Her haste was so at odds with the subject she had to paint that she almost lost her focus. Then the image rose up again, and she began squeezing colors onto her palette. She had been staring out to sea during her lunchtime walk, and she had almost stepped on a huge jellyfish lying like a puddle on the sand. Only Piper"s sharp bark had alerted her in time to break her stride and avoid the creature. It had oozed along the beach, its movement imperceptible but for the telltale indentation behind it, revealing its path.
Pam quickly streaked a thin wash of Payne"s gray over the surface to make a blue-gray ground for the painting. While it was still wet, she stippled paint over the base for the damp sand. Dry sand created a border along the bottom of the canvas, and the edge of a wave defined the top. She played with several blends of colors on her palette before she sketched the jellyfish slightly to the left of center, its trail leading off the canvas to the right. She couldn"t reproduce the quivering blob with her heavy oils, but she visualized the sea gla.s.s in place before she even finished the early stages of painting. Pale blues and grays and clear, polished gla.s.s would bring life and lightness to the heavy ma.s.s of paint and imitate the glistening reflection of sunlight off the creature"s surface.
Smudge this line a little. Yes, perfect. Pam"s brush froze on the canvas. She held her breath and carefully finished the stroke before lifting the brush. Where had the thought come from? Where was her usual disconnect from the work? She was right there, watching the painting unfold, making adjustments so it matched her vision, holding both the painting-in-progress and the finished product in her mind.
Instead of locking part of herself away and letting the painting happen.
Almost against her will. Now she was present, making conscious decisions about the work. She slowly put her brush against the canvas again, exhaling through her mouth as she stroked across the painting.
Seeing the paint as it spread, antic.i.p.ating the next layers of color, visualizing the completed and sea-gla.s.s studded mosaic.
Pam"s mind moved ahead even further, beyond the completed picture, and she saw Mel hanging the painting in what Pam called the Gray Room. She named the rooms by their colors, but Mel had taken to referring to them by their paintings. She had a Starfish Room, a Seascape Room, a Storm Room, a Kite Room, and soon she"d have a Jellyfish Room. Pam refused to use those terms out loud, but under Mel"s influence she was beginning to secretly follow Mel"s lead.
She had been unaccustomed to living with her art. Over the past years, she had put her paintings up for sale as soon as she had managed to finish them. But the daily exposure to the pieces while she had been living with Mel had worn away some of her discomfort. She hadn"t spent a lot of time contemplating the paintings as they hung on the walls, but she had at least been able to walk past them without cringing.
She had to admit that Mel"s excitement with each new painting was a big part of the reason she was slowly allowing herself to accept inspiration when it came instead of fighting so hard to ignore it.
Pam stepped back from the easel and from the vision of Mel hanging the picture in her inn. She had seen jellyfish on the sand hundreds of times, but never before had she felt so compelled to paint one. Maybe she felt a kinship with the slow, shapeless animal.
These past weeks with Mel had left her feeling as if she were crawling through sludge in an attempt to keep pace with Mel"s explosion of growth. From her inn to her garden to her relationship with Danny, Mel was transforming at a rapid rate. Pam, by comparison, barely was able to drag herself from painting to painting, from isolation to an uneasy companionship. She"d settle back into her own pace as soon as she delivered the last of her paintings to Mel.
Or would she? Go back to her sluggish pace of one painting a year, when she had just finished her fourth in less than twice as many weeks? She had been so accustomed to denying herself this outlet, this way of expressing her pain. Her pain and vulnerability, those feelings too intense to express any other way than through her art. She had blamed Mel for forcing her to paint, but Mel had only asked. Pam had picked up the brushes, had let the images pour out, had slowly moved from expressing her pain to easing it.
