The Thousand Mile Love Story

by Natalie Vivien

  “You totally look like you belong here,” Andee quipped to Tiffany, who snorted and laughed, making the horse slick his ears back at her.

  “Oh, don’t be mad. People can’t help how they laugh,” chuckled Tiff, as she tottered forward, trying to walk properly in the grass on her stilettos before coming alongside Andee and stroking the horse’s nose, too. He relaxed at that, his ears swiveling forward again.

  “Is buggy-napping still a hangable offense?” asked Robin, considering the horse and buggy when she knocked for the tenth time—and still no one answered.

  “I’m pretty sure that around here it is,” said Tiffany, brows up as Robin trotted back down the steps with Jill, coming to pet the horse’s neck.

  “Hey,” said Robin, sniffing and jerking her chin up as she tried very, very hard to look nonchalant. Andee was still well versed in this look, even after a decade apart. She knew when Robin was up to something. “Why don’t you and Jill go three more houses down, Tiff? I think they had a sign for buggy ride rentals there, too. We’ll split up, see who can find and rent a buggy ride faster. Because, you know, we really do have to get going. Kecksburg is a ways from here.” Robin’s broad, white smile was dazzling as she blinked slowly at Tiffany and Jill.

  They exchanged a glance before Tiffany sighed, nodding. “Okay. If we both rent buggies, we’ll have a race or something.”

  “Deal,” said Robin, with a wide grin. Tiffany and Jill got back in the car and drove slowly away…three houses down.

  Everything was so quaint here, Andee thought, petting the horse’s velvet nose. Not that she wanted to become Amish or anything, but with the idyllic little houses, so old fashioned-looking, like they belonged on a postcard or in an old Currier and Ives print, along with the big red barns and the rolling green pastures…it was a pretty sight that Andee could definitely get used to seeing.

  Like the pretty sight of Robin, grinning at her with mischief flashing in her blue eyes. Robin waited until Tiffany and Jill had driven around the side of the house and onto the main road again before she offered Andee her arm, her head tilted to the side. “Shall we, m’lady?”

  “What are you talking about?” asked Andee, taking a step back, but thinking better of it after a moment and eventually reaching for Robin’s arm. Robin playfully pulled her toward the buggy. “Oh, no, Rob, you can’t be serious!” Andee gulped as Robin lifted her up and into the side of the buggy. “Oh, my God. They’re going to kill us. We are stealing their buggy, you crazy woman!”

  “You used to love my craziness,” Robin pointed out with a laugh, as she untied the horse from the post and backed it up slowly.

  “And where did you learn to drive a horse?” asked Andee curiously, as Robin leapt up beside her and took the reins from their place, looped around the buggy’s dashboard.

  “Oh, you know, here and there,” she sniffed, smile so wide that it made Andee’s heart begin to beat even faster. “Hold on!” she said, and then she chirruped to the horse and clicked her tongue.

  The horse took off from a standstill to a fast-paced trot. “Whoa!” Andee muttered, gripping the edge of the seat as she bounced around and—perhaps exactly as Robin had planned it—into Robin.

  Robin grinned and put an arm around her, her left hand holding the reins. She was relaxed, and yet skillful, the way she was able to manipulate the two reins separately, and Andee was pretty impressed.

  If she stopped fretting over the fact that they were committing a horsenapping.

  “For centuries, courting was done from the seat of a buggy,” said Robin, head to the side as she glanced at Andee, her brow up, questioning.

  “For centuries, courting was not done in a stolen buggy,” said Andee. The horse slowed to a walk as Robin pulled him in. Then Andee said quietly, “Courting?”

  “Whoa,” muttered Robin, and—on a dime—the bay gelding stopped.

  The sunshine poured down all around them. In the distance, a cow actually mooed. If Andee closed her eyes, she would have thought she was watching a period movie. But she wasn’t. Somehow, impossibly, she was sitting in a stolen Amish buggy with the most beautiful, funny, and surprising woman she’d ever known.

  And the pain from ten years ago, she realized, was beginning to fade away.

  “Robin!” called a man’s voice. Andee pulled back, realizing she’d been leaning toward Robin, her heartbeat thundering, as Robin sighed and peeked out the side of the buggy.

