Winter's Harbor

by Aurora Rey

  Although it had been her home for three of the six years she’d lived in Provincetown, Alex was still amazed by the fact that it was hers. Well, hers and the bank’s perhaps, but that was a technicality. It was everything she had ever wanted a kitchen to be, and she’d made it that way.

  Murphy was waiting with his tongue out and tail wagging. “How’s my boy?” she asked him. The dog promptly sat, tongue still out and tail now swishing back and forth across the floor. Alex took his leash from the hook by the door and he stood, doing his happy dance. She slipped on her Carhartt jacket, stuffed the leash in her pocket just in case, and off they went.

  Since the sun was still shining, she figured they would walk toward the beach instead of going for a run. First, however, Alex wandered down Commercial Street into the West End of town. She resisted the urge to walk by Lia’s place, if for no other reason than she’d left Lia’s scarf at home and didn’t have a good excuse to drop by. Murphy, thrilled to have so many bushes and lampposts to smell and pee on courtesy of their slowed pace, strolled with her.

  Alex loved the neighborhood. The houses were mostly old and close together. Almost all of them were sided with cedar shingles, some recently done, but most the weathered brownish-gray for which Cape Cod was known. Some had front porches, some had neat little gardens pruned back for winter. White picket fences and arbors were covered in vines no longer in bloom. Each was different, but everything felt as though it went together. If she hadn’t ended up at the bakery, she would have tried to find a place here in her price range. It would have been a tall order.

  They walked down one of the public walkways toward the water. Even with a breeze, the water harborside remained mostly calm. Alex found a piece of driftwood and tossed it. Murphy bounded after it, picked it up, and trotted back. He dropped it at her feet and looked up, clearly asking her to do it again. She obliged, throwing it almost to the water’s edge but not quite. In the summer, Murphy loved nothing more than chasing sticks into the water. He’d probably do the same without hesitation now, so she was careful not to tempt him.

  After a half hour, she called it quits. Murphy seemed to have had his fill and didn’t even cast longing looks back at the water as they walked from the beach and began to loop back toward home. With daylight savings time over, the sun was setting earlier and earlier. Alex checked her watch; it was barely past five o’clock. The wind was picking up as well, adding to the chill in the air. They didn’t dawdle on the way.

  Alex left her shoes at the door and walked into the kitchen. She opened a large bin and scooped Murphy’s dinner into his bowl. He sat patiently, glancing at his food and then looking to her for the signal. “Go ahead,” she said, and he dove in.

  While he crunched, Alex headed to the bedroom, stripping off clothes as she went. She dropped her gray chef coat and t-shirt into the hamper, followed by jeans, socks, bra, and boxer briefs. In the bathroom, she cranked the shower nice and hot and stepped under the spray. While she scrubbed away the hours of kneading and chopping and whipping and stirring and slicing and serving, she found her thoughts drifting again to Lia.

  The attraction she felt had been immediate. She always had a soft spot for the femme types, especially smart and quirky ones. That fact had proved to be a bit of a blessing and a curse. In her experience, the prettier they were, the harder she fell. Alex had fallen hard twice in her life, once in college and once with her boss a few years later. Both times, she’d had her heart broken. After that, she swore off trying to find “the one,” preferring instead to keep her relationships focused on mutual enjoyment.

  One of the key reasons she left big city life was to simplify things. That applied to her love life as much as it did to everything else. What she couldn’t decide was if Lia would be a nice addition to that, or a giant complication.

  For no reason but a strong gut feeling, Alex thought Lia wasn’t the type of woman interested in a fling. Nor did she seem to be attached to anyone. She wondered if the change of scenery that Lia was looking for was as much about escaping a person as escaping a place. Alex respected that, but it definitely set off warning bells. The question was whether or not she intended to heed them.

  Shaking off her curiosity, she turned off the water and toweled off. She padded into the bedroom naked and pulled out a pair of sweatpants and an old, gray, Bruins T-shirt from the bottom drawer of her dresser. Content in her lounge wear and slippers, she wandered back to the kitchen for a beer and to flip through her mail.