She looked closely at every detail of her painting. Looked at every line, every texture, breaking it into sections as she a.n.a.lyzed her work. She made some small changes to the jellyfish"s shape so it didn"t appear so symmetrical. Darkened the sand in one area, so the contrast between wet and dry was more p.r.o.nounced. She had fought Mel"s positive interpretations of her paintings at first. Then she had started to see them through Mel"s eyes. Indirectly, cautiously. Always on guard against the chance of being hurt again. But she didn"t need the filter anymore.
Her vision was direct and clear, even through her tears. Seeing the painting objectively, but still investing all her emotion in it.
Somehow Mel"s courage as she rebuilt her life and her inn had helped Pam find the courage to stop denying her art. The return to being an artist had been a long one. Eight years followed by eight daring and complex weeks. The eight weeks she had known Mel. Pam wanted to share her tentative hope, the hesitant resurfacing of her abilities, with Mel. But she couldn"t. She"d share this painting with Mel, but not the breach in her protective sh.e.l.l. Not the aching joy she felt as her desire to express and create broke free. Love had almost destroyed her, as an artist and as a person. Being in love, losing her love. How many decades would it take for her to get over Mel if they started a real romance and failed? Pam might never pick up a brush again. She had used up all her courage. She wasn"t brave enough to take the chance.
Mel slowly peeled back the blue painter"s tape from around the window sash. The neat white trim contrasted nicely with the slate-gray walls. She had chosen colors with more depth for the third-floor rooms. Pam"s kite painting hung next door, against a rosy background.
Pam was delivering the painting for this room today. She had given Mel some suggestions for colors but wouldn"t tell her what she had painted.
Mel stopped to admire the panoramic vista offered by the upper-level rooms. They shared a bath, but the view more than made up for the slight inconvenience. Plus, the two rooms worked well as a suite for families, and Mel had already booked the full suite several times for the following month. She sighed and turned away from the ocean to gather her sc.r.a.ps of tape. She was doing all this work for other people to enjoy the views and the rooms while she languished alone in her downstairs dungeon. She was lonely without Pam and Danny and nervous about her soon-to-arrive guests. She had come up with the idea of an inn so she could have more people in and out of her life. But a few days with Pam in her bed, in her house, sharing her world, had spoiled her. She wasn"t certain she"d be able to live her whole life like this. She didn"t think she"d be able to survive with only intermittent companionship, with no lasting closeness.
Her body, her senses wanted Pam. Pam, windblown and smiling after drifting through ocean winds, a storm replacing the calm sea of her eyes when she took Mel in her arms. The taste of her kiss, as wild and uncontrollable as the tides. The feel of her arms, so strong and comforting, as the crashing waves of release washed over Mel"s body. Mel had spent so many years denying her body, and now she was tempted to keep their affair alive. But her instincts whispered a warning so quiet it was almost lost in the turmoil in her mind. She wanted more. She wanted everything. s.e.x, yes. Definitely. But love, too. Companionship and honesty.
Pam wasn"t ready to give her anything but s.e.x. And it was almost enough, but not quite. Mel had to keep searching, find a new path to the future she wanted. Pam had emotional limits because of her past, because she had been hurt, because of things Mel still didn"t fully understand. But would the women Mel was going to meet be any more available? Travelers, pa.s.sing through town before they returned to their real lives. Short days in which to find a spark of interest, to try to find someone who didn"t fail when compared to Pam.
She heard footsteps on the stairs. Pam. Bringing her fourth painting. At this rate, she"d be done with the commission within the week. Without the business deal to link her to Pam, Mel doubted they"d see each other at all except for accidental meetings in town.
She had been so excited when Pam finished the first mosaics. Now, she dreaded the final one.
"Wow, the walls look great," Pam said, walking sideways to fit through the door with the large painting. She turned it to face Mel.
"The color will be perfect with this."
Mel stared at the jellyfish. She had seen the creatures on the beach but had never expected Pam to paint one. She loved it. "It"s different," she said, unable to articulate what she meant. Pam had painted a portrait. Of a globby jellyfish, but it was a portrait. Her other paintings were distant, as if Pam was standing as far away as possible.
