Falling for Hope (2 page)

“How’s the veterinary office
treating you?” asked Irene with a smile.
 
Irene owned a horse farm on the far edge of town and sometimes brought
her barn cats into the vet clinic.
 

“Good…good…” she said, trailing
off.
 
Her shoulders were up around her
ears; she felt tense and couldn’t quite shake it.
 
When she’d gone into Hope’s room—what had been Hope and Melissa’s
room—there seemed to be the shadow of Melissa everywhere.

“Hey…it’s not my place or nothing,”
said Irene, leaning down toward Amy then, conspiratorially, “but have you told
Hope how you feel about her?”

Amy felt her heart climb up into
her throat as she stared at her friend with wide eyes, mouth open.
 
“What do you…how do you…”
 
She shut her mouth just as quickly as she’d
opened it, mortified.

How did Irene know?

“It’s kind of obvious,” Irene
chuckled, not unkindly.
 
“I just wanted
to tell you…if you haven’t told Hope because of Melissa or whatever—you have to
trust me on this.
 
I’ve known those two
for twenty years.
 
They weren’t meant to
be together.
 
We’re never going to
forget Melissa.
 
She’ll be in our hearts
always.
 
But she and Hope weren’t even
together when Melissa got into the accident, and if you’re not telling Hope how
you feel because of a sense of loyalty, well…”

Hope rounded the corner just then,
decked out for bed in a tank top and boxer bottoms.
 
Irene straightened a little, grinning as Hope strode past, headed
for the kitchen and the “sleepy tea” Cole had been making for everyone.

Amy finally found her voice.
 
“Irene…”
 
But she didn’t know what to say.

“Just think about it, okay?” said
Irene, as Vanessa came out of the bathroom ahead of them.
 
Amy practically dove into the bathroom,
shutting and locking the door and turning on the water, as cold as she could
make it.
 
She splashed her face in it over
and over, but when she looked at her reflection in the mirror, all she saw was
a red-faced woman who’d never rock the boat.

When Amy came out of the bathroom,
Irene was gone.
 
She’d probably found
one of the other bathrooms unoccupied, but Amy had thought of all sorts of
questions to ask her—like, if Irene knew, was there a chance that Hope
knew?
 
But she didn’t want to wander
through the entire house to find Irene, who may already be in bed.
 
Amy swallowed, her mouth already dry, and
ducked back into the bathroom for one more sip of cold water.
 
Then, holding her toothbrush and toothpaste
so hard her knuckles shone white against them, Amy crossed the hallway from the
bathroom to Hope’s bedroom.

She knew what she had to do.

Amy knocked politely on the bedroom
door before pushing it open.
 
Hope was
sitting up in bed, reading.
 
She was in
the only bed in the room.

“Hey, Amy,” said Hope
apologetically, setting the hardcover down in her lap.
 
“I wanted to tell you, no one brought an
extra air mattress, so you’ll have to…”

Amy shook her head, cleared her
throat.
 
“I’m so sorry, Hope,” she said
softly, “but I can’t sleep in here tonight.”

Hope cocked her head quizzically to
the side, glanced around the room.
 
“Is
there anything the matter with it?”

“No…”
 
Amy could hear the hurt in Hope’s voice, and miserably kept
going.
 
“It’s just…Melissa…”
 
Amy cringed at using the dead woman as an
excuse.
 
An excuse that was a lie.
 
She took another deep breath as Hope watched
her.
 
Amy closed her eyes.
 
She wasn’t going to use Melissa as a lie,
and perhaps telling the truth would be easier with her eyes tightly squeezed
shut.
 
“It’s because of how I feel about
you,” she said then, voice a whisper.
 
There.
 
It was out.
 

Amy almost stopped breathing when
she heard the shift of the bed as Hope got up.
 
Amy peeked, and her eyes flew open: Hope was coming toward her.

“Would you come in, please?” asked
Hope then, her voice low.
 
