Quandary
Part One
A cool, almost chilling breeze floated in through the open window, ruffling the crisp curtains. Ryan O'Flaherty malevolently shifted her wakeful gaze toward the offending air. She knew she could easily get out of bed without waking her lover. In fact, if their University of California Class of 2000 had awarded a medal for the soundest sleeper, Jamie Dunlop Smith Evans would not have had a single serious competitor.
But Ryan didn't want to get up. She had long subscribed to the theory that she would fall back to sleep more easily if she stayed in sleeping position. She was well aware that her theory was, at best, a postulate.
She knew it was either very late, or very early, but she refused to look at the alarm clock, abiding by the dictates of yet another unproven theorem. She had a big day ahead of her, and knew that her wakefulness was only serving to ensure that she wouldn't be at her best. Since logic didn't work well in such times, she tried another tack, one that she had learned from a therapist she had briefly consulted earlier in the year. She didn't like to have to resort to it, but had to admit that it was usually effective.
Ryan sat up, punched a pillow so that it provided better support, put her hands behind her head and laced her fingers together, assuming a favorite contemplative pose. She detested having her psyche trip her up, but she had learned the hard way that no matter how much she wished it could, logic did not always rule and there was little use in trying to fool herself.
Ryan's eyes fluttered closed for a moment or two as she forced herself to admit how something so simple was so difficult for her.
What wants to get out of my hard head?
Such a simple question, but one that she had great difficulty in facing. She knew the list of possibilities was very short; it always was. But the brevity of the list didn't have much to do with the effects.
Her lips pursed, Ryan absently chewed the inside of her cheek, distracted by thoughts of everything but what she needed to focus on. She felt more anxious as the moments ticked by without perceptible progress, so she gave in to her body's desire for activity. Her feet hit the floor with a thump and she nosed about the room in the dark, looking for something to put on. Finding a discarded tank top and some tight shorts she wore under her softball uniform, she dressed and went downstairs.
A few minutes later found Ryan doing some quick jumping jacks and starting to get loose. As her focus shifted from her brain to her body she started to feel more in tune, more in herself, a concept she had a difficult time explaining to herself, much less anyone else. But it had always been true for her: when her head wasn't cooperating, she had to approach it via the rest of her body.
After ripping off a few sets of crunches she started to hum, her mood improving as her muscles awoke and started sending out increased levels of oxygenated blood. By the time Ryan started to mindlessly perform push-ups, the thoughts bubbled to the surface. She was going to take her last exam in just a few hours, and Jamie was set to graduate that evening. She wasn't sure which event was more upsetting, finally deciding that they were about equal.
The prospect of not having school to define her was terrifying, and there was no use in denying it. And having a formal ceremony telling both of them in no uncertain terms that they were no longer students made her stomach turn. If she wasn't a student, what was she? She couldn't be an adult, because she didn't have a job. Adults worked. There was no way around that. Whether it was running a home, caring for children, volunteering for a special cause, or flipping burgers—adults worked.
She had no job, no intention of getting a job in the near future, and no fixed plans. The thought of spending the next year lazing about was too upsetting to give it any real thought, so she stuck with the more immediate issue: leaving the place that she had always dreamed of, the place she had clearly been meant to find. The road had been bumpy, but if it hadn't been she wouldn't have met the woman she knew Destiny had determined was the one for her.
She had everything she'd wanted. She had the woman, she had the education, she'd gotten more out of Cal in two years than she had any right to expect. And she didn't want to leave. Not now. Maybe not ever. She loved the school like it was a person, and she didn't have to remind herself how poorly she dealt with losing people she cared about.
Ryan shook her head, dislodging the perspiration that had started to form across her brow. The push-ups were having their intended effect. Now that her body was busy, her mind was completely open to her, but the feelings she was dredging up were universally unpleasant. And worse than the fact that they were unpleasant was the other truth—they were just...feelings. She couldn't control them; she couldn't change them; she couldn't fix them. All she could do at the moment was try to tire herself out. That almost always helped.
She put her feet on the seat cushion of a chair and did some more push-ups, finding the burn in her shoulders and belly deliciously satisfying. If only she could work her way out of her feelings. If only there were a mental exercise that would let her cleanse her head the way exercise cleansed her body.
Ryan wasn't keeping track of how many push-ups she was doing, but she knew it had to have been a lot. She grunted out two more, just to show her muscles that they always had more in reserve than they thought they did. She collapsed onto the floor, letting the thin, wool fibers of the Oriental rug serve as a towel.
"What demon are you exorcising?" Mia asked, her tone conversational.
If Ryan's muscles hadn't been so fatigued, she would have started. "How long have you been watching?" she asked wearily, knowing it would be a waste of time to ask her roommate to announce her presence.
"Not very long." She got up from the stair tread on which she'd been sitting and walked past Ryan on her way to the kitchen, returning a moment later with a glass of water. Extending it towards her friend, she asked, "Want some?"
Ryan waved her off, then rolled onto her side and stretched.
Mia sat in the chair that Ryan had been using as a foot rest and watched her. After a few moments, she asked what seemed a like a sincere, though totally incongruous question. "Why do you think we never had sex?"
Ryan spent quite a few seconds missing her simpler years of living with only men, men who rarely asked questions deeper than, "What's for dinner?", then she got to her hands and knees and eventually stood. "I'm not sure," she said, looking into Mia's gaze, the one that sometimes seemed so genuinely, innocently curious. "Maybe because I was desperately fixated on your roommate?" Ryan headed for the stairs, hoping to forestall further questioning.
"You had sex with other women, lots of them, and Jamie was engaged. I'm talking about fall semester, junior year, like right after we started working out together."