This time, however, she had stepped close. Stared her subject in the eye-or whatever it was a jellyfish had. She had somehow captured nuance and subtlety in the heavy oils. Mel wasn"t sure what this step meant for Pam, but she knew it was progress. Special.
Pam laughed self-consciously. She had become accustomed to Mel"s enthusiastic responses to her work, and the implied criticism she heard hurt. This painting wasn"t more technically proficient or conceptually interesting than her others. Mel had no reason to like it better, no way to know how different the process of painting had been. Why had Pam expected her to understand? "Saying it"s different is like saying a blind date is an interesting conversationalist."
"I didn"t mean bad different. It"s beautiful and unique. You can see sunlight glistening on it. I just meant, well, I"ve never seen you get so close to a subject. So single-minded in your focus. You"ve changed."
"Whoa," Pam said, backing away. She wasn"t changing, wasn"t turning into whatever Mel suddenly seemed to see. Vulnerability shifted to anger in a second. The hint of her former creative spark was still too new, too fragile to share. She had needed Mel"s praise somehow. Her appreciation of the painting. But Pam wasn"t ready to have the focus shifted off the art and onto her as an artist just yet. Not until she had regained some control, some of her old ability to paint at will. Some proof that the tentative confidence she had experienced while painting had some foundation in reality. "Don"t read too much into it. I saw a jellyfish and I painted it. You know what they say, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."
"Careful, the trim is still wet," Mel said, pointing at the wall behind Pam. Her voice rose in pitch to match Pam"s.
Pam stopped backing up and stood her ground. "If you don"t like it, I can try to paint something else..."
"I like it. I want it in my inn, so don"t try to replace it. I wasn"t trying to offer a psychological a.n.a.lysis of you as an artist. I just meant the subject and how you treated it is different from the other mosaics."
"Okay," Pam said. She was reacting foolishly and she tried to calm down. Just because Mel made the observation about her focus didn"t mean she was trying to interfere with Pam"s creativity. Dissect it until it disappeared. "I"m sorry," she said. "I"ve been...a little edgy since I moved back home. I miss, well, I miss you. Having s.e.x with you, I mean."
Mel rubbed her arms. "I miss it, too. The s.e.x part. And I"m lonely here, but I"ll be better this weekend when my guests come."
Pam carefully put the jellyfish mosaic on the floor. She wanted to take Mel in her arms, keep Mel talking about s.e.x. Make some joke about her trim comment and lighten the mood. Strip off her clothes and initiate the new guest room. Because that"s what casual s.e.x partners did.
But she had to let go of the illusion. She and Mel were anything but casual. Mel had been the key to unlocking her old talent, her broken love of art and creation. And Mel was the one person with the ability to make Pam lose everything once again.
"You"ll be fine. We"ll both be fine," she said. She walked away from Mel and from her painting. From the only part of herself she dared to offer.
Chapter Twenty-Two.
The soft ding-dong of an old-fashioned doorbell startled Mel.
She had installed the electronic chime on her front door, choosing the homiest sound-effect option, but no one had activated it until now. Her guests. She was tempted to stay in the kitchen until they gave up and went away, but she reluctantly put her eggs back in the fridge and walked out to greet them.
"Hi, I"m Mel. Welcome to the Sea Gla.s.s Inn," she said, forcing a smile.
"I"m Angie, and this is my partner Sara and our friend Tracy."
Mel shook hands with the three women. Angie had called last month to make this reservation for the group-her first official guests, since the wedding had only booked because they"d lost their original venue. She should have been excited, eager to celebrate the momentous occasion of launching her inn, but she felt curiously empty inside, lonely without Pam. She had gotten attached too quickly, and just as fast, their relationship was over. She had lost part of herself by getting too close to someone, just as she"d feared.
"What a beautiful old house," Angie continued as Mel picked up one of the suitcases and started up the stairs. "After talking to you and hearing about all the renovations you had to do, I was expecting to be staying in a construction zone. But this place is gorgeous."