  “Sorry, Robin!” called the man, running up to the side of the buggy and panting. Andee stared. The man was Amish, wore a big straw-brimmed hat and overalls, and he was talking to Robin like he knew her. Which he, apparently, did. He grinned up at Robin, taking off his hat before running his hand through his thinning hair. “We’d been just about to unhitch Goliath there and exchange him for Bo, but I knew you’d told me you were going to arrive around this time. I wanted to tell you, though, Goliath threw a shoe, and—”

  “I’m sorry, Joe. Did I do any damage?” asked Robin quickly, hopping off the buggy seat and trotting up to the horse’s side. Andee stared, her mouth open, as Robin bent down and effortlessly picked up the horse’s front left leg.

  “No, you didn’t go far enough,” said the man, Joe, shaking his head. “Bring him back, and I’ll hitch up Bo for you, and you can go at it again.”

  Robin glanced ruefully at Andee, grinning and shaking her head. “It’s okay, Joe. We went for a little ride, anyway. I appreciate it,” she said, slipping the man what appeared to be a hundred dollar bill.

  “You come anytime, Robin,” said the man again, clapping his hand to her shoulder. Robin grinned at him, walked alongside the buggy and held up her arms to Andee.

  “Come on,” she said, smiling warmly. “Let’s go find the others.”

  Robin helped Andee down, and Joe hopped up into the buggy, taking the reins and wheeling Goliath around as he walked placidly back toward the little farm.

  Andee and Robin began to stroll along the road, Andee staring at her strange companion, mystified. “So… You know that guy?”

  “Joe? Yeah, we go way back. I always bring my clients here when they want to try horseback riding, or—really—anything to do with horses. He’s a good horseman,” she said, tossing her hair out of her eyes as she thrust her hands into her pockets.

  “And you just…randomly…” Andee blinked. “Wait a minute. Had you rented that horse and buggy from him? To take me on a ride?”

  “It sounds less romantic when you say it like that,” said Robin, grinning at her.

  “But the Amish…they don’t have phones, do they?” said Andee, wracking her brains as she thought back through what little she knew about Amish ways. Which amounted to the fact that they didn’t use much technology and that they made shoo-fly pies. “So, how did you tell him? And when did you tell him?”

  “Let’s just say…” murmured Robin, bumping into Andee a little with her hip. Warmth flooded through Andee. “Let’s just say that I was hoping that, by this time, you’d be talking to me. And that I could impress you with my horsey knowledge.”

  “You had the guy leave his horse and buggy out for you so that you could take me on a drive through the countryside,” said Andee, stopping. The road was so quiet. The wind whistled in the trees alongside it, and a herd of sheep gazed at them with interest through the wooden fence, pieces of grass sticking out of their little mouths as they munched, watching.

  “Yeah,” said Robin, gazing down at Andee and searching her eyes.

  Andee opened her mouth. She shut her mouth. She swallowed the lump in her throat, and then she was about to speak when a whoop filled the air.

  And a buggy carrying Tiffany—hollering at the top of her lungs—and a seasick-looking Jill trotted past, the black horse in front moving its legs so quickly, they looked like a blur. Tiffany was clinging to the Amish man’s arm who was driving the horse, and he appeared to be just as seasick as Jill.

  “Yee-haw!” shouted Tiffany. It was probably the first time that
word had been uttered in the county in at least a hundred years.

  ---

  “What are we looking at?” asked Tiffany, her head to the side as all four women stared at the odd object before them.

  “This is a handmade replica of the alien spaceship that crash-landed here in the sixties,” said Robin patiently. For the fourth time.

  “Huh,” is what Tiffany said, her head still to the side. And then, she added, “It looks like a big fat acorn.”

  Robin put her head to the side, too. “Maybe the aliens were a race of really big squirrels?”

  Jill shook her head, crossing her arms and sitting down on the stump beside the parking lot where the weird thing was situated. Andee sat down next to her, and they continued to stare up at the spaceship replica. They had, after all, driven a couple of hundred miles to see it. They might as well stare at it for a while.

