Page 12 of The Light Year (Stardust Beach #6)

jeanie

. . .

The kiss by the fence had lit her on fire. Heat raged from Jeanie’s solar plexus and radiated out as Bill’s lips pressed against hers, his tongue searching her mouth right there at the Cape, where anyone could have seen, had they been looking.

Two women in flowered swim caps and padded swimsuits drift by, waving liver-spotted hands at her when she turns her head in their direction.

Jeanie smiles and waves back, but then turns her face to the sun again, the sound of everyone’s voices blissfully drowned out by the silence she hears underwater.

Bill kissed me. He didn’t even care who was watching. What does this mean? How do I feel about it ?

The questions in her mind are unrelenting, but the answers don’t come easily. The day of the kiss, she’d come home to Vicki, intent on not telling her about it, but all it took was one look for her roommate to drop the magazine in her hands and pick up a cigarette.

“Spill it, princess,” Vicki had said around the cigarette as she touched it with the tip of a flame to light it. “You’ve got ‘just been kissed’ energy all around you.” Vicki blew the smoke out and put her bare feet on the coffee table, crossing them at the ankles.

Jeanie had laughed, still thinking she might be able to keep the kiss to herself. It took only moments for her to fold, sitting down across from Vicki with an air of defeat.

“I asked to talk to Bill outside today,” Jeanie admitted. “He met me at the fence and we just… we kissed. A lot.”

“Ooooh,” Vicki said, narrowing her eyes. “More, please.”

“He pushed me up against the fence and I completely forgot that we were in direct sight of the building. I have no idea if anyone saw us.”

“Are you doing it on purpose?” Vicki asked without hesitation. “Do you want to get caught?”

“No? I don’t think so?” Jeanie sounded as conflicted as she felt, and she knew it.

“I think common sense would say that I want us to get caught so that it’s out there, but common sense would also say that I don’t want us to get caught because that will create so much trouble for Bill at home, and definitely for both of us at work. ”

Vicki exhaled smoke as she nodded slowly. “Right. It would. But as we discussed, you two were caught on camera kissing—at least as far as we know. So it’s not like no one knows about you and Bill.”

Jeanie slumped forward, putting her forehead to her knees as she remembered the way people were already gossiping.

“I know, I know,” she said, her words muffled as she talked into her legs.

Vicki reached over and scratched her back lightly through her cotton dress, her long fingernails sending chills up and down Jeanie’s spine.

Jeanie sat up and looked at Vicki with flushed cheeks. “Do you think I’m self-sabotaging?”

“That would be insane. You’ve worked way too hard for that.”

“I know. I have. But maybe I’m sabotaging Bill? Maybe I feel so angry at him for getting us into this situation—wait,” Jeanie stopped herself, waving both hands back and forth. “I can’t put this on him. I did this, too.”

“You did,” Vicki agreed with a single nod, tapping her cigarette into an ashtray. “You most definitely did. And you’re a grown woman, so let’s not take anything away from you by putting it all on him.”

Jeanie nodded. Her sigh was so heavy that it felt like it carried actual weight as it left her body. “I think I need to leave, Vic.”

Vicki’s eyebrows shot up. “Leave NASA?”

“Leave Florida,” Jeanie said sadly. “This is my dream job, but I’m turning it into a nightmare, and I can’t stop myself.”

Vicki ground the cigarette out in her ashtray. “Let’s just tap the brakes there, princess. I know you to be a tough, smart lady, and there’s no reason for you to run away with your tail between your legs. Maybe you just need to redirect your affections. Go out with other men.”

“I tried!” Jeanie protested, holding out a hand and ticking the men off on her fingers. “I went out with Peter Abernathy,” she said, referencing a fellow engineer whom she’d dated a year or two prior.

“Snooze,” Vicki said, rolling her eyes. “Never liked him.”

“And I went out with that guy you set me up with.”

“I apologized for that,” Vicki said, wagging a finger at her. “He looked different when I met him in a bar after two cocktails.”

“I’ve gone out with two or three other guys that I’ve been set up with since I moved here, and none of them took. There was no… spark.”

Vicki nodded wistfully. “There does have to be a spark.”

The women sat there in silence for a moment, letting the late afternoon light drift through the front window of their shared condominium.

Jeanie’s shoulders slumped again. “I’ve only ever had a spark with Bill,” she said, sounding forlorn.

“But Bill’s already got a spark—with his wife,” Vicki said firmly.

Jeanie thinks about that conversation now as she floats in the swimming pool.

Her eyes are shaded behind sunglasses as she lets her arms and legs float limply in the water like seaweed.

The two liver-spotted women in bathing caps walk by again in the shallow end of the pool as they swing their arms in an exaggerated movement, sort of like they’re on a stroll together, only with the resistance of the water to slow things down.

They’re talking animatedly, but Jeanie’s ears are still in the pool.

She knows Vicki is right: there’s no reason for her to pack her bags and her cat and leave Florida.

There’s no call for her to abandon her own dreams just because she and Lieutenant Colonel Hot-to-trot can’t keep their hands off one another.

The very thought of having to call and tell her mother that she’s screwed up her life over a married man is enough to sober Jeanie completely, and she puts her feet on the bottom of the pool, standing up abruptly and letting the water stream over her tanned body.

Her hair drips down her back and she walks over to the steps of the pool, climbing out and walking over to the chair where her towel is slung over the back.

She takes off her sunglasses and squeezes the water from her long hair, then wipes her face off and dries the droplets from her arms and shoulders.

The eyes of everyone in and around the pool take in her youthfulness with wistful longing, and then the retirees all go back to their books and conversations before Jeanie even notices their admiration.

There’s no way she’s going to give up everything she’s worked for just because her hormones are playing tricks on her. Jeanie is infused with determination in this moment, and she knows she can stay away from Bill. She knows she can, because she has to.

To do anything else would be career suicide, and would also mean she’d given up on herself entirely. And if anyone is going to believe in her and make her dreams come true, it’s going to be Jeanie.

She wraps the towel around her waist, knotting it tightly, and slides her sunglasses back on her face.

The women in the pool give her one more smile, and every man in the gated pool area watches her walk away.