  There wasn’t much of note, except for the new issue of Esquire. Her sister, Meg, had gotten her a subscription after Alex teased her about reading Cosmo. That had been while they were still in college, but Alex had enjoyed reading it so much that she renewed it over and over again. This month’s issue included a feature on the rise of small-batch bourbon distilleries.

  She flopped on the couch and invited Murphy to join her, happy to have a relaxing evening at home. After a while, she dug around in the refrigerator for some soup. She warmed it up with some of the day’s leftover bread.

  She sat at her dining room table to eat, turning on the television and looking for a football game worth watching. Not finding one, she turned the channel to catch the second half of Jeopardy. When it was over and her dishes were loaded into the dishwasher, Alex picked up her magazine and flopped back on the couch. She found herself restless, however, after flipping through just a few pages. It was unlike her, and more than a little irritating.

  Her thoughts turned again to the scarf and its owner. Lia would likely come back to the bakery in the next few days and she could get it then. But maybe she wouldn’t. The idea of not seeing Lia again, or at least of not knowing when, started to gnaw at her. She’d just return it. The bakery was closed tomorrow anyway. She’d walk over to Lia’s place and return the scarf and be done with it. No big deal.

  Feeling only slightly more settled, she rubbed Murphy’s ears for a while, then picked up her phone. She had no interesting email, so she switched over to the Twitter feed she rarely read. She used it mostly to follow sports news and a few bands she liked, some celebrities, a few chefs and bloggers. Alex perused with tepid interest until she happened upon a link from her favorite queer culture blogger entitled “Sexy Librarians: NSFW.”

  Alex clicked on it and landed at a photo gallery of women of all shapes and sizes, each one posing somewhere in a library. There were butches in tweed and andros in argyle sweaters; they stood in the stacks and sat at circulation desks. Femme-types in prim skirts and blouses offered coy smiles while women in lacy lingerie pored over books studiously. Some of them were silly, but the majority were sexy.

  She scrolled until her eyes fell upon a curvy brunette. She was wearing black stockings and killer heels, a lace bra with matching panties, and glasses. It was a side shot and the woman was leaning over a library cart filled with books, ostensibly browsing the titles. She looked just enough like Lia that Alex instantly pictured Lia in the photo. She imagined the swell of Lia’s breasts in the black lace bra, Lia’s pale stomach and smooth thighs showing over the tops of the stockings. Alex could feel her hand on Lia’s skin, in the deep curve of her lower back.

  Almost without realizing it, Alex began massaging her breasts. She imagined what it would feel like to have Lia there, straddling her thighs and teasing her. While her left hand pulled and tugged at her nipples, Alex moved her right down her stomach and slid it beneath the waistband of her pants. She was hot and wet. Alex started tracing slow circles over her swollen clit and didn’t even try to stifle the moan that escaped her.

  With her eyes closed and images of Lia dancing through her mind, she teased herself. When it felt like her clit was going to explode, she moved her hand, sliding her first two fingers deep inside herself. She arched back, pumping and pressing. The pressure built and she let it take her.

  The orgasm left her panting and shaky. She couldn’t remember coming so hard from touching herself. She told herself that it was the result of not having sex for the
last three months. But as she got up and walked to her bedroom, her thoughts were still very much focused on the woman who’d appeared in her coffee shop and clouded her brain for the last two days.

  Alex was unaccustomed to being infatuated. It wasn’t her personality and it wasn’t her style. Infatuated, however, was exactly what she seemed to be.

  Chapter Nine

  Since she worked for herself and set her own schedule, Lia always did her cleaning on Mondays. It reminded her of Grand-mère’s tradition of using Monday as a wash day. She would put a pot of beans on the stove early, throw in the ham bone from Sunday supper or some smoked turkey necks, and do the week’s laundry while scrubbing the house from top to bottom.

