"Hi yourself," Jamie said. "Where are you little jocks?"
Glancing at Jordan, Ryan chuckled a bit and said, "Not many people would look at the two of us and use the term little, Hon. You’re talking twelve and a half feet of volleyball power here."
"Point taken," Jamie agreed. "And half of that twelve feet is just about the cutest assemblage of DNA on this earth." At Ryan’s hearty chuckle, Jamie added, "I like to mix in some biology terms just to keep you interested."
"Oh, I’m interested," Ryan agreed. "I’ll always be interested." She cleared her throat, consciously setting aside the images being conjured before her "interest" became overwhelming. "Now to answer your initial question, we’re in Half Moon Bay eating fish tacos. They’re really good," she added, winking playfully at Jordan.
"Sounds better than the brunch I just sat through with my relatives," Jamie muttered, feeling a little out of sorts. "I now remember why I stopped coming here in the first place."
"Is it really that bad?" Ryan asked solicitously.
"No, it’s not," Jamie said, realizing that she was whining for no good reason. "But you’re not here, and nothing is quite right if you’re not with me. Luckily for me, you’re the most thoughtful woman in the world, and you provided me with a very lifelike substitute for your sweet self."
Getting up and walking over to the parking lot for some privacy, Ryan asked, "Do you really like him?"
"Him?" Jamie’s tone was playfully shocked. "She’s a her, I’ll have you know." She regarded the orange and white striped tiger that Ryan had secreted in her carry-on, and gave the animal a hug. The little beast wore a tiny white T-shirt, upon which Ryan had used fabric paint to write "I love Jamie" in bright green sparkly letters. "I don’t think I’ve had a stuffed animal since I was tiny," she revealed. "I absolutely love her. And I love you for going out of your way to remind me of how much you love me."
"I searched and searched for the squishiest tiger in town," Ryan said, her voice gentling. "I wanted you to have something to hug at night."
"I want you to hug at night," Jamie murmured, rubbing her face gently against the soft orange fur of her tiger. "I miss you so much, Ryan, and it’s only the first day."
"I know, Honey, I miss you too. I guess though, for me, it’s nice to know that you’re with your mom, getting in some bonding time while I’m stuck down in Santa Cruz. It would be much harder to think of you alone in our bed."
"You know, I guess that’s true for me too," Jamie allowed. "Thanks for reminding me of that, Love. I should have known that you would be able to see the bright side of this."
"That’s me," she agreed brightly. "I’m your built-in optimist. So, what are you doing the rest of the day?"
"We’re going sailing in a few minutes. I just came up to change."
"That sounds like fun," Ryan said, thinking of Jamie in her brightly colored sