by Alcy » Mon Sep 21, 2009 2:22 am
Special note: This chapter is dedicated to Deb (JustSkipIt), for all the wonderful words she has written over the years and, in turn, all the kind and helpful comments she has left for me over the years...and because she likes this wee fic so much!
[center]~ Chapter Nine – If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind? ~[/center]
For the third time in less than two minutes Tara glanced at her watch. Besides the painstakingly slow passage of those two minutes, nothing had changed and Willow Rosenberg was still over half an hour late. Tara sighed and glanced down at her almost empty chai latte, she drained the cold dregs in the bottom and no sooner had she set the cup down than it was whisked away by a busy waiter. She couldn’t help but notice the haughty glance he flicked in her direction as he passed that clearly said he thought she had occupied valuable space for too long. Customers from a nearby table had asked fifteen minutes earlier if they could take the empty chair opposite her, to which she replied that someone was joining her. She couldn’t help but feel that they were now staring at her and whispering amongst themselves that she was merely pretending to be waiting for a friend.
She had sent Willow a text message twenty minutes ago, saying nothing more than the fact that she had arrived at the café. Willow’s ‘great, c u sn’ had come back rather quickly. However, twenty minutes didn’t exactly fit Tara’s definition of ‘soon.’ With a sigh, she scraped her chair back and got up to leave. At precisely that moment the gorgeous but flustered form of Willow Rosenberg sauntered into the café. Despite her slightly red cheeks, her hair and clothing were immaculate. As she sat down, Tara caught the distinct whiff of perfume mingled with fresh shampoo and expensive hair products. Her suspicions as to where Willow had been were to be shortly confirmed by the girl herself.
“I’ve had the worst morning!” Willow moaned as soon as she sat down in the chair opposite.
Tara would have cast a smug glance in the direction of the nearby table who were no doubt all glancing over their shoulders at the beautiful newcomer but she was much too preoccupied with staring at Willow. At the mere sight of her, she promptly forgot just how angry she had been at being left to sit alone and stared at for the past thirty minutes. Instead she paced her elbow in the edge of the table and propped her chin up with her hand…very close to drooling over the significant amount of bare skin displayed by the plunging v-neck of Willow’s sweater.
“Gustav took simply ages to do my hair this morning, and then when I walked out of the salon I realised the cut just wasn’t sitting right. I had to march back in and demand he touch it up.”
Willow patted at her perfectly arranged curls with a scowl on her face as though they still weren’t sitting right and then she finally looked up at Tara. The dreamy eyed stare was dismantled in an instant as Tara sat up and whipped her elbow off the table, trying to look somewhat pissed off.
“I did think of calling, honestly but I was so distressed about my hair that it slipped my mind,” Willow admitted. She then had the decency to look somewhat ashamed. “You’ve been waiting here since eleven? I should’ve called.”
“It’s no problem,” Tara shrugged. “I don’t have anything better to do than sit in a café all morning and have people stare at me.”
“Tara Maclay, was that a sarcastic rebuke?” Willow whispered in a voice of mock horror. “I thoroughly expected to turn up and find you surrounded by a wall of admiring young women, all trying to get your number. At which point I would make my entrance, sweep through them all and say ‘she’s here with me ladies, piss off!’ Or something to that effect.”
“Well, obviously I am not quite that eligible,” Tara replied. She was unable to resist a smile in the face of such an emphatic display, despite the fact that her rebuke had been tossed aside with such little regard. She really is incorrigible! Tara thought with a slight shake of her head. However, she knew that she definitely would have felt a little thrill if Willow were to say ‘she’s here with me.’
Willow glanced around for the waiter and only to find that they were all occupied in the busy café, she turned her attention back to Tara. “I must admit that you fully occupied my thoughts before the disaster with my hair. I was thinking about just how little I know about you. Now I’ve finally got you all to myself, I can uncover the real Tara Maclay. For starters, I don’t have the faintest idea what you do for a living.”
