“Twice. You say you cheated once; you cheated twice. You cheated on me.”
“But that — it was only — we weren’t even — ”
“Whatever you’re trying to say, Anika, don’t. Don’t say it doesn’t count because it was just a kiss. And don’t say we weren’t anything official. You were at that reception with me, as my date. If that’s not official, I don’t know what the fuck is.”
I open my mouth to argue, but then I see tears pooling around the rims of Amy’s dark eyes.
“You’re right,” I say. “I’m sorry. I’m so totally fucking sorry.”
Amy sniffs, blinks the tears away. “I don’t know how you can affect me like this,” she says. “You’re just some… some stranger I met on a plane. Some basketball player I never thought I’d see in person. You’re not even real.”
“I’m not?” I say, completely confused.
I look down at my scrambled eggs, and it sucks because they’re going to get cold, but I put them down next to my coffee. Then I get out of my plastic chair and drop down onto one knee in front of Amy.
“Amy Ellis,” I start, but she interrupts me before I can go any further.
“Oh, God, Anika, what are you doing? Don’t tell me you’re about to fucking propose or something.”
“No — I — well, not this time, anyway.” I place my hands on her knees, which are still holding a coffee cup between them, and I start again. “Amy Ellis, I am so, so sorry. When I look at you, I see my future. And I don’t know exactly what that means, because who the fuck knows what the future holds, but there’s one thing I know for sure about my future — I want you in it. I need you in it. So, please, please will you give me another chance? One get-out-of-jail-free card, that’s all I’m asking.”
Her gaze falls to my face, and she seems to study me for a moment. Then she smiles. It’s a smirk, really, one of those devious Amy Ellis smirks. That smirk. I didn’t even realize how much I’d missed that smirk until it hits my heart with a sharp pang.
“I tell you what,” she says. “One date. One chance to impress me. Show me something in Basel that you truly love, something that doesn’t have anything to do with basketball. And if it impresses me, then… I’ll consider forgiving you. But I’m not making any promises.”
I nod. “I’ll take those odds.”
I don’t try to sit next to Amy on our flight to Basel. I figure it’s better to give her space. At baggage claim, I tell her I’ll get in touch about the date, which she agrees to.
Two days later, a little after ten in the morning, I’m standing on the stoop outside her building, two cups of coffee (good coffee) in hand. I press the buzzer on her door.
Chapter 48: Oh, the places you’ll go!
“So. A morning date?” Amy says when she steps outside and accepts her cup of coffee. “Bold.”
I grin. “You’re going to like this.”
She raises an eyebrow. “Maybe I will. Maybe I won’t.”
“You will.”
I open the door to the dark grey Mercedes parked at the curb for her; she glances between it and me in surprise.
“Have you always owned a Mercedes? Women’s basketball salaries must be higher than I thought.”
“They’re not,” I say. “Trust me. But I already sold my car; I just rented this one for the day.” I shrug. “A Mercedes is really more Dutch’s thing than mine, but… You told me to impress you.”
She smiles a little. “So I did.”
I climb in behind the wheel, put the car into gear.
“Why did you sell your car?” she asks curiously.
“Oh — I didn’t tell you? I’m moving back to Ohio.”
Her shock is evident on her face. “Really? Why? I thought you said you’d rather move to Antartica than Ohio?”
“Yeah, it’s true. I did say that. But… you know, with my mom being sick… Plus all my family’s there. I mean, PJ’s in Philadelphia, but that’s close enough. I figured it was time to get back to my roots. Or grow some roots. I realized when I was home that I’ve been running from Ohio for way too long.”
She thinks about this a moment. “So what are you going to do in Ohio? It’s not exactly known for its booming economy, you know.”
“Well… I kinda bought my parents’ restaurant.”
Now she’s looking really fucking shocked.
