er's touch on her skin. The ethereal, green-eyed woman's fingertips caressed her skin as a harpist caresses the strings of her instrument. Gently enticing, not forcing the music forth. She felt herself melting into the touch and felt her body slowly moving forward. Finian suddenly caught herself before she toppled face first onto the floor.
She opened her eyes quickly and saw the notebook lying at her feet. 'How could I have forgotten that?' She thought as she reached for the book on the floor. Finian placed the notebook back on the nightstand and slipped into the jeans and T-shirt that she had placed on the bed. She shook her long, dark hair out of the towel atop her head as she walked back toward the bathroom.
She picked up the hairbrush and began pulling the tangles out of her slightly damp hair. She watched herself in the mirror as she did so. She looked into the deep, blue eyes that stared back at her. The depths of which held mysteries, which, until now had been kept even from her.
Who was she? She suddenly realized that she really did not know who she was. She had never allowed herself to look at all of the parts of her. Especially her sexuality. She had always tried so hard not to have one. It was safer; it kept life uncomplicated.
She had known from a very young age that she was different. But on the playground at school and on the television and radio, she learned that being different was not always good. In fact, more often than not, it was hurtful. It set you apart; you were rejected and called names.
She had even faked an interest in a couple of boys in school to keep the rumors at bay. But, even so, in the eighth grade, one of the boys in her class made a reference to her lips that had sent her into hiding from herself. He said she had lesbian lips. That comment had made her blood run cold. For that split second in time, she knew that it was true. But she wouldn't allow it to be true. If she did, her friends would reject her. She had quickly looked around at the group of girls she was standing with when the comment was made. She immediately noticed the look of discomfort that just the mention of the 'L' word had caused in all of their faces. That's when she realized that it was not safe to admit to herself or anyone else that liked girls instead of boys and had decided that not having a sexuality was the safest way to go.
Of course, all of her friends took up for her and they all started hurling insults and some books back at the boys. Before he was finished, Roddie had also managed to hurl some 'fat' insults at Belinda, who was a rather large girl. Finian laughed to herself as she thought back and saw Roddie's face. His lips were actually fuller and more defined than hers were. Oh the insults she could throw now.
Fantasizing about what she would say to Roddie if he said those things to her today and being surprised at the feelings that the memory still conjured up, finally brought her out of her trance-like state. She placed the hairbrush on the countertop and shut the light off behind her.
Back in the kitchen, she filled her cup with hot coffee and sat on the barstool closest to the wall. She glanced down at the telephone and then to the pad of paper next to it. 'Not yet,' she thought, 'I can't deal with that yet.' She leaned back against the wall and stretched her denim-covered legs across the other two stools, crossing her bare feet at the ankles.
She stared at her feet and thought about all the crushes she had had when she was a kid. The two boys that she had had crushes on when she was very young, she realized now, were very effeminate. All of the crushes she had as she got older were on girls. In fact, if she were being completely honest with herself, at the time of Roddie's comment, she had quite a crush on her best friend of the moment, Patty.
She and Patty had become very close, even somewhat intimate. When one of them would spend the night at the other's house, they would often lie in bed rubbing each other's backs, sometimes they would lie facing each other, talking, their legs wrapped around one another. She remembered one night when they were lying on the bed; Patty had her hand under Finian's pajama top and was rubbing her back when her grandfather walked into the room, unannounced. The two young girls had jumped and moved quickly away from each other. She remembered, even now, eighteen years later, the look of disapproval that had flashed across her grandfather's face and how her cheeks had reddened and how guilty she had felt. She had felt like she had been caught doing something wrong.
She had never even told Michelle about Patty. Michelle knew that she and Patty had been friends; she just didn't know how close. For a few years during high school, Michelle and Finian had chosen different groups of friends to hang out with. They were still friends, they just didn't spend as much time with each other as they had when they were younger.
Not long after being caught with Patty in her bedroom, Finian had started dating a guy. Over time, she managed to distance herself from Patty. Patty was jealous and angry that Finian had replaced her with a guy. It had hurt to see the hurt and longing in Patty's eyes on those few occasions when they would end up in the same place at the same time. Finian, it seemed had always been the first to break eye contact whenever it happened. She couldn't bear the pain that she saw in those slate blue eyes. And she felt guilty; guilty because she knew she was lying and hiding.
She didn't have the courage at fourteen to admit what she felt and she had spent the next several years dating occasionally but mostly just hanging out with groups of friends. In college, she had thrown herself into school and didn't allow herself time to date. If she didn't date, she didn't have to think about her sexuality.
When Michelle came out to her, it had frightened her more than Michelle had ever known. It had been only been a few weeks since she had heard that Patty had killed herself. Finian had experienced days, if not weeks of guilt when she heard of Patty's death. When Michelle came out, Finian shrank even further into the closet. Somehow, in her mind, she felt responsible for Patty's death. A part of her felt that if she had been more courageous and not so afraid to love Patty, Patty might still be alive. Some part of her, she realized had felt a need to pay homage to Patty, by suffering the loss intimacy that she should have embraced.
Finian wondered for a moment if maybe a part of Patty's soul or spirit had found its way backward in time. She smiled at the thought. Her smile got wider as her thoughts turned to Caer. She only knew one thing at this moment in time. It didn't matter. None of it mattered. She had found the woman she wanted to spend lifetimes with.
Finian swung her legs down off the high stools and went to refill her coffee cup, placing it on the counter while she went to her small office and turned on her computer. She then returned to the kitchen to make the telephone call to John Macintosh.
Several minutes later, Finian placed the telephone back in its cradle. She had a meeting with Mr. Macintosh on Thursday morning at ten. They were looking for someone to teach a six-week class on local history. She had until Thursday to decide what she wanted to teach and to put a class syllabus together for Mr. Macintosh's approval. Today was Tuesday. She had a little bit of time. She poured the last of the coffee into her cup and headed for her office.
This was good, she thought. She really felt like she needed some time alone and this was a good excuse. It wasn't really an excuse. It was the truth. She had a lot of work to do and a short time to do it in. And she felt that Michelle and Bobbi, but especially Michelle, needed some time to think about all the things that Finian had talked to them about. And Finian really didn't feel that she could deal with all the questions that Mich wanted answered, when she didn't yet have the answers herself. So, the timing was perfect. She reached for the portable phone.
Finian hesitated before she dialed the number of the insurance office where Michelle worked. Should she tell her the one thing she had become sure of since she had last talked to her? Finian thought about all the questions that would lead to and decided against it. She would savor her coming out to herself first. She smiled.
She thought about Patty and she thought about Caer. Her fear and her guilt were gone. When she thought about losing Caer, in the same way and for the same reasons that she had for so long believed she had lost Patty, she knew that she would not repeat that mistake again. She would never again hide whom she loved. She had survived her own dishonesty about her sexuality. Patty had taken her own life because she could not be honest about hers. She finally let Patty be responsible for herself and picked up the phone.
Michelle answered, as Finian knew she would. "Hey, Mich, it's me. I just called to see how you guys are doing. It's been a couple of days since I talked with