“Um…I-I’m a writer,” Tara managed to splutter, still dwelling on the fact that she had ‘fully occupied’ Willow’s thoughts.
Willow momentarily lifted her eyebrows with surprise. “Oh well good then, I wasn’t keeping you from going back to work. Unless you’re a journalist, in which case I feel even worse. I’ve probably made you miss a deadline.”
Tara shook her head. “No, no deadlines. Well, I do have deadlines but they’re not often all that strict. I’m a novelist. Historical fiction mostly…ummm…Land of Fire, Passion in a Distant Land, Loss of Innocence…”
Willow shook her head with each title Tara reeled off. “Nope, haven’t heard of any of them…but don’t be offended. My reading material consists solely of Vogue, Cosmo and the gossip section of the Thursday edition of the Dominion Post…although I don’t really read that, I just scan for pictures of me.”
“Why am I not surprised,” Tara muttered.
Her comment went unheard as Willow had already turned to try and catch the attention of the waiter once again. He finally saw her frantically waving hand and he practically ran to their table with a broad smile on his face.
“Will darling, how lovely to see you!” he exclaimed as he leaned down to deposit a kiss on her cheek.
“Thank you, Jonathan,” Willow replied with a warm smile. “This is my dear friend, Tara Maclay.”
Jonathan glanced across at Tara with a big smile on his face even though he had just spent the last half an hour practically ignoring her. “Tara, I must say, you have the loveliest eyes I’ve ever seen. Will, if you’ve managed to reel this one in then you had better do a good job of holding onto her!”
Tara ducked her head; cheeks turning red with embarrassment at the thought of being ‘reeled in’ by Willow.
“Tara and I are just friends,” Willow replied.
Tara risked a brief glance up at Willow; she was hardly convinced by the manner in which Willow said ‘just friends.’ It was as though she said it, and meant something else entirely. She thought she saw the waiter, Jonathan, give Willow a little wink but she could not be sure. At any rate, she was already coming to the conclusion that the whole ‘coffee’ meeting had been a bad idea since inception. She once again regretted leaving her number on the whiteboard and knew that it would not be a mistake she made with the next gorgeous but shallow girl who walked into her life. As if there will be a procession of gorgeous girls lining up to date me, Tara groaned inwardly. This whole affair with Willow was beginning to show her exactly why she stayed with Audrey even after the cheating and being treated like crap. She was terrified she would never be able to find anyone else.
She then saw that both Willow and Jonathan were staring at her expectantly and she realised they were waiting for her to place an order. “Um, I’ll have the pancakes with fruit and an orange juice.” Her order was said quickly. After all, she’d had quite a while to peruse the menu and had decided what she wanted twenty minutes ago.
Jonathan left to place their orders and Tara was once again left with Willow. Even though they were sitting in the middle of a crowded café, she felt as though she was completely alone with Willow…such was the unnerving effect that she had on her. Tara shifted uncomfortably in her chair, crossing her legs beneath the table. Her heart almost stopped beating when she felt her foot brush up against something much too soft to be the leg of the table. She blushed a bright red and shifted again so her feet were as far away as possible from Willow’s legs even though she was currently thinking of stripping off her shoes and running her bare feet down their length.
“So now I know you’re a writer,” Willow returned her attention to Tara. “And you’re currently single.”
“That sums me up nicely,” Tara admitted with a small shrug.
“I don’t think so,” Willow replied, cocking her head to one side with an expression of interest. “I think there’s much more to Tara Maclay.”
Tara suddenly felt extremely special, as though once again she was the sole focus of Willow Rosenberg’s attention. She was beginning to realise why so many girls would throw themselves at her feet. It wasn’t just the fact that she was drop-dead gorgeous, there was something magnetic about her.
“I’m actually kinda dull,” Tara tried to admit.
“You, dull?” Willow lifted her eyebrows with incredulity. “C’mon, spill…let’s start with something we both have in common. When did you first realise that you were gay?”
Tara coughed slightly at the unexpected question, even though she had been out for almost eight years she found herself looking around to see if anyone had overheard and was casting glances in her direction. Across the table from her, Willow had a broad smirk on her face.
