Summer Fling

by Jean Copeland

  Kate giggled. “I’m glad I don’t have to go up against you in court.”

  “Why? Because I make such good arguments?”

  “No, because you’re so sexy. I could never keep a jury’s attention with you in the room.”

  As Kate jabbed her sides, Jordan yelped and writhed to get free. She continued searching for more ticklish spots until, after a long, torturous span, Jordan finally arrested her hands.

  “I loved singing that song to you,” Jordan said as the moon peered into the window and illuminated her sleepy face. “The lyrics are perfect, especially the part about feeling sad for the rest—the women who lost you and the ones who can’t have you now that you’re mine.”

  Mine? Kate choked up on the sweetness of her sentiment and the fear it conjured. She wasn’t aware they’d reached the possessive-pronoun stage already. Jordan probably hadn’t meant it that way. It was just a lovely, romantic thing to say.

  “You have quite a way with words, too,” Kate said.

  “They come from the heart. You can’t be a songwriter without it.”

  “It’s a wonderful talent.”

  Jordan propped herself up and stared into Kate’s eyes. “I mean every word. You inspire me to express everything you make me feel. That’s how I know you’re the one.”

  Kate swallowed hard. “The one?”

  “Uh-huh,” Jordan uttered softly then cuddled her tighter.

  “Oh, come on.” Kate laughed it off. “It’s a little soon to know that for sure. I mean, look at me—I’m full of faults.”

  Jordan giggled. “Relax, baby. I’m not about to get down on one knee or anything. Especially since I’m stark naked at the moment.”

  Kate laughed in relief. “I knew that.”

  “Did you?”

  “Pffft, yeah,” Kate said.

  “Okay, good.” Jordan began kissing her neck. “So, listen, as long as we’re naked…”

  Chapter Twelve

  Mother Knows Best?

  The backyard Kate grew up in always seemed so small whenever she gazed out from the deck during visits with her mom. Still surrounded by a perimeter of forsythia bushes on each side and a robust wall of shrubbery edging out from the woods in back, it always offered Kate a respite when the real world felt like it was bearing down on her.

  At that moment, it wasn’t the world bearing down on her, but her mother’s occasional but obvious inquisitive glances at Jordan. The idea seemed harmless enough—a lazy afternoon and a lunch of steak and veggies on the old three-legged charcoal grill on which the late Mr. Randall had worked his outdoor culinary magic. But the late-August humidity wasn’t the only form of oppression dogging Kate.

  Jordan sat beside her at the umbrella table oblivious to Kate’s discomfort as Mrs. Randall regaled her with quaint Randall-family anecdotes.

  “Mr. Randall told me he’d never rest in peace if I didn’t learn to use this grill before he died,” Sylvia said. She imitated her husband, shaking a bony finger at Jordan. “‘And don’t you dare sell out for one of those gas jobs either,’ he said.”

  Kate smiled. “Barbecuing was a competitive sport for Dad.”

  “I get that impression,” Jordan said. “Thank you for lunch, Mrs. Randall. It was delicious.”

  Buddy, the chubby, aging yellow Lab sitting patiently by Jordan’s chair, barked in agreement.

  “You’re welcome, Jordan. Thank you for bringing the trifle. I can’t wait to try it. I hope you have room for dessert.”

  “I think I can force it down.”

  “Let me get the coffee started.”

  “I’ll help you.” Kate gathered the plates and silverware.

  “I’ll help, too,” Jordan said.

  “Both of you stay out here and relax,” Mrs. Randall insisted. “Besides, Jordan, I don’t think Buddy will like it very much if you leave him.”

  “Is that right, Buddy-boy?” Jordan asked the dog as she scratched his ears. He dropped to the patio so she could rub his belly.

  Kate grinned at the charming scene. “If you keep pampering him like that, he’ll never leave you alone.”

  “I’m not worried,” Jordan said. “I’ve got plenty of affection to give you Randalls, especially the furry ones.”

  “Should I stop shaving my legs?”