"Thank you," Mel said, with a smile that felt more natural than her earlier one. She felt a mix of shyness and pride at the praise.
"Is this the original molding?" Tracy asked.
Mel halted in the middle of the staircase. "It"s original, but I had to fill in some big chips and replace some whole sections. Here, and here," she said, pointing to the repaired areas. The project had taken her hours. "The joins aren"t very smooth. I did this section first because I thought people would be less likely to stop on the stairs and notice. I improved, though. You can barely tell what I replaced in the dining room."
Tracy laughed. "Sorry to call attention to it. I promise I"ll go up and down the stairs with my eyes closed from now on. But you did an excellent job-that"s very exacting work."
Mel was surprised how pleased she was at the compliment. She carried the suitcase into the first room and then showed Tracy to hers.
All three of her guests immediately went to examine and praise Pam"s seascape, and then the storm painting. She had originally planned to put Tracy in the Starfish Room, the room Pam had used, but she couldn"t handle having a stranger sleeping in Pam"s bed. Eventually she would have to fill the room, but not yet. Forgetting about Pam was going to be very difficult when Mel had these ma.s.sive reminders in every room. She endured the few minutes of discussion about Pam, her gallery, and the other paintings. And the inevitable tour through the inn to see the other mosaics.
Finally, Mel herded her guests back into their rooms. She would get over it eventually. She would let go of the weeks of sharing a house, and then a bed, with Pam. As Mel went through the motions of showing her guests where they could find extra blankets and pillows, she told herself she needed to take a lesson from Pam and approach their relationship with logic and reason, not feelings. She had come to the ocean to start her own business and live independently for once in her life. But she had given Pam enough power to upset her equilibrium. To make her wonder what she could have done differently to keep Pam here. She knew the answer. Nothing. Pam hadn"t wanted to stay.
Mel tried to refocus on her guests. "I can make a picnic lunch for you to take on your bike ride tomorrow. And if you"re looking for a place to eat, there"s a binder full of menus from local restaurants in the living room. Breakfast will be at eight."
"If you have time while we"re here, I"d enjoy a tour of the house," Tracy said. "I"ve done a ton of remodeling in my old Victorian in Seattle. We could compare notes on painting techniques."
Mel hesitated in the doorway. She noticed Angie and Sara exchange smiles behind Tracy"s back. The realization stunned her for a moment. Tracy was obviously asking to spend more time with her.
Tracy was interested. In her. She felt fl.u.s.tered and was about to make an excuse to put Tracy off when she suddenly wondered what Pam would do. Pam would flirt and would casually make a date with Tracy because she was an ideal candidate. Only in town for a few days. Very pretty with her shoulder-length brown hair and long legs. Mel didn"t feel an instant attraction, an irresistible pull, as she had with Pam. But maybe a s.e.xual connection needed time. Maybe it didn"t have to be so natural and overwhelming as it had been with Pam.
"I"d like that," Mel said. "Catch me any time you"re free. And if you"re nice, I might let you s.p.a.ckle something."
She left the room and her guests" laughter behind and went downstairs to the kitchen. She returned to the task of preparing the ingredients for tomorrow"s breakfast, quietly shocked that she had flirted with a stranger. Awkwardly flirted, but flirted nonetheless. She hadn"t done that for years. Since her crush on Danny"s teacher. But she hadn"t been free then, and her overtures had been hesitant and short-lived. This was different. She was free. Single. Anything could happen. She whisked a bowl of eggs and cream and vanilla for a batch of m.u.f.fins and covered it with plastic wrap before putting it in the fridge. The dry ingredients were already sifted and ready, so in the morning, she would only need to blend them and add some fruit right before she baked them.
