany would dare own such a pair of monstrous slippers) and began to shuffle through the kitchen toward the bathroom. A little self conscious of her Garfield shirt and her tiny pair of shorts (at the time that Andee had packed them, she was only thinking of luggage space and what pajama type things would take up the least amount of room), Andee stood, moved a little farther into the living room and behind the couch and unrolled her yoga mat, the pink paisley thing a sudden splash of comforting familiarity.

  Behind the couch, besides being out of Robin’s direct line of sight, actually looked out onto the sliding glass doors in the condo, and from there, down to the pretty courtyard with the little fountain. It was a lovely view for her morning’s yoga practice and as Andee stepped onto her mat, as she lowered her shoulders, put her hands in front of her heart and breathed out softly, slowly, she tried to let her head clear of everything.

  Absolutely everything, she thought stubbornly, inhaling again and getting another whiff of those glorious flapjacks.

  As she dropped her top half forward, ready to move into downward facing dog, Robin strolled around behind her, close enough that her flowing pants leg swished gently against the backs of Andee’s ankles. Robin had a perfectly valid reason—she was just walking past to her now deflated air mattress to grab her phone--but when Andee glanced through her legs, upside down, to see Robin staring at her rear, she felt the blood rush to her head a little faster.

  “Breakfast is almost ready,” said Robin, noncommittally, even though her eyes roved over Andee’s body
with one brow up, appreciating the view.

  Robin couldn’t tell that Andee was watching her. Which was just as well. Because Andee’s eyes were currently set to “laser kill.”

  “…oh my God, Emily, I’m sorry, okay?” said Tiffany into her cell phone, as she stomped out of the bathroom, a towel wrapped around her middle (and nothing else besides), and a gigantic towel like a turban wrapping her red hair up in a tight twist. She switched the phone to her other shoulder pressing it against her damp ear as she took a plate of flapjacks from the counter and the keg of maple syrup sitting beside it. “Yes, baby, I got all of your texts. How many? Honey, you expect me to actually count them? Yes, I’m having a good time, oh. My. God. Robin!” Tiffany squealed around the mouthful of flapjacks she’d just shoved between her lips. “Oh my God, these are orgasmic! Yes, Emily, honey, I’m talking about food…”

  “Glad you like them,” said Robin, rising at the same time that Andee did, her meditative mood completely ruined as she glared at Robin, blushing. “What?” asked Robin, rolling her shoulders as she put her head to the side, considering Andee.

  “Nothing,” Andee muttered, though she had to brush past the woman on her way out of the living room, through the kitchen, ready to take her own turn in the bathroom. As she went past Robin, the familiar scent of her cologne filled Andee’s nostrils, the warmth of Robin’s nearness making her head spin. Or maybe that was just the after effects of the alcohol.

  Yes. Probably the alcohol.

  Totally not lingering attraction at all.

  When Andee ran the tap for the shower, she made it as cold as it could possibly get.