“You are just too cute for words.” She shook her head slowly. “It’s 2009; no one’s going to spit on you in disgust.”
“You never know!” Tara replied.
Willow shrugged. “I’ve never been one for caution…as you might have guessed! So, spill, you were just about to tell me when you realised you were a big ol’ dyke.”
Tara couldn’t help but let out a short laugh, “Um…high school I guess, there had been a few boyfriends but I was only ever an ornament to them, and they meant even less to me. None of them lasted longer than a few weeks. I used to clam up when they’d try and kiss me.”
“Which of course led to you being labelled ‘frigid’?” Willow suggested with a knowing nod.
“Um…yeah,” Tara admitted. ”My family is pretty religious though so that kind of explained it…but really I just wasn’t into them in that way. Then during the summer holidays before my final year, I spent time at the beach with one of my best friends. She and I had always been close but…”
“Name?” Willow interrupted, as though Tara was skimping on the details.
“Fiona Rigby, but everyone called her Fi,” Tara continued.
Willow pursed her lips together thoughtfully for a moment. “Nope, don’t know her.”
Tara frowned. “You can’t possibly know every lesbian in New Zealand!”
“Well…most of ‘em. The hot ones anyway,” Willow grinned.
“Well, there’s no chance in hell because she’s not a lesbian. At least not anymore,” Tara explained. Willow nodded knowingly again as she continued. “Anyway, the subject of boys came up as it always does and I admitted that I had very little interest in them…and even less in being kissed by them, or doing anything else at which point Fi flatly came out and asked if I was gay. She’d guessed before I even knew myself. Before I could even say anything she was kissing me and I was kissing her back…”
Tara paused during her story, she couldn’t help but wonder why she was admitting some so fiercely private to someone she knew so little of. It had taken her almost a year before she told Audrey. Willow smiled encouragingly and Tara found she could continue almost easily,
“We were together for almost six months, until the school ball and she refused to go with me. She didn’t want to be outed and labelled a ‘dyke’ in front of the whole high school.” Tara sighed. “That was the end of it. A guy asked her to the ball and she ended up dating him. I didn’t go. To make matters worse Fi blabbed to everyone that I was gay, the whole school, my parents, everyone knew…”
Tara trailed off with a slightly pained expression on her face. Even after all this time the memory of such a rejection from the first girl she had loved and lost her virginity to still burned fiercely. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Willow’s expression; a part of her had expected the redhead to be slightly mocking or dismissive as per her usual behaviour. However there was a sympathetic look on her face, when she opened her mouth to say something she was interrupted by the arrival of their drinks, her orange juice and a bowl latte for Willow.
“Coming out sucks,” Willow announced after a deep gulp of her coffee. “I realised I was gay right from primary school when I used to pretend to have trouble with my homework so I could stay late with Miss Orange…damn, she was one hot primary school teacher. Coming out terrified me but, being Willow Rosenberg of course, I eventually decided to come out as loudly and proudly as possible. By then Xander and I were friends so we pretty much stuck together. The faggot and the dyke.”
“Did people avoid you?” Tara asked tentatively.
Willow took another sip and shook her head. “On the contrary, we eventually became the novelties. Everyone wanted to be friends with us and when I got to ‘that age,’ girls wanted to know me a little more intimately. Although discreetly of course.”
Tara again found herself laughing. “Oh my god.”
Willow winked. “Who would’ve thought that high school could be so much fun. I didn’t learn any of the traditional lessons of course. Not that I needed school for anything. I was politely ‘asked’ to leave at the end of Sixth Form for behavioural reasons, but the truth was I just didn’t give a fuck.”
“University was liberating for me,” Tara continued. She was finding it easier by the minute to talk to Willow. “There were finally others like me, support groups and parties. At first I was a little hesitant to get involved with anyone else after Fi, but I soon learnt that I could trust again…” Tara paused, realising that once again she had chosen the wrong woman to trust in Audrey. She stared at Willow, knowing full well that she could have chosen wrong again.