  “Ha-ha. Uh, no.” Jordan smiled as she patted Buddy’s chest. “It was a really nice surprise when you invited me here to meet your mom. That’s kind of big.”

  Kate shrugged. “It’s just a little lunch.”

  “But it’s lunch with your mom. Unless you have a girl-of-the-month club I’m not aware of. When was the last time you brought someone to meet her?”

  “Hmm.” Kate pressed her finger against her lips as she calculated the answer. “Twenty-three years ago.”

  “Two decades? Yeah. No big deal.” Jordan shot her the cutest smirk.

  “She’s seventy-five. Tomorrow she probably won’t even remember meeting you,” she said with a wink.

  “I doubt that. She’s wicked sharp.”

  Kate enjoyed their teasing banter, but it really was a big deal. Bigger than she’d wanted to make of it only two months in.

  “Does this mean you’ll meet my parents now?” Jordan asked.

  Suddenly, Kate’s self-assurance plunged like the cabin pressure in a nose-diving airplane. Meet her parents? Who said that was part of the bargain? “Uh…”

  “I don’t mean like tomorrow. You know, I mean when we’re all free to arrange something. Whenever that might be.”

  “Sure, yeah, definitely,” she sputtered when she’d recovered her ability to process language. “Let me see if my mother needs any help in there. Be right back.”

  Kate peeled out into the kitchen through the sliders.

  “I think you might have to give Buddy up to Jordan,” she said to her mother after a deep breath.

  “Ah, he’s always been a pushover for pretty girls,” Sylvia said, heading for the coffeemaker. “Like everyone else in this family—except me.”

  “It’s never too late to break into something new, you know,” Kate said. “And it’s more fun than learning conversational Spanish.”

  Sylvia smirked. “I’ll give it some thought.”

  Kate tossed out the lunch scraps and arranged the dishes in the dishwasher, tracking her mother’s every move with anticipation. Finally, with contrived nonchalance, “So, how are things?”

  “What do you mean, ‘how are things?’ You know how they are. We talk three times a week.”

  Kate rolled her eyes. “It’s rhetorical. I’m trying to start a conversation with you, about something serious.”

  “You haven’t been this clumsy with words since you came out to me in college. What are you, going back in?”

  “No,” Kate said with a laugh.

  Sylvia stopped and whirled around with the coffee scoop still in hand. “Kathryn, please tell me she’s just a friend,” she said, as if she already knew the answer but was hoping she was mistaken.

  Kate frowned. “Why are you saying it like that?”

  “Does her mother know where she is?” Sylvia was apparently teasing, but the look on her face was of genuine concern.

  “That was tacky, Mom, even for you.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m old. My mind isn’t it what it used to be,” she said after noticing Kate’s expression.

  “Who are you kidding? You’re more on the ball than all of us.”

  “I love these cheeks.” She pinched Kate’s face before heading to the faucet to fill the coffeepot.

  “You have a problem with the age difference?”

  Kate joined her mother in gazing out the window over the sink. Jordan was rolling around in the grass loving up Buddy, who wriggled on his back.

  “You’re a big girl, Kate. You don’t need my opinion.”

  “I know I don’t, but I always talk to you about what’s going on in my life. Is this really a problem? We’re just dating.”

  “That’s it? Just dating?�
� Sylvia gave her that I’m gonna keep letting you lie till it blows up in your face look she recognized too well from her adolescence.

  “That’s all.” Kate let her eyes lock on her mother’s in defiance. “Who knows if we’ll even be together in six months, or next month?”

  Sylva’s stare felt like a Taser.

  “Listen, kid,” she said. “I know you’re an ace in the courtroom, but your trial expertise is no match for a mother’s instincts. You’re crazy if you think I can’t read in your face, in both your faces, that this is more than just casual dating.”

  “Whatever, Sylvia,” Kate said. “I’m living in the moment, and I’m happy. That’s all that matters.”

  “Good. I’m glad you’re happy.”

  Kate stared at her mother’s back for a moment and then said seriously, “Would you just say what you want to say?”