“When I really sat down and asked myself, ‘What do I care about, other than basketball?’ the answer was — and look, I know this sounds like a fucking Hallmark card, but seriously — I decided that what matters most is my family. I love Alex and Graham and their kids, and they’re like family to me, but they’re far from everyone else I love. And… I haven’t really done a good job at being a good daughter or a good sister or a good auntie over the years. So I wanted to make up for that.”
“I can understand that,” Amy says, “but I’m still a little surprised you decided to buy the restaurant.”
“I know. I’m still a little surprised, too. But you know what? When I stopped thinking about it as just ‘restaurant’ and started thinking about it in other ways, I realized that it really isn’t all bad.”
“So what does that mean, exactly? How are you thinking about it now?”
“As a piece of my family, for one. It’s almost like Soul Mountain has been my parents’ fifth child. And it was in rough shape, financially, due to — eh, well, it’s a long story, but it was a fifth child that was on life support. And it was going to break my parents’ heart if they ended up having to take it off life support and close it. So that’s one part of it.”
“Is there another part?”
I glance over at Amy while I wait for the light to change. “There is. You know what I figured out from working there during the last couple months? Soul Mountain doesn’t just belong to my family; it belongs to the whole goddamned town. It’s an institution there. If it disappeared… it would be like the statue of Custer disappearing.”
Amy shakes her head, lets out a small laugh.
“What?” I ask. “Is that too sappy?”
“It is sappy,” she agrees. “But it’s also… I don’t know, it’s sweet. That you would care about your family enough and Marcine enough to sink your future into a restaurant.”
“Hey,” I admonish. “Let’s not use the words ‘sink’ and ‘restaurant’ in the same sentence, okay?” I see an open parking space, pull into it before it has a chance to disappear. “We’re here, by the way.”
“Where’s here?”
“You told me to show you one thing here that I truly love. Well, I love this place. As a matter of fact, I think it’s fair to say that it’s my favorite place in all of Basel.”
She glances around, looking for something remarkable. But we’re parked on a side street, next to a nondescript hotel.
“It’s actually behind us,” I say. “We’re going to have to walk a block.”
“It’s not the Spalentor, is it?” she asks, referring to the old, castle-like city gate.
“Nah. Too touristy.”
“Then what is it?”
I chuckle. “Follow me.”
#
Switzerland is a mountainous nation, cloudy, rainy, snowy for large chunks of the year. Summer is pleasant in Basel, but the daytime high doesn’t usually climb much above seventy. We’ve had eighty-degree days, for sure, but for the most part, I’d call the weather on the cool side of “temperate.”
That’s why, for the past several years that I’ve lived here, I’ve made the botanical gardens at the University of Basel my second home. Inside the big glass greenhouse, I can pretend I’m in a tropical climate. I can lose myself amongst the rows of orchids and water lilies and Seussian-like flowers, drinking coffee and thinking about life.
I brought Cici here once, the girl I dated for a couple years. She was bored and antsy here, had a “So?” attitude that led to us leaving almost as soon as we arrived. I never brought anyone to the botanical gardens after that. It’s become like my ow
n private retreat space, the place no one knows about but me.
I mean, of course it’s not actually fucking true that no one else knows about this place; people are in here all the time. But somehow, whenever I’m there, I feel like I’m in an insulated world all my own, and for a while, I can forget about my fucked-up problems.
I tell all this to Amy as she follows me into the main, domed greenhouse, where we are met by humid air. I let her get a few steps ahead, take in the green while I linger behind.
She stops in front of the pond that sits beneath the dome’s center, gazing out at otherworldly lily pads.
“How did you find this place?” she asks.
“By accident. Just wandering around the city one day.”
“And you come here a lot?”
“Probably at least once per week. Twice if it’s a shitty week.”
She turns around, and there’s a smile on her face. A genuine smile, an Amy smile. The kind I grew to love in the days leading up to Grace Adler’s wedding. “Anika Singh, you never cease to surprise me. You know that?”
“Is that a good thing? Or a bad thing?”
“In this case, it’s a good thing.”