  The strange sculpture sat on top of a platform about ten feet off the ground in the middle of a parking lot in one of the tiniest towns Andee had ever found herself in. They were somewhere in Pennsylvania… That was all she knew. And that here, decades ago, an alien ship had supposedly crashed down.

  Tiffany was right: it did look like a gigantic acorn. The sculpture had some strange alien-ish writing along its side.

  “They call Kecksburg the Area 51 of the east,” said Robin, sitting down beside Jill and Andee as Tiffany continued to stare up at the sculpture. “It was pretty big news. In the sixties.”

  “Yeah. So were bell bottoms and Pyrex serving dishes,” said Jill thoughtfully.

  “I have seen enough of this space acorn,” said Tiffany imperiously, turning on her heel as Robin began to get out her camera, “and staring at an oversized acorn has made me realize that I’m very hungry.”

  “Maybe you’re part squirrel?” said Jill, still sounding thoughtful.

  “We have to take a picture before we set up camp,” said Robin, shaking her head as she fiddled with her camera, propping it up on the stump that Jill and Andee had vacated. “I want everyone to get in front of that thing… Tiff, try to look like you’ve just seen something pretty darn cool and out of this world.”

  “Well, I have seen something that squirrels would consider cool,” said Tiffany around her gigantic smile that she was pointing at the camera.

  “Okay, everyone! Say ‘I want to believe’!” shouted Robin, pressing the button and running toward the three women. She collided, laughing, with Andee, and this time, Andee warmed at that, warmed as Robin put her arm around Andee’s waist, as Robin held her close and the flashing light on top of the camera held, a brief click declaring that this moment was captured forever.

  “So, we’re camping around here?” said Tiffany, shivering a little as she gazed back over her shoulder at the sculpture. “Where aliens supposedly landed?”

  “Says the woman who snorts at the idea that aliens could even exist,” laughed Robin, pocketing her camera and walking over to the car. “So, not only are there supposed to be aliens about,” she said, brows raised and voice pitched like Boris Karloff’s. “But these woods around here? They’re supposed to contain Bigfoot.”

  Tiffany sighed for a long moment before opening up the driver’s side door. “I rest easy in the fact that I’m tiny compared to all of you,” she said blithely, then, “and if Bigfoot ever came for us, he’d eat me last. He’d definitely start with you, Rob.”

  “Naturally!” said Robin, spreading her arms as she grinned sidelong at Andee. “But what if he wants something small and tender? A snack? Like a Chicken McNugget?”

  “You could always walk to the campground!” Tiff sang out sweetly, and started the engine.

  “Guys, I’m a little worried,” said Jill, as Tiffany pulled out of the parking lot, the spaceship replica growing smaller behind them. “I haven’t received a text from Leila in a couple of days…” Jill was looking down at her hands, trying to keep her voice upbeat, but it cracked on the last few words. “I…really miss her.”

  “Aw, honey,” said Tiffany, reaching out and squeezing one of Jill’s hands. “I know you must. I mean, you were with her for a long time. It’s up to you what you’re going to do after the wedding.”

  “I still have a lot to think about,” Jill muttered, rubbing at her eyes and sighing. “Anyway…I can’t believe the wedding’s so soon,” said Jill, leaning back in the seat. “This Saturday! I mean, that’s what—five days away?”

  “So, I know I’m wearing a bridesmaid dress,” said Tiffany, beaming into the backseat as she slowed down for a stop sign. “And that Andee’s wearing a dress. What about you two?”

  “Suit,” said Robin and Jill at the same time.

  “We’re going to look so swanky!” Robin chuckled.

  “What about Kimberly?” asked Andee. “Suit for her?”

  When Andee spoke Kimberly’s name, she noticed that Robin visibly stiffened beside her. Andee glanced sidelong at her companion, brows up as Robin stared out at the scenery, mouth in a downturned line.

  “She’s wearing a suit,” said Tiffany, not noticing the icy change in the backseat. “But I’m super worried about my dress. There was this little rip in the right sleeve, and I had it sent away, but I didn’t get a chance to try it on, because the seamstress had to have it sent directly to Burlington if it was going to get there in time…”

  “I’m sure it’ll be fine,” said Andee soothingly.