  Sylvia turned around again and leaned against the counter, arms folded. “Okay, so you’re having the time of your life right now, but what about in three years when you turn fifty and she’s only in her early thirties? Where’s this coming from anyway? Is this a delayed Lydia rebound?”

  “What are you talking about?” Kate said dismissively. She sat in the chair where she’d spent numerous summer evenings of her youth forcing down creamed spinach at dinner as part of the bargain to go back into the swimming pool.

  “Kathryn, ever since you were a little girl, you wanted everything just right. No one could touch your international doll collection because you had it arranged by continent and then by country. All your albums were alphabetized, and that time your brother spilled soda on your favorite paper-doll set, I didn’t think I’d ever get you to stop hollering. You do things a certain way because it suits your personality. That girl out there is marvelous but, honey, she’s a stack of albums entirely out of order.”

  “Yes, Mom,” Kate said with an exaggerated nod. “No one is going to dispute my propensity toward anal-retentiveness, but Jordan is a person, not a thing. I love spending time with her. I think it shows tremendous personal growth that I haven’t dumped her because she doesn’t fit into a specific mold.”

  “Obviously, your mind is made up.”

  “Look, you have a point, to a certain extent. But I’m surprised at how narrow-minded you’re being. That’s so not you.”

  “Oh, Kate, these May-December things never work out.” She ambled to the table and sat down with her.

  “How can you say that? Bogey and Bacall were your favorite Hollywood couple.”

  “You can’t count them. He died before anything had a chance to go wrong.”

  Kate scoffed in exasperation.

  “What kind of future do you think you can have with someone that young? What happens if she meets someone her own age?”

  “If you’ll recall, I planned a future with Lydia, who was my age, and we all know how well that turned out. As for her meeting a younger woman, well, now you’re asking me to answer questions no one can.”

  “You’re both in such different places in your lives. You must see that. Think about how much you’ve changed since you were her age. Isn’t that why you and Lydia broke up? You hit your forties and grew apart.”

  “That’s a gross minimization of my situation with Lydia, but yeah, that was part of it.”

  Sylvia looped her fingers around Kate’s. “Honey, you think I’m being narrow, but you don’t have children. You don’t know what it was like for me to look at you and watch you suffer the pain of a broken heart and know I couldn’t do a thing for you. I never felt so helpless in my life. With this girl, you could be setting yourself up for more of the same.”

  The weight of her mother’s words crushed her confidence like glass.

  “Kate, the deeper you let yourself fall…” She got up and resumed busying herself with the dessert preparations. “I don’t know. I just don’t want to see you to go through that again.”

  Kate’s head throbbed. She could’ve easily flustered herself at home with these unpleasant musings without braving miles of summer highway traffic so her mother could reinforce them.

  “Look, there’s no reason to worry. This isn’t serious.” She pushed away from the table and padded to the counter.

  Sylvia eyed her.

  “We better hurry up and eat the trifle,” Kate said. “Things seem to turn sour awfully fast around here.”

  Sylvia feigned her classic maternal frustration. “Fine. I’m just your mother. What do I know about anything? I’ve only survived on this planet for seventy…”

  Kate took the large trifle bowl from her as she ranted and breezed out the sliders.

  Jordan jogged over to her. “Is everything all right? You look a little flushed.”

  Kate soothed herself with the aroma of freshly mowed grass. “I’m fine. It’s just a little hot out for coffee and an inquisition.”

  “Your mom still gets on your case,” Jordan said through a chuckle.

  Kate narrowed her eyes. “Was that a crack about my age?”

  Jordan clapped her hand over her mouth. “No, no. That’s not what I meant. I mean, mine does, too.”

  “Forget it.” She hooked her hand under Jordan’s arm and led her to the table. “Let’s swelter in the heat now with dessert and my mom’s hot coffee.”

  “Sounds like heaven,” Jordan said.

  * * *

  The ride home did little to restore the normal color to Kate’s face, despite the continuous blast of air-conditioning. Sylvia knew exactly where to dig to strike a nerve by reminding Kate what was and wasn’t suited to her infamously uptight personality. So, she was serious. Big deal. Where would the world be without a few conscientious, even-keeled people like her to balance a universe filled with impetuous fools?