We end up spending the rest of the day together, eating lunch outside at a cafe because it’s shaping up into a warm, near-summer’s day, then taking a leisurely walk back to where I parked the Mercedes.
“Well,” I say to Amy, leaning against the passenger’s side of the car. “Did I do okay? Am I still relegated to the doghouse, or is there a chance I can be forgiven?”
Amy reaches up, puts her hands lightly on my shoulders. Her touch sends an unexpected jolt of energy into me as if I’d gotten a miniature electrocution. She runs her hands down my arms, over my wrists, squeezes my fingers.
“Do you understand how badly you hurt me?” she asks, voice soft.
“I do. And I’m sorry.”
She shakes her head. “No. I don’t think you do understand. Ever since I met you…” She trails off, staring at a far away place beyond me. She tries again. When she speaks again, she sounds more like she’s talking to herself than to me. “You can’t understand how it felt because I don’t completely understand it myself. You’re not supposed to be anyone to me, Anika. Just a stranger. Just a few days of fun in Ohio while I waited for Grace’s wedding. But somehow, I fell for you so fast, so hard, that I…” Her eyes regain focus, and she looks up at my face. “You’re not the only one who looked at us and saw the future. I saw it, too. I saw it from the time you told me the story of how your parents met. But I assumed… I’m not a rash person, Anika. I don’t just fall for people like that. But with you… and then at that reception… I think you might’ve broken my heart. And I’m long past the age where I thought anyone would break my heart ever again.”
I lean forward, plant a gentle kiss on her forehead experimentally. When she doesn’t flinch, doesn’t pull away from me, I lean in a little further, open her mouth with mine. She doesn’t fight me; she sinks into it, kisses me back.
I don’t push my luck and try to stretch the kiss out; I figure Amy and I are back into baby steps mode. I run my thumb along her cheek.
“I can try to put your heart back together again,” I say. “If you let me.”
She smiles; there’s a hint of sadness in it this time. “Maybe,” she says. “Take me home?”
“Alright,” I say. I turn to unlock and open her door for her.
“Will you have dinner with me tonight? At my place. I’ll cook.”
I try not to show how completely fucking awesome that invitation makes me feel, try not to do the happy dance right there on the sidewalk like a flamboyant NFL player in the end zone.
All I do is grin and say, “Okay. What time?”
Chapter 49: A romantic second date.
I bring flowers. I’m not usually a bring-flowers-to-a-date kind of girl, but it seems like the right move. I’m still barely out of the doghouse, after all.
Amy opens the door, sees me, sees the flowers, smiles. She takes them out of my hand once we’re inside her apartment, and she rewards me with a peck on the cheek.
“I’ll put these in some water,” she says, and for some reason, I can’t help but think of my parents, of my father refusing to take “no” for an answer when he first asked my mother out.
Hell, maybe Marty McFly was right. Maybe I’d simply needed to try harder, and God or the Universe or fucking British Airways decided to give my sorry ass one more chance by putting Amy and me on a plane together again.
“Told you so,” McFly says at my elbow while Amy’s in her small kitchen, digging for a vase.
“Go away, McFly,” I mutter. I don’t turn to look at him; I think if I do, it’ll only encourage him.
Dinner goes smoothly. Afterward, Amy puts on some music and we both retire to her sofa, each of us working on a second glass of red wine. Amy opens up to me a little, tells me the story about her and Wendy and the professor who came between them. She tells me about the panic attacks. She tells me about the car accident — and shyly, self-consciously, she unbuttons the bottom of her blouse and pulls it to one side to show me the scars. I don’t need her to tell me that she’s insecure about the scars; it’s written all over her face.
I reach out to touch them but stop myself a few inches from the surface of her skin. I feel the energy crackling there between my fingertips and her ribs, the miniature electrocution waiting to happen all over again.
My eyes flit up to hers. She’s breathing hard, but she also looks more open, more vulnerable than I’ve ever seen her.
“May I?” I ask. “Is it okay to…?”
“Yes,” she says quietly, almost inaudibly.