"Mmm, I don't know. I think you had a boyfriend, didn't you?" She tried to make sure Mia caught the teasing tone in her voice, but if there was one thing she had learned, it was that Hillsborough girls were very tenacious, so she had little hope that the discussion was over.
Mia got up and followed her up the stairs. "You had sex with other people who had boyfriends, even fiancés, as a matter of fact."
Annoyed, Ryan said, "I didn't have sex with Jamie while she was engaged."
"I wasn't talking about Jamie."
They were on the landing and Ryan's hand itched to turn the knob to her bedroom door. "I know people you slept with. You didn't seem to care whether they had boyfriends. And one girl who was in a class with me was engaged to a football player." She looked very satisfied with herself for having an answer for each of Ryan's protestations.
"I don't know why we didn't hook up, but I think it would have been memorable if we had." She showed the smile that had convinced many women to join her in bed and had just as slickly assured many others that Ryan's refusal to merge with them would be a regret they would carry to the grave.
Mia's indefatigable queries often annoyed her, but this one was particularly vexing. There was no benefit, no benefit at all to examining questions like this, but Ryan knew Mia well enough to know that she would not be easily brushed aside. The way Mia posed questions had always seemed invasive; her methods were nearly surgical. Ryan often felt as though Mia knew the answer to the questions she posed, and that she enjoyed watching Ryan's squirm to reply. That made Ryan all the more determined to not reveal her discomfort.
But Mia was just as good, if not better, at this game as Ryan was. ""There’s something you’re not telling me." She reached up and patted Ryan's flushed, damp cheek. "Never mind. I'll get it out of you eventually. G'night studly."
Mumbling a good night, Ryan went into her room and closed the door. She shucked her clothes and dried herself off with them, then went over by the window and let the cool air help turn down her internal thermostat. Mia's question kept intruding, ruining the tranquil high that her exercising had begun to build.
The breeze fluttered Ryan's hair, and she turned to see Jamie burrow further into the covers. Her lover had migrated across the bed, probably seeking out Ryan's warmth. Smiling at how adorable she looked, Ryan slipped into bed on Jamie's preferred side. She spooned up against her back, wrapped her arm around Jamie's waist and slid her thigh between her lover's. Ryan smiled when Jamie let out a heavy sigh and backed into her. She knew she hadn't solved anything with her frenzied exercise, but she felt significantly better. The heat flowed from her and in just a minute or so Jamie's chilled skin was warm where it touched hers. She nuzzled her face into Jamie's sweet smelling hair, and in just another minute both were soundly and contentedly asleep.
The alarm began to chirp at 7:30, and Jamie reached out to slap it into silence. But her flailing arm didn't catch the clock or even the bedside table. Instead, it bounced off a warm body that was, unexpectedly, behind her. As always, it took her brain a few seconds to catch up with the physical sensations her body was experiencing. "Why are you behind me?" she asked, clearly perplexed.
Ryan snuggled closer and draped an arm over her waist. "You encroached on my territory, so I made a land grab."
Turning her head, Jamie got a look at Ryan's face. "You look like you've been up for a while. Have trouble sleeping?"
"Yeah." Ryan yawned lustily. "I was up for a while around two. Then I woke up again about an hour ago. I've been conjugating verbs."
Shifting her weight while disentangling herself from the sheet, Jamie managed to turn and face her partner. "Sweetheart," she said, running her hand up and down Ryan's chest, "you know that doesn't help. You've been studying like a madwoman for this test. It's all in there." She tapped Ryan's temple with a finger. "You need to relax and clear your mind, not stuff more into it."
"I tried that. When I couldn't sleep I went downstairs and did push-ups until I burned off some energy."
"Did that help?"
"Yeah. I guess so." She threw off the sheet and started to get up, but Jamie grasped her arm, rendering her off-balance.
"Don't get up yet."
"My exam's in a little over an hour. That's just enough time to get breakfast and run to school. If I don't make myself do something physical, I'll just keep trying to cram more into my short-term memory."
Giving her a seductive smile, Jamie took Ryan's hand and threaded their fingers together. She scooted closer so their nipples touched when she inhaled. "I can keep you busy for a while." Ryan's fleeting look of annoyance brought Jamie's seduction to a grinding halt. "Go study," she snapped, rolling over and letting her feet hit the floor with a thump. "But don't ever tell me I never make the first move."
"What did I do?"
The high pitch that Ryan's voice often took on when she knew she was in trouble made Jamie's ire rise. Her eyes flashed with anger and her color rose. "Nothing. But this is why I don't like to approach you for sex. You know it's hard for me to do, and you'd go out of your way to be receptive if you really wanted to encourage me."
Ryan could almost see the ammunition being loaded into the chambers of her partner's mind. "I didn't do anything! Why are you upset?" She patted the bed in the most inviting way she could muster. "Come back to bed, baby."
"No. No way. I think I'm onto something here." Jamie's eyes narrowed and she stared at Ryan with an intensity that was never a sign of good things to come. "You say you want me to make the first move, but I think that's a lie. I think you need to be in control, complete control. If you want to have sex, we do. If you don't, we don't."
"That's not true and you know it. You're being silly."
"No, I'm not. Why else would you look annoyed when I tried to start something? When you look annoyed, you're annoyed. You're remarkably transparent."
Ryan looked as though she'd tasted something sour. "I do not...I am not. I'm not!"
"You were definitely annoyed. Admit it." Jamie climbed onto the bed, her knees splaying apart as she sat on her haunches. "Admit it."
Ryan assumed the same pose and they faced off for a few tense seconds. "I'm not annoyed." Her expression morphed into a slow, sexy smile. "I'm turned on." She reached out and put her hands on Jamie's hips and pulled her close, but Jamie turned away, keeping her mouth well out of Ryan's reach.
"Too late; I'm not. Go to school."