The conversation trailed off slightly in the wake of Tara’s silence but all too soon their food arrived. Buttermilk pancakes and fruit, smothered in maple syrup for Tara and a ‘works’ breakfast for Willow, bacon, sausage, hash browns and toast. Tara watched in surprise as Willow poured generous helpings of salt and tomato sauce on her food before digging in with great gusto. She glanced up a moment later with a full mouth and saw Tara looking.
Willow swallowed quickly with a slight shrug. “I’m not one of those girls who lives on salad and diet coke.”
“Neither.” Tara shovelled a forkful of pancakes into her mouth; they were exceptionally sweet and fluffy. Although knowing her own love of running, she couldn’t help but wonder if Willow worked out. She distinctly remembered pressing up against a very firm set of abs during their night of passion.
“So, what about you?” Tara asked, pausing for a break between mouthfuls. She had to admit that her curiosity was burning exceptionally strongly when it came to the question of just what Willow did to keep herself living so comfortably.
“Me?” Willow replied between swallows. “Um…I keep myself busy with a demanding calendar of social engagements, especially at Imerst…and a little bit of working out to keep my arse looking so damn fine.”
And we have a winner, Tara thought, finding it difficult to imagine Willow sweating away on a stair master. Although the more she tried, the more appealing the image became. Although in her imaginings there was no stair master, just sweaty Willow. The image of sweaty Willow almost took her mind off the fact that Willow had completely avoided the real crux of her question.
“I probably wouldn’t go all that often but Xander is a personal trainer at Body Works, he pretty much kicks my arse if I don’t go,” Willow continued quickly. It was as though she was anxious to steer the conversation away from the direction in which Tara was leading her.
“He seems like the only one that can keep you in line,” Tara pointed out. Although she hardly knew Xander, she clearly remembered just how nice the young man had been following the drama at his party.
“Yeah, he’s my family.” Willow nodded before tearing the end off a sausage with one bite.
“Have you any other family?” Tara asked tentatively. She had not forgotten that Karl had started to say something about Willow’s parents on Monday when she went to pick up her cell.
Willow stopped chewing for a moment. She swallowed quickly and shook her head. For once it seemed that she was lost for words.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Tara immediately regretted prying. She opened her mouth again to admit that she had recently lost someone but closed it when she found she didn’t want to bring Audrey up at all.
Willow shrugged and swung the focus back to Tara. “What about you? Parents, siblings…children or dogs?”
Tara laughed lightly. “Yes to the parents, and the siblings. I have an older brother, Donnie. They’re all up in Auckland. I don’t have any children.”
“Me neither,” smirked Willow. “At least none that I know about.”
Tara couldn’t help but laugh again at the adorably naughty expression on Willow’s face. “Nor do I have any pets. I would love to get a dog, but for that I need to buy a house in the suburbs and I’m not quite ready to let my apartment go. I still haven’t recovered from my suburban childhood.”
“Let me guess, your folks live in Remuera?” Willow asked, referring to a high-priced suburb full of large houses and well to do families with their perfect little children being sent to the best schools in the city.
“Guilty as charged,” Tara admitted.
“Well…you turned out pretty well all the same,” Willow commented with a grin.
Tara couldn’t resist a slight dig in return. ”I can’t say the same for you!”
“Thank you, thank you very much,” Willow laughed. “Although your barb is completely and thoroughly deserved as you experienced first hand after my disgraceful behaviour last weekend.”
Tara was slightly taken aback by the sudden admittance, her lip and eye had almost completely healed and she’d done her best to put the awful experience behind her…despite being reminded of it every time she looked at Willow. “It’s okay, really.”
“It’s not okay!” Willow blurted out. “My fucking ex-girlfriend decked you. I’ll never forgive myself for my ineptitude in not leaping to your aide sooner.”
