Authors: Nicole Conn
By this time Elena was not only listening she was ticking off all the qualities she knew existed in her relationship with Peyton. “Fourth, and this one’s key, everything feels completely brand new, yet absolutely familiar. Yes, that person’s eyes really are a window into your soul.”
Tyler took a dramatic pause. “And, finally, this connection has fundamentally changed you. Significantly, altered you to the core.”
Even through her tears, Elena smiled. Everything on Tyler’s list was true.
*
Elena walked as briskly as she could, knowing she was already late to meet Peyton at the park after she had had to cancel yesterday because Nash kept dogging her, following her every movement. If she stood up, he’d interrogate her. “Where are you going? Are you going to see
her
? Is that what you’re doing? Just tell me. Tell me the truth!” Until Elena thought she would lose her mind.
The day before, when she had set up this meeting with Peyton, she had made it into her car and begun to back up and there he stood behind her at the end of the driveway, arms folded. He terrified her. Shook her to her very foundations. Like her son was now her judge, jury and executioner. But finally, finally, he had left with a friend to go to the movies. After he had safely been gone for ten minutes she had phoned Peyton and asked her, rather desperately, if they could meet at the park.
She stopped when she saw her, standing at the bridge that overlooked the brook. So handsome. So beautiful. Once again Elena was struck by Peyton’s entire being, and couldn’t resist running to her, wrapping her arms about her, finding Peyton’s lips, and the moment she did she felt safe, on solid ground, and could feel the rightness of who they were together and the exquisite warmth and feeling of being alive, startlingly alive when she was with her, all of it flooding back over her in the same breath.
Peyton gently but firmly tried to push Elena aside, but Elena held her close and Peyton too sank into the smells, the silky softness of Elena’s lips, the ungluing that always happened the moment Elena touched her.
*
Millie was powerwalking, up to six miles a day, which was really great because it also meant she could jam in all her afternoon calls on her headset as she plowed through her miles, checking her BlackBerry, steady as she goes, walking her pink-bowed Chow, Snowflake Angel, managing the universe according to Millie with precis1em with pion and efficiency. She was proud that she could literally handle anything. Everything. The more she had to do the better off she was. She was going to change the world. And they were going to be good changes. Changes that not only needed to happen to save the very fabric of marriage, but would put her in position to pen her memoirs. She’d tie it up and promote the heck out of it, take part and delight in every talk show from Oprah to her absolute favorite, Glenn Beck—okay so she had a little crush on him, but it was nothing. Nothing, really. She really could begin to position herself as the next Dr. Laura—helping all those poor unfortunate misguided fools who had lost their way—
What was she seeing?
No.
NO. It couldn’t be.
Two women kissing. At this park. A
family
park.
Millie almost tripped over Snowflake Angel as she gaped, watching these two women really going at it.
I mean get a room already!
Millie was beyond incensed that these two people had the audacity to exploit their filth at this park, this park where kids, children and her innocent Snowflake Angel roamed. If people weren’t safe here, where were they safe?
Elena!
Her horror soon turned to fascinated repulsion. She scrambled to collect herself. She could barely breathe. Barely could catch her breath as she lunged for her cell phone.
Elena Winters. In the park. Kissing.
Kissing a…a WOMAN shrieked in her brain.
She dropped her phone.
She scrambled to pick it up, tangling her feet up with Snowflake Angel, tripping to her knees, but jumped back up as she nabbed her BlackBerry and began to dial.
*
Peyton gently but firmly pushed Elena from her.
“Is he…is he okay?”
Elena nodded yes, not with great confidence, but enough so that Peyton felt relieved. She took Elena’s hand, smiled weakly, and then led Elena to several large flat boulders below a huge oak tree.
As they sat, Elena studied Peyton, traced a finger over her face.
“I’m in love with a woman.” Elena’s voice was filled with wonder and awe. “It still amazes me. At times I feel it’s all been a dream. But then when I’m with you…it’s all so real.”
Peyton tossed Elena a bleak smile.
“Look, Peyton…I we. Peytonknow this last week has been rough...”
“Yeah.” Peyton sighed long and hard, then said, without looking at Elena. “Maybe we should pull back a bit. Until...you know—things settle down.”
*
“I tell you I just saw her kissing a woman!” Millie yattered on the phone as fast as her lips could form words. “In the plain light of day!”
Millie summarily tossed her Snowflake Angel into the car as she frenetically tried to keep pace with her own gossip. “I knew something was up with her. Not wanting to protest, missing services. But
this!
” She barely gave the poor dog another moment as she jumped into the front seat and began driving without having fastened her seatbelt.
“She’s turned into...into a GAY! And what about poor Pastor Barry? How could she
do
this to him?”
Millie, now on a mission, sped through the streets of the city.
*
Elena glanced sharply back to Peyton, could see the raw pain etched in her exhausted face.
“You wouldn’t have to feel so guilty,” Peyton continued softly. “I could dial this back and get my head screwed back on right.”
Elena bolted to her feet, alarmed.
“Where...where is all this coming from?”
“I...I just think we need to pull back and get some perspective.”
“Do you really believe if you rearrange the psychic furniture that will fix it? If you act like you’re not as in love with me as I am with you that—that—” Elena stopped. She could see that escalating this debate was getting nowhere, and tried to calm herself.
“I understand all the reasons you can’t trust. Your mom, Margaret cheating on you...but Peyton, I’ve never lied to you and I never will.”
“I guess at this point I really don’t know that, Elena.”
Elena shook her head, now getting upset.