  Lia remembered going there after school to help her with the housework, and the house would smell of simmering red beans and lemon oil. There’d be no work left, but always a freshly baked cake. She’d cut them each a big piece and let Lia have a café au lait that was mostly lait. It was their little secret, and Lia grew to treasure the time with her grandmother far more than getting first dibs on the dessert that would be devoured by her brothers later.

  Lia didn’t pretend to inherit the meticulousness with housework, but she did like to keep the tradition. Most Mondays, that consisted of changing the sheets, running the vacuum and mopping floors, and doing a quick clean of the bathroom. In theory, Lia added other chores on a rotating basis, things like dusting baseboards and cleaning kitchen appliances, but she was rarely so ambitious. So about once per month, she set aside the entire morning to give the things she missed a thorough cleaning.

  Her Provincetown apartment was no different and, even though she’d been there for only a week, today was the day. She put on a pair of old shorts and a tank top and piled her hair on top of her head. She set the coffee on to brew, then pulled out the ingredients for red beans and rice. The only pot in her apartment large enough to use was the lobster pot, so she set it on the stove and dumped in the drippings from the bacon she’d indulged in over the weekend. She sautéed onions, bell peppers, celery, and garlic in the bacon grease. Once they were soft, she added the beans she’d soaked overnight, water, and some andouille sausage she’d been lucky enough to find at the little gourmet grocery on the other end of town.

  With the beans cooking, Lia poured herself a cup of coffee and pulled out the cleaning supplies. Before she got to work, she brought her phone over to the docking station for the stereo so she could queue up the appropriate mood music. She browsed her collection, selecting soundtracks, then Broadway, then Evita. All of her friends, in addition to Dani, teased her about the choice of show tunes to accompany housework, but she was unswayed.

  Now that she didn’t have to worry about neighbors sharing her walls, she could crank it up and sing to her heart’s content. With Ché lamenting the circus of Eva’s funeral, Lia picked up a bottle of Windex and got to work. An hour and a half later, she was covered in sweat and pleading with Argentina not to cry for her.

  *

  Although she’d decided to return the scarf, Alex continued to hem and haw before making the short walk to Lia’s apartment. She really didn’t want to seem like a stalker. She was just being nice. She didn’t want to presume Lia would be a regular, and the café was closed on Mondays. She wanted to go for a long walk with Murphy anyway. Showing up with a dog would seem less stalkerish, right?

  Alex and Murphy strolled toward the West End. Since she came that way often, and had a general fascination with houses, she knew that author Melissa Harrison’s place was on Vine Street. When she saw the car with New York plates, she knew she was in the right place.

  She was halfway up the driveway when she heard the music. Although it took her a few more steps to make out the words, she quickly recognized the iconic song from Evita. By the time she got to Lia’s door, the orchestra was swelling and Alex could make out two voices—the one in the recording and an off-key, but heartfelt, accompaniment. She peeked in the window and saw Lia, a dust rag in one hand and a bottle of furniture polish in the other. Her arms were outstretched, beseeching the invisible crowds beneath her nonexistent balcony. It was ridiculous, and it nudged Alex’s attraction to her up yet another notch.

  She knocked on the door to no avail. She looked down at Murphy, who was tilting his head from side to side in an attempt to figure out what the noise was. She decided to enjoy the show until the song ended. As the music faded, she tried again.

  The brisk knock on the door nearly gave Lia a heart attack. She yelped, dropped the bottle of furniture polish she was holding, then spun around in the direction of the noise. Alex was at her door, smiling through the glass. Oh, God.

  Lia hurried over to the speaker to cut the music and then to the door. She opened it, feeling flushed from both the work and the embarrassment of being caught channeling her inner Eva Perón. She offered Alex a sheepish smile. “Hi.” She then noticed the dog sitting obediently at Alex’s feet. “And hello to you, too. What’s your name?”

  “Hi,” Alex said, ruffling the dog’s ears. “This is Murphy.”

  She bent so the dog could sniff her hand. “You’re a very handsome boy, Murphy.”

  “Sorry to startle you.”