  But what if by some strange cosmic shift her mother was right? As horrible as it was to comprehend, Sylvia had presented an airtight case. Before Jordan burst onto the scene, life might have been occasionally dull and lonely, but at least it was ordered, and Kate had full sovereignty over her emotions. Before Jordan, the international dolls and albums were precisely where they belonged.

  “She hated me, didn’t she?” Jordan said, staring out the window.

  “Huh?” The question jolted Kate out of her rumination.

  “Your mother. She hated me.”

  “She did not hate you. She said you’re a doll, and that’s a direct quote.”

  “She liked the trifle anyway.”

  “She loved it. And you tripled your market value when you said your grandmother taught you how to bake.”

  Jordan smiled. “She did. We always made desserts together—cookies, pies. She always let me get my hands right in it.”

  “And playing with Buddy all afternoon? Forget it. You’re golden.”

  “It just seemed like there was some tension in the air, especially during dessert.”

  “You were probably just a little anxious about making an impression.”

  Jordan nodded, seeming satisfied with her answer. But as the sun slipped into the smoky orange horizon, Kate’s little exchange with her mother still had her on high alert. As she and Jordan strained for conversation on the ride home, she struggled to convince herself that the disquiet inside was the handiwork of an overactive imagination.

  “If I’m the anxious one, how come you haven’t reached for my hand once since we got in the car?” Jordan set her hand on Kate’s thigh.

  All along, Kate had measured her safety in this by guesstimating how she’d feel if Jordan decided to stop seeing her. No big deal, she’d told herself. She’d reclaim her independence after a brief interlude of melancholy—nothing she couldn’t manage. But the truth was finally confronting her. She’d miss her. A lot. And what if her mother’s projection came true? How would she feel if Jordan had a midlife crisis at forty and wanted to move on with someone her own age, more in tune with her life goals? It might not even take that long. If the way women flocked to Jordan at her shows was any indication of things to come, a bet
ter match for her was only a performance away.

  * * *

  All had returned to normal with Kate and Jordan in the couple of weeks since visiting Kate’s mother. She’d managed to compartmentalize her mother’s doomsday predictions far enough from her consciousness that they’d eventually lost their bite. Jordan had even offered to turn down a gig invitation so they could spend an entire weekend together, but Kate had insisted that she take the Sunday-afternoon lesbian social event at a local brewery. The selfless deed had made her feel magnanimous and emotionally secure. Of course, she’d gone along with Jordan to the gathering, but that was a minor detail, not to detract from her good-girlfriend magnanimity.

  Now as they drove to the restaurant for Sunday dinner with Jordan’s parents, Kate contemplated the feasibility of bolting from the passenger seat at the next stoplight. She wished she’d thought it through more before she’d invited Jordan to meet her mother. It left the door wide open for something like this.

  Jordan clutched Kate’s thigh from the driver’s seat. “Stop shaking your leg like that. You’re making me nervous.”

  “Okay, sorry.” She replaced the leg-shaking with drumming her fingertips on the passenger-side door panel. Dinner with Jordan’s parents. Why had she agreed to this? Certain implications were made when one meets the parents, heavy implications—unspoken, binding promises. The roller-coaster speed at which things were progressing made her feel like she was a passenger who realized right before the first drop that her seat belt was undone.

  “Kate,” Jordan snapped. “Come on, babe. You don’t have to be so nervous.”

  “I don’t? You’ve essentially described your parents as judgmental elitists.”

  “They’re judgmental with me. You’re an attorney. They’ll love that I’m dating you. They’ll probably say something like they hope your professional status will influence me to go back to school for a more prestigious career—such as greedy, soulless CEO or corporate yes-woman like my sister.”

  “I’m sure it was awful growing up feeling like you had to fill the shoes of a sibling, but you’re an adult now, with a mind and dreams and goals of your own. Hopefully, they’ll learn to respect that fact sooner than later.”