Amy didn’t
know what to do, so holding her toothbrush and toothpaste too tightly (that
tube would never be the same again), she stepped forward and shut the door
behind her.

When Amy looked up at Hope, she
breathed out in surprise.
 
Because Hope
was there, then, her body against Amy’s, pressing the slighter woman against
the door.

No words were exchanged.

Only a kiss.

Who started it, Amy could never
say.
 
She’d breathed out, and then there
was a warm mouth against her own, strong hands at her waist, pushing up her
pajama top to rest a bare palm against Amy’s skin.
 
Amy wrapped her arms around Hope’s neck and drank the taller
woman in, the sweet mint of the toothpaste that Hope used, the heat of her
mouth and the strength of her lips as Hope kissed her soundly and deeply.
 
Amy gasped, then, because Hope was kissing
the line of her jaw, her lips trailing kisses down Amy’s neck as she arched her
head back under Hope’s mouth, everything gone in her but feeling.

And she felt everything.
 
The way that Hope’s hands pulled up her
shirt, pulled it off, in fact, though Amy had no memory of how that
happened.
 
The chill air of the room
made Amy shiver, or maybe it was Hope’s mouth that made her tremble, because
the woman was kissing her shoulder now, tongue tracing a pattern down her
breastbone, down and down…

“Wait…” Amy managed, and, panting,
Hope straightened, gazing down with darkened eyes full of need.
 
Amy put her arms tentatively about Hope’s
neck, glancing up at the woman in wonder.
 
“Hope…” she murmured.
 
“I’ve
wanted to be with you since I met you.
 
I wanted to date you…”
 
Words
didn’t seem adequate, but she swallowed, kept going, the dizzying need inside
her pulsing and pushing her to hurry.
 
“Did you…”

But Hope stopped up her mouth with
a kiss before backing away again, shaking her head, and—to Amy’s
delight—smiling easily.

“Even Melissa knew how much I was
attracted to you,” said Hope then, voice low and throaty, almost a growl.
 
It made Amy shiver in delight.

“So this whole time…” Amy murmured,
and then she was laughing, almost sobbing, helplessly, leaning against
Hope.
 
This whole time, if she’d only
gotten up the courage…

“Let’s waste no more time,” said
Hope, then, and their mouths met, and their hearts touched.

That night, the summer party got off to a glorious
start.

Building Hope

Amy was having a wonderful
dream.
 

For the past five years, she’d been head over heels
in love with an unattainable woman—her best friend Hope.
 
But, in this dream, Hope was
kissing
Amy inside of Hope’s vacation cabin.
 
Outside, the fireflies moved through the forest, and the crickets sang,
and everything felt so right.
 

Breathless, dizzy with Hope’s kisses, Amy wished the
dream would go on forever.

But, as all dreams must, it came to an end when she
opened her eyes.

Amy breathed out slowly and
snuggled closer to the pillow.
 
Maybe,
if she positioned herself just right, she could go back to sleep and pick up in
the dream where she had left off…

Warm lips kissed her bare shoulder.

Amy’s eyes opened again.

“Good morning, beautiful,”
whispered Hope in Amy’s ear, kissing her cheek, soft lips moving to her neck
now.
 
Amy’s heartbeat throbbed in her
veins as she rolled over, staring in complete shock at Hope Wells, her best
friend, the woman she’d been desperately, hopelessly in love with since the
moment they met.
 

Hope bent down and brushed her lips
against Amy’s with a smile, that easy smile that made Amy’s heart beat a little
faster.
 
Her warm mouth pressed against
Amy’s mouth again clinched it:
 
this
was, most certainly,
not
a dream.

The previous night came rushing
back to Amy as Hope kissed her.
 
Amy had
confessed to Hope, finally, that she’d been in love with her all this
time.
 
And Hope had confessed to her
that she felt the very same way about Amy.

But unhappier thoughts began to
creep into Amy’s consciousness.
 