“That would have been welcome.” Tara mopped up a large pile of maple syrup with a piece of pancake and shovelled it into her mouth, mainly to keep from having to say anything further. She knew if she continued she would possibly absolve Willow of all wrongdoing. As it was, she quite liked the fact that the redhead felt guilty for what she had done.
Willow looked suitably chastened as she tucked into the remainder of her big breakfast and they sat in what soon developed into a companionable silence as they both finished their meals. Tara found herself sneaking brief glances up at Willow every now and then and realised that, for all her hugely inflated ego and arrogance, she was growing on her. She no longer seemed like the shallow young woman who had sauntered into the café complaining about how badly Gustav had cut her hair.
Full to the brim, Tara set down her knife and fork with a clatter and wiped her mouth with a serviette as she waited for Willow to finish. Although she still knew very little actual information about the redhead, she felt as though she had gained an insight into her life. There was still however the one question that Willow had neatly avoided.
“You didn’t answer one of my questions earlier,” Tara said quietly, trying to keep her voice as nonchalant as possible. “What do you do?”
Willow frowned. She was suddenly slightly uncomfortable. “I thought I told…”
“You told me what you like to do, but what do you do…you know, work wise? I write and you…?” Tara trailed her voice off, leaving Willow to fill in the gap.
“Oh.” Willow paused and suddenly looked very interested in what remained of her breakfast. A few moments passed before she finally met Tara’s gaze once more. “Well in actual fact I don’t do anything. Technically however, I own a company.”
“You own a company?” Tara asked dubiously.
“Don’t look so surprised,” Willow scolded her for displaying the expression so blatantly. She shrugged. “You’d be surprised at just how little you actually have to do to own a company. Turns out you can pay people to do everything for you.”
“You own a company?” Tara repeated. “I mean, how, why and what?
The uncomfortable expression remained on Willow’s face but she stubbornly held Tara’s gaze. Tara saw something in her eyes that she had not seen before in the redhead. She was sad. The display of emotion startled Tara and subconsciously she lifted her hand to the table. With her hear hammering in her chest, she slowly moved her fingers towards Willow’s hand which was resting near her empty coffee cup. Her fingers were scant inches from Willow’s when she was startled by a loud, grating voice.
“Willow, what a delightful surprise!”
Tara snatched her hand back and glanced up to see a tall, somewhat thin woman with bottle blonde hair standing over their table. She placed one hand possessively on the back of Willow’s chair and leaned in close. Tara immediately thought it was a little too close for someone who was just a good friend.
“Natalie,” Willow greeted her in return, turning her face towards the other woman so she could lean in and kiss her cheek.
Natalie deposited a kiss on the proffered cheek and then moved away only slightly, the smile on her face indicating that it could have been much more than a simple kiss on the cheek if they had not been in the middle of a crowded café. It was at this point that Natalie cast a surreptitiously smug glance in Tara’s direction.
Tara pointedly turned away as though she wasn’t in the least bit interested in whatever Natalie was trying to prove. She suddenly found the remnants of her breakfast extremely interesting and proceeded to mop up the remaining syrup with her finger, not caring how childish she looked as she licked it off. She tried to block out the honey-like words flowing from Natalie’s lips as she complimented Willow on how good she was looking. Although she did note that the compliment wasn’t returned. She had to wonder just why that satisfied her immensely.
“Will I see you at Imerst tonight?” she asked hopefully.
Tara almost snickered; she couldn’t see how anyone that sounded so desperate could possibly be smug about anything.
“Possibly,” Willow shrugged. “Although I very may well have another engagement, you know what it’s like for busy people.”
After nearly a minute of sickening conversation, Natalie excused herself, saying she was late for an appointment and finally left their table.
Tara watched Willow and saw that she her gaze was following the other woman as she left the café. She felt her gut begin to ache until it reached the point where she thought it was tied in a hard knot. Just as the woman was about to walk out the door she turned and made a visible ‘call me’ signal in Willow’s direction. Tara felt like throwing up at the responding smirk on Willow’s face. It was only when her scantily clad body had finally disappeared from sight that Willow turned her attention back towards Tara, completely failing to notice the stormy expression on her face for what it was.