  “And I love the color of the dress,” Tiffany cooed, switching topics with lightning efficiency. “It’s totally something I’ll wear again.”

  “I’m going to rock that suit until I can’t rock a suit anymore,” grinned Robin, softening.

  “And I’d like to rock more than wheat bread and shoo-fly pie for dinner,” said Jill reasonably as they passed a tiny, hole-in-the-wall grocery store. “Unless you guys were considering eating pine needles for dinner.”

  “I was thinking pine needles,” said Robin cheerfully.

  Tiffany laughed and—taking the hint—pulled into the grocery store parking lot.

  “We don’t need fixings for s’mores,” said Jill, taking out her phone and starting a list. “What about hotdogs?”

  “I think it’s actual camping law that you have to have hotdogs when you go camping,” said Tiffany, parking and turning off the ignition. “And I need a new bottle of nail polish remover.”

  “I think it’s actual road trip law that Tiffany must go through at least one bottle of nail polish remover per trip,” said Robin, winking as Tiffany pushed her sunglasses up on her head to check her makeup in the rearview.

  “Oh, I’ll get you back, Rob. Just you wait. I’m going to lure Bigfoot to our camp,” she said primly, patting her bandana and fixing her strands of unruly red hair. “It’ll be like those cheesy horror movies from the fifties. I can see the poster now! Tiny, adorable lesbian lures Bigfoot to eat big, loud lesbian! It’ll be the picture everyone goes to see.” She grinned winningly into the rearview mirror, and the women spilled out of the car, chuckling and stretching.

  The grocery store was a little more rustic than Andee was accustomed to. It seemed that every single customer was a man in a beard wearing plaid.

  She honestly didn’t think anything of it until they were in the checkout line.

  “So, Bigfoot, really?” she asked Robin, as Robin put a six-pack of beer on the conveyer belt. Robin shrugged, taking her wallet out of her back pocket, but the guy in front of the women in line turned around, his brows raised. He was of the plaid shirt-wearing, beard-toting variety, and he gazed back at Andee and Robin with wide eyes.

  “You’ve seen him, too?” he said then, voice rumbling as the cashier, a slight girl who looked sixteen at most, continued to scan the man’s items as quickly as she could.

  “We’re camping in the area tonight,” said Robin easily as Tiffany opened—and then shut—her mouth. “We haven’t seen him,” said Robin, then.

  “Well, I have. Several times,” said the guy, handing the checkout girl a fifty-do
llar bill as his gaze narrowed. “If he comes for you ladies, you just start a big racket, right? They don’t like noise,” he said, taking up his plastic bag of groceries and nodding as the checkout girl began to scan their provisions. “You be careful, you hear?” said the man, and beneath the terribly flickering fluorescent lights overhead, his eyes flashed darkly, and he turned on his heel and stalked out of the grocery store.

  “That wasn’t creepy at all,” said Tiffany cheerfully, as she began to dig money out of her purse, Andee and Jill each taking out a twenty from their respective wallets to split the grocery bill.

  “That was Bigfoot Bob,” said the checkout girl then, miserably. The tag on her lapel read Carol. “He’s always going on about how he’s met up with Bigfoot in the woods, but he also thinks the aliens landed here, too, so...” She shrugged. “Paper or plastic?”

  The four women carried the groceries out to the car in silence.

  “Robin Barnes, if I am kidnapped by Bigfoot or aliens tonight, so help me, I will come back as a ghost and haunt your ass,” said Tiffany, dumping the bag she carried into the convertible’s trunk. She glanced up at Robin, who was trying very, very hard to swallow her chuckle.

  “The only thing being kidnapped tonight is a bunch of hotdogs and buns. And they’ll be abducted into our bellies,” promised Robin, shutting the trunk. The four women climbed into the convertible, and Tiffany typed the address for the campground into the GPS.

  Campgrounds were some of Andee’s favorite places on earth, accommodating moments from her childhood—and from when the “Adventures Lezzies” went camping together—that comprised some of the most cherished memories in her heart.

  But Andee had never been to this campground before.