Like
the fact that she and Hope were, right now, tangled together in the bed that
Hope and Melissa had once shared.
 
That
it had been only six months and one day since Melissa died in the car crash
that had, with its tragedy and suddenness, rocked their small group of friends.
 
That Hope and Melissa had once been partners,
and, right at this moment, Hope and Amy were betraying Melissa’s memory.
 

“What’s wrong?” asked Hope, brows
creasing as she lay on her elbow, staring down at Amy.
 
“What is it?” she asked, words more sober
when Amy sat up, holding the blanket to her chest.

“I just…”
 
She gulped down air and closed her eyes, trying to calm her
beating heart.
 

“Don’t tell me that you regret
it.”
 
Hope sighed and lay back down on
the bed, one arm arched above her head as she settled against her pillow with a
frown.
 
“Because I’m the one who came on
to
you
, Amy.
 
Do you regret the
fact that we…”
 
She trailed off, biting
her lip, waiting.

Amy gazed at the handsome woman
beside her and rubbed a hand over her face, breathing out.
 
“What about Melissa?” she asked in a small
voice.

Hope reached toward Amy, then, and
put her arms around her, pulling her near, to nestle against her.
 
The way that Amy fit into the space between
Hope’s shoulder and chest, in the hollow and crook of her arm, made her feel as
if she and Hope were two pieces of a puzzle, at last perfectly placed.
 
Amy’s heartbeat began to calm as Hope gently
and rhythmically stroked her hair and her shoulder, fingers long and slow and
steady upon her bare skin.

“I told you last night,” said Hope
quietly, pressing her lips to Amy’s forehead. “Melissa and I weren’t right for
each other.
 
I miss her—deeply—and I
will never forget her or let her memory die.
 
But we weren’t even together when she got into the accident.
 
I’ve spent six months waiting, out of
respect, out of…”
 
She drifted off,
stared at the ceiling as her jaw worked.
 
“Out of something.
 
And I’ve
always been attracted to you, Amy, and it’s not wrong or disrespectful to
Melissa’s memory for me to finally have the courage to do something about
it.”
 

Amy shuddered a little, emotion
wending its way through her body until she trembled from its aftereffects.
 

Maybe she
was
still
dreaming.
 
This was, after all, a dream
come true.

Amy breathed out again, a long, low
sigh that soothed her nerves.
 
She rose
to her elbows, staring down at the softly smiling woman who lay beneath her
now.
 
Hope’s short black hair pointed
crazily in all directions, and her easy smile was aimed directly at Amy’s
heart, it seemed.

“Okay,” said Amy, nodding slowly
and smiling, too.
 
“Let’s—”

But whatever else she was going to
say was drowned out by an earsplitting rumble of thunder.
 
Amy jumped a little, but Hope glanced at the
window with a slanted mouth as the sky opened outside.
 
The summer storm had stolen quietly but
quickly over the mountain, and a deluge of rain now battered against the roof.

“Aw, crap!” came Chris’s grumble
from outside the bedroom, out in the hallway.
 
Hope and Amy could hear the other women in the cabin, their friends,
rising and moving about.
 
And then there
came a nearer voice, projected straight through the closed bedroom door.
 
Followed by a tentative knock.

“Hope?” Irene said.
 
“Hope, are you up?”

“Yeah, Irene—just a minute,” said
Hope, rising and casting about for her tank top and boxer shorts.
 
She found them crumpled on the floor and
began pulling them on hurriedly as Amy, too, began a frantic search for her
pajamas.
 
She found her bottoms wadded
up at the foot of the bed and discovered wrinkled underwear beneath her discarded
t-shirt.
 

Hope opened the door just a crack when they were
both fully dressed.

“What’s up?” asked Hope, offering
her easy smile.
 
Amy glimpsed Irene’s
arched eyebrow even through the narrow opening.
 

Good-naturedly, Irene chuckled,
murmuring, “Wonderful.”