“I spent the last day and half with my guts skewered inside out wondering whether you were having sex with your husband.” Peyton’s jaw clenched as she took a deep breath, “and last week I did the same thing because of your anniversary— getting shit-faced over it because I can’t bear the idea of him touching you. But also because I have no right to these feelings—”
“Oh Peyton...nothing happened. We didn’t even go…Barry had an emergency at the cid ncy at hurch.”
Peyton looked at Elena. She didn’t get it. It seemed to Peyton that as long as Elena felt she could dodge one bullet after another, the end still wasn’t going to be global destruction—for both of them.
“I knew what I was getting into...it is what it is.” Peyton bowed her head, then looked out at nothing in particular. “I just don’t think I can do it.”
“Peyton, don’t you see a future with us?”
“So this date night nothing happened. What about the next one and the one after that? At some point...something will happen.”
Elena was about to defend this last, but how could she really? How could she say she and Barry would never sleep with one another again? Not because she would want that—the thought made her stomach lurch with dread, but the reality was that they were still married.
“After all, Peyton...I have been married for fifteen years.” She stopped thinking about how she had been able to hold Barry off for nearly eight months. But without telling him why and it had already become such a huge issue—and she wasn’t quite certain she was prepared to do that yet—she knew that sleeping with him again was, in all reality, a likely possibility. “I...Nash, my family—they don’t—they can’t understand this...and I, I’ve already told you—it would mean absolutely nothing—”
“Don’t you get it?” Peyton turned to her, the agony plain in her eyes. “I’m...I’m too damn far in.”
Elena reached for Peyton, but Peyton’s face and body were stone.
“Please if you can give me some time, I’ll...”
“You’ll
what?
”
“I’ll...I’ll work it out.” Elena felt like the ground was disappearing from beneath her. “But I need to know you’re right there with me.”
Peyton clenched her jaw as she stared ahead, felt herself withdrawing, farther and farther away. When she looked at Elena, even though she loved her with all of her being, she also saw a woman willing to sleep with
him
in order to keep both lives. She felt herself hardening. “I believe they call that having your cake and eating it too.”
Peyton saw that she had gone too far. Saw the surprise in Elena’s eyes. She was not used to Peyton causing her pain.
“I don’t think I can do this halfway,” Elena countered.
Peyton shook her head. The tone in her voice wasn’t accusatory, merely bleak and pragmatic. “You
are
doing it halfway.”
Peyton saw the tears in Elena’s eyes, knew she would begin crying soon herself and wanted to finish this business. Be done with it. “Maybe I’mookMaybe limited, but no, I don’t see a future with...this.”
Elena could not believe what she was hearing. Confused, angry, terrified and completely overwhelmed she shook her head, and walked away.
*
“I can’t even say the word.” On her seventh call now, heading from her home to the church, Millie sucked in her breath. She had dashed home in a panic, knowing when she went to see Barry she was not going to present her news in a Martha Stewart jogging suit. She’d flown into the house, jumped into her sexiest Ann Taylor skirt and blouse ensemble, hastily putting on her makeup, letting her hair down as she jabbered furiously with one lead congregant after another.
“…lesbian!” Oh, Millie said it after all, shocked by the titillating jolt that ran through her body. “A…lesbian. That’s what they call them. That’s what she is.”
“Don’t call her that,” Diana said on the other end. “Look, Millie. I know.”
“What? You knew this was going on?”
“I…Elena told me a few weeks ago. I thought it was a phase. That it would pass. That she would do the right thing.” Diana sighed. “And I think we owe it to her and her years of service to the church to come to the right decision. Millie, please tell me you haven’t said a word to anyone else.”
“Of course not!” Millie lied easily. “But has it occurred to you that maybe Elena’s been like this all along?”
“No.”
“Well, you would know,” Millie suggested. “I know how close the two of
you
have always been.”
“Millie—”
“Don’t be silly,” Millie recouped, “you think I don’t know how full your hands are with those kids of yours? I’m just saying, if she would have told anyone, she would have told you…and apparently she has. Now, the question is, who is going to tell Pastor Barry?”
“No one,” Diana snapped, shocked that Millie would ask. “It’s their business, Millie—”
“I’m afraid that’s simply not the case. This is Pastor Barry we’re talking about here. How is he supposed to lead this charge when his wife is sleeping with one of
them
? He can’t do an effective job. He’ll be laughed out of the pulpit. Someone has to protect him,” Millie proffered indignantly. “Someone has to take care of this. And I’m the one to do it.”
*
Barry walked to the altar, his face ashen. He slammed his hands on the pulpit that he stood before every Sunday, then burrowed into /dirrowed his head into palms, trying to blot the vision from his head of his wife, kissing…
NO…it can’t be true!
He swiped his sermon papers before him to the ground.
Millie watched his rage. A smile curled at the edges of her mouth. Yes, this was causing her no end of satisfaction, but she couldn’t be having Barry tear the place apart. She had put too much money into the spring renovations. She allowed another moment of sweet solace, then, righting her shoulders, she calmly walked to Barry and put her arms about him.
“There, there,” she held him, soothing him.
Barry bristled at her touch. He wanted to throw her against the pews, break her slimy little neck. How dare she!
“How could she?” he hissed. “No. You must be mistaken. Not Elena.”
“Barry, I know how difficult it is to accept this—”
“How do you even know it was her?”
Millie cocked her head with a patronizing shake of the head, feigning pain.
“Barry, Barry, Barry…I’ve got the good eyes the Lord gave me. And while others have difficulty embracing the evils of the world, God gave me the gift to stare it straight in the eye…to call it for what it is. And this is not just adultery, Barry. She hasn’t just wronged you by sins of the flesh, she has gone out of her way to insult you—to tear at the very foundation of your greatest battle.”