  Lia tried not to think of how frightful she must look. That quickly morphed into wondering what Alex was doing at her house, and how Alex knew where she lived. “It’s…it’s fine. It doesn’t take much to scare the living daylights out of me.”

  “Well, I’m sorry just the same. It was quite a performance.”

  Was Alex flirting with her, or making fun of her? It was hard to tell. “How much of that did you see?”

  “Only a minute or two. It was very moving.”

  Flirtatious teasing, was that a thing? It was a little weird. But nice. Sort of? Should she flirt back? She cocked her hip and gave a dramatic head toss. “Thank you,” she said, trying to make her voice sound playful. “I do pour my heart into every role.”

  “Tony-worthy, truly.”

  Ha! It was flirtation. They were flirting. Alex the sexy baker was flirting with her. But that still didn’t explain what Alex was doing at her house.

  “I, uh, I have your scarf.”

  “Oh.” So that’s what she was doing there. That was weird. Nice, but weird. Not that she would say that. “That’s so nice. You really didn’t have to go to the trouble.”

  “Murphy and I walk out this way anyway. It was no trouble at all. Besides, it’s going to be wicked cold tomorrow. I figured you’d want it.” Alex spoke quickly, as though she were nervous. “Jan, from the real estate office, is a regular customer and happened to mention there was a new person at the Harrison place. I figured she must have been talking about you.”

  Well, that explained how Alex knew where she lived. If she were in New York, she’d be tempted to call the police. In her hometown, everyone in town would know where the new girl was living. P-town was probably more like Vacherie than New York, at least in terms of how gossip traveled. She could deal with that. Thinking of home made her remember her manners. Even if it freaked her out a little, Alex had done something nice and she was keeping her in the doorway like someone selling vacuums.

  “I appreciate it. Come in, come in, both of you.”

  “I don’t want to intrude.”

  “You aren’t, not at all. Please.” Lia waved them in with her hand. She wondered if Alex always went out of her way to do nice things. Then she wondered what she was supposed to do with her. Again, manners kicked in. “Can I offer you a cup of coffee to warm your bones?”

  Alex stepped inside and motioned Murphy to follow. She decided that she had passed the test—the one about whether or not she was being creepy. Relieved, and happy to be invited in, she said, “That would be nice, if you’re sure it’s not any trouble.”

  Lia took a sweatshirt from a hook by the door and slipped it on. Alex was both disappointed and thankful. On one hand, the tank top showed off Lia’s breasts beautifully and she was enjoying the view. On the other, the l
ast thing she wanted was to be caught staring at Lia’s cleavage. That would definitely tip the scales back toward creepy.

  Lia grabbed a mug from one of the open shelves in the kitchen. “How do you take it?”

  Alex pulled her attention back to the conversation. “Just a little milk or cream if you have it.”

  “Coming right up.” She filled both mugs and added a splash of half-and-half to each. “Will you sit for a little while? I’m more than ready for a break.”

  “Sure.” Alex followed her into the living room area and took a seat on the sofa. Murphy immediately stretched out in front of her, placing his head on his paws. This ploy was working even better than she’d hoped. Not that it was a ploy.

  Lia, who’d taken a seat at the other end, set down her cup and pointed at the dog. “Would he mind some attention?”

  Alex laughed at the question. “He loves attention. My only warning is that you might have a hard time getting him to leave.”

  Lia laughed as well, then got on her hands and knees and crawled the short distance to where Murphy was lying. Alex, who was watching her, was immediately struck with a vision of Lia, clad in the sexy librarian getup, crawling toward her. Get a grip, McKinnon. You are going to start drooling if you aren’t careful.

  Lia only petted Murphy’s head a few times before he rolled over and flashed his belly. Lia buried her fingers in the thick fur on his chest. “You’re a good boy.”

  His tail thumped and Alex rolled her eyes. “He has no shame.”

  “And why should he?” She turned to Murphy. “Why should you? There’s nothing to be ashamed of. You just like getting your loves, don’t you?”