“So, when can I see you again?” Willow asked quietly, reaching across the table to lay her hand atop Tara’s.
If Willow had been oblivious to Tara’s emotions a moment earlier, she was brought up to speed when she snatched her hand away and folded her arms across her chest. Willow paused mid-movement before placing her hand back on her lap, looking slightly wounded as though she were the one that had just been ridiculed.
“Um, okay, so I missed something?” Willow asked with a slight frown of confusion.
“I don’t think you missed anything at all,” Tara replied tartly. “You sure got a good look at everything.”
“What? Natalie?” Willow asked in a surprised voice. “C’mon, I was just talking to her. It was fun making her think she had a chance in hell with me!”
“Well, just because I jumped into bed with you practically the moment we met doesn’t make me someone like her!” Tara growled angrily, unfolding her arms so she could point her finger in the direction that Willow’s admirer had just disappeared.
“Tara…” for the first time that morning Willow appeared slightly taken aback and lost for words. “I didn’t mean anything of the sort…”
“I know exactly what you meant,” Tara growled angrily, reaching into her bag to withdraw a twenty-dollar note. As she stood she slapped the money down on the table. “Goodbye, Willow.”
Willow stood also, her chair scraping back on the floor in her haste to stop Tara. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to insinuate anything of the sort, honestly.”
“Well, going on your past record you’ll forgive me if I don’t believe you,” she said quietly, refusing to be drawn in by the almost sincere expression on Willow’s face. I will not give into her dammit! She can’t just pull that puppy dog expression at me and expect to have everything forgiven! Tara thought, trying to keep her anger raging as she knew she stood more of a chance of resisting Willow’s charms if she remained angry with her. This whole date was a bad, bad idea!
With some effort on her part, she turned her back on Willow Rosenberg. She walked out of the café, hoping to god that Willow didn’t follow her. Once safely on the other side of the road she quickly stepped into a nearby gift shop and hid behind a display stand so she could watch the entrance. Sure enough, less than a minute later Willow appeared, obviously having paid her bill as quickly as possible. Tara watched as she glanced left and right before her shoulders slumped slightly and she walked off to the right, away from the store in which Tara was hiding. As Tara watched her walk down the road she couldn’t help but wonder if she had been guilty of over-reacting to Willow’s flirtatious nature. After all, it was what had won her over in the first place…that and a little too much alcohol.
“Can I help you?” a prim voice spoke from just behind her shoulder.
Tara spun around to find herself face to face with a snotty looking sales assistant. She glanced around for a moment; the gift shop was the type of store that sold extremely overpriced candles and linens to people with pretensions towards refinement. It was not the sort of store Tara visited unless she was looking for a present for her grandmother, and it was months until her birthday.
“Ah, no…thanks,” Tara replied quickly, ducking back out of the shop.
Willow was still visible in the distance, continuing to walk down the street. Tara watched her for a moment, secretly willing her to turn around. However, instead she unlocked a small, black Audi and Tara realised with a fright that she would drive directly past her. Once again she ducked back inside the gift shop and hid until the sleek sports car drove past her and stopped at the traffic lights just up ahead.
“This isn’t a bus stop, you know.”
Tara turned and smiled as politely as possible at the sales assistant, “You know what it’s like when you’re hiding from a girl that you really want to see, and yet don’t want to see at the same time?”
“No, I don’t,” she replied in a condescending voice.
Tara just shrugged and peered back out the window to see that the lights had changed and Willow’s Audi was pulling into the turn, soon she would be gone altogether.
“Nice work,” Tara added to the assistant as she indicated the display she had been hiding behind. With the woman still glaring at her, Tara left the store and began her walk home. She was already doubting her ability to do any writing that afternoon and suddenly thought that a DVD and a big bag of salt n’ vinegar chips sounded like absolute heaven. She’d stuff her face with fatty, salty goodness and the subsequent stomachache would serve as a reminder that Willow Rosenberg was just as bad for her.