Her methodical approach to breakfast was soothing. She knew she looked efficient and in control as she browned sausage and peppers that she would add to eggs and bake in a ca.s.serole. The melon was already cut and macerating with lime juice and mint leaves. Steel-cut oats were sitting in the Crock-Pot, ready to cook overnight. But the steady and organized prep work she was doing was completely at odds with her jumbled thoughts. She hadn"t expected to connect like this with her guests, but now that she was running the inn she wondered why she was so surprised. She was hosting people who chose to be in a more intimate bed-and-breakfast instead of an anonymous, large hotel. And by advertising her inn as gay friendly, she had inadvertently set up a convenient dating pool.
She paused in her cooking to answer the phone. A couple traveling with their two grandchildren wanted to stay for a few nights in January. She would put them on the third floor, in the Jellyfish and Kite Rooms with their shared bath. She carefully entered the information on the spreadsheet she and Danny had created for her bookings, and she was amazed to see how many rooms she had reserved for the month. And she was already getting enough calls to hint at a full inn for the summer.
Mel returned to the kitchen and stacked her dirty dishes in the dishwasher. She could see the growth of her business so clearly.
Phone calls, booked rooms, painted walls. But when she looked at her personal life, all she saw was what was missing. She"d called Pam a mistake. Thought she"d lost part of herself during their affair. But her brief interchange with Tracy proved her wrong. What would she have done two months ago? Would she have been too embarra.s.sed to be playful? Would she even have noticed Tracy"s interest? Before the inn-before Pam-she hadn"t seen herself as attractive, certainly not in a s.e.xual way. Closed off, shut down, too old, too late. But not one of those phrases applied to her anymore. They never had, but she had believed in them anyway.
Scenes from her time with Pam flashed through Mel"s mind. The floor, the bed, the shower, the rickety back porch. Mel smiled and felt her skin grow warm with remembered arousal. She had lost Pam but no part of herself. Every step she had taken since buying this inn had resulted in another lesson learned, and her affair with Pam was no exception. She had grown, had gained clarity about what she wanted and deserved, had opened herself up to new possibilities.
Why couldn"t she have a full inn and a full life? A full inn meant nonstop work. And now it meant she"d have an opportunity for a date or two. She wiped down the counter before heading downstairs. Some transitory flirtations might be exactly what she needed to get over her obsession with Pam. She sure as h.e.l.l wasn"t going to sit around and wallow in self-pity.
Mel shut the door to her room and sat on her bed. Where she and Pam had spent their nights together. Near the rug where they"d shared their first citrus-scented kiss. No, she"d never be unaffected by her time with Pam. She"d probably never fully get over her. And she had a feeling Pam"s unemotional and carefree approach to s.e.x was only a veneer concealing a pa.s.sionate and sensitive soul.
She had seen Pam"s paintings-had seen Pam paint-and the discrepancy between her pictures and her words was clear. Pam managed to look at a beach, at a wave, at a jellyfish and take her subjects deep inside her. Hold them there until she connected them to something bigger and wider and deeper than what she saw in front of her. She claimed to be noncommittal, happy to play with shallow relationships and surface emotions, yet her paintings, her memories, her love for the son she had lost revealed only depth. But Mel couldn"t force Pam to acknowledge any feelings she might have when she seemed so determined to keep love, art, and emotion out of her life.
The very qualities Mel wanted more than anything.
Chapter Twenty-Three.
Pam parked next to Lisa"s van in the high school"s parking lot. She hurried over to help Lisa, who had crawled in the back of her van and was wrapping protective blankets around several crates she had transported. Pam took one end of a heavy crate full of sculptures and walked backward quickly as they moved out of the drizzly afternoon and into the auditorium. They repeated the trip three more times with crates of paintings.
"I have your booth right up front," Tia said, coming over to greet them. "Did you bring any of your own paintings?"
Pam had been antic.i.p.ating the question. Tia asked her the same thing at least twenty times before every annual charity art show. Pam always answered the same way. No, but she would purchase and donate a few pieces from other artists in her gallery to sell at the fundraiser for a local animal shelter.
"Yes," Pam said, enjoying the shocked expression on Tia"s face.
"I brought three."