The electrocution I expected comes the moment the pads of my fingertips meet her scars. Goosebumps and heat run like a rash up both my arms and down my center, melting lower into a pool of something warm and wet.
Amy must feel something similar, because she gasps and lets her eyes flutter closed.
“Anika,” she whispers. “Put my heart back together. And promise me you’ll never break it again.”
I take the glass of red wine out of her hand, place it on the coffee table. Put mine next to it. I trace the scars with the pad of my thumb, bring my other hand to her face. I stroke her cheek with the back of my fingers.
“I promise.”
I lean Amy back onto the couch slowly and gently, kissing my way up her throat, nipping gently at her jaw.
“I promise,” I say again, and kiss her while I undo the rest of the buttons of her blouse. My hand skirts up her stomach, across a bra-covered breast, thumb stopping long enough to tease her nipple into hardness.
“Baby,” she breathes.
I sit her up far enough to take off her shirt, her bra. I suck against her clavicle. And you know what the good thing about long fucking albatross arms is? I can suck on Amy’s clavicle and unbutton her pants at the same time.
“Are you… Are you giving me a hickey?” she asks.
I push myself up. “Why? You don’t have to be a bridesmaid anytime soon, do you?”
“Anika,” she says, my name a blend between want and chastisement.
I only smirk, drop my mouth back down to the base of her throat while I push her pants down past her hips. She lets out a soft moan, which tells me I’m on the right track.
I kiss her hard, sliding my hand beneath the band of her silky underwear. She’s wet, so fucking wet, that it makes me answer her moan with one of my own, totally losing track of my kiss. I dip the tip of my index finger inside her — just the tip — reveling in the way her hips buck up to meet my hand.
“Anika,” she says into my mouth. “I want you. I’ve always wanted you.”
I push two fingers in this time, moving inside further, stroking against her front wall.
Amy’s hands come up, fingers digging into my shoulder blades, squeezing me towards her.
I rock my hips forward, thrusting deeper, finding Amy’s rhythm until we’re
moving together, our breaths coming out in short, matching pants. I drop my face into the side of her neck, licking up with the tip of my tongue until I find her ear, taking it between my lips as she drives down against my fingers.
She mutters something in German, then French, then her hips jerk up against me so hard that I nearly lose my balance. But I don’t. I put one foot on the floor to steady myself and push harder. For a split second, my mind rushes back to the night I lost my virginity with Jenny on a park bench outside Columbus, one foot digging into the earth, the other on the bench. And instead of the memory hurting, it tastes sweet, like red wine on the back of my tongue, like I’ve completed a circle that had been broken for too long. Then the memory goes, and my mouth finds Amy’s.
A couple minutes later, I feel the earthquake of her orgasm shudder down her body, squeeze itself around my fingers, dissipate out through her hips. Her body goes limp beneath me.
“Motherfucker,” she says once she catches her breath.
I smile against her neck, begin to pull myself out of her.
“No,” she says quickly, catching my wrist. “Not yet — oh.”
An aftershock tremors through her.
She tugs on my wrist. “It’s okay now. Just — just don’t go anywhere yet, okay?”
I laugh. “I’m not going anywhere. Do you really think I’d just, ‘wham, bam, thank you, ma’am’?”
“No, I just — I don’t know.” She wriggles to the edge of the sofa. “Just lie here with me a minute. Will you?”
I’m much too fucking big for Amy’s modern little European sofa, but I comply anyway, wedging my right side into the narrow gap she’s created for me, threading my arm under her neck and around her shoulders. I drape my other arm across her chest, nestling her into me.
She sighs contentedly. “You’re tall,” she remarks.
“So I’ve heard,” I say drily.
She tugs at the arm draped across her chest, wraps a hand around two of my fingers, puts them into her mouth. Her lips close around my second knuckles, her tongue slides into the gap between my fingers as she pulls them from her mouth, slowly.
Anika takes the long way home up soul mountain: A lesbian romance (Rosemont Duology Book 2) Page 30