"Let me see!" Tia said, pulling at the lid of one of the crates.
Pam laughed. "They"re in here," she said, indicating the box at her feet. She pried open the lid and slid out one of the paintings. Tia pushed her away impatiently, but her hands gentled as she took off the bubble wrap and felt that protected the picture.
"Oh, it"s perfect," she said, propping the painting against the booth"s wall and stepping back to admire it. Piper ran at the water"s edge, chasing a seagull and leaving paw prints in the damp sand.
"A dog painting for the shelter! We"ll have plenty of animal lovers here, so this will sell right away. Is this the price you"re asking? Nonsense. Give me that pen and I"ll just add a one to the front of this number. Next year we"ll plan to have you do an entire animal series. My neighbor has a cat that would be so handsome sitting on a sand dune."
Pam unwrapped the other two paintings and set them in a row.
She listened to Tia ramble on and wondered at her complete lack of panic when Tia talked about more paintings for the next benefit, although she hoped Tia would forget about the cat idea by then. She had shocked herself by managing to get three paintings done in a week. Mel"s commission for the mosaics had forced her to create, and the habit seemed to be sticking. One minute she had been laughing as Piper struggled up the beach with a huge piece of driftwood in her mouth, and the next she had been dragging out her rarely used watercolors and splashing them onto paper. A remembered scene of the dog pawing at a crab in a tide pool quickly followed. And then Piper"s daily, and invariably failed, attempt to catch a seagull.
Pam had liked the feel of the paint, the fluidity it gave to the dog"s movements, the hazy colors of the sand and waves.
For the first time in years, she had created with a range of emotions beyond the negative ones of anger and pain. She had been enchanted by watching Piper play, and she had captured the moment.
Simple. Fun. Not detached-because why paint at all if she didn"t care?-but not wounded by the process. And her first thought when she finished was an almost overwhelming desire to rush over to Mel"s inn and thank her, to show her the paintings, to try to express what it meant for her to create even such a small thing, like these watercolors.
She didn"t need to see the pictures through Mel"s eyes, to rely on Mel to show her the joy here. Pam could see it on her own. She simply had wanted to share them with Mel. But her relationship with Mel was anything but simple, and she had stayed home.
"Thank you," Tia said, grabbing Pam in a big hug.
"You"re welcome." Pam gave her an awkward pat on the shoulder and stepped back when Tia released her.
"So is your girlfriend coming tonight?"
"Didn"t we have this conversation already? She let me stay while my house was being repaired," Pam said. She could tell Tia was teasing, but she wanted to be clear about her relationship with Mel. To protect Mel"s reputation in town. She turned away and started to unpack the sculptures. "It was damaged in the storm, remember?"
"Of course. And I noticed you wisely waited a week for the paint to dry before you moved back home."
Another gallery owner arrived, and Tia went to meet him, leaving Pam mercifully alone. She set several risers of varying heights on the booth"s table and covered the whole thing with a shimmery, pale-blue cloth. She arranged a series of brightly colored enamel fish sculptures on the lower level of the platform. Yes, it was true. She could have moved back home weeks before she did, but she had waited. Until her feelings grew too threatening for her to stay any longer. She hadn"t answered Tia"s original question about whether Mel would be coming to the art show because she didn"t know. But she hoped so. Especially tonight, she had a ridiculous urge to share her watercolors and the hesitant renewal of faith in her art with Mel.
Mel and Tracy ran across the dark parking lot and burst into the auditorium, laughing and shaking raindrops everywhere. Mel immediately scanned the brightly lit room in search of Pam and just as quickly scolded herself for caring whether or not Pam was here.
The entire population of Cannon Beach seemed to have flocked to the art show. Mel wasn"t surprised. She had learned there was little to do in the town on a Sat.u.r.day night, especially in the off-season. After so much time alone and isolated in her inn, the ma.s.ses of people, smell of popcorn and hamburgers, and colorful displays of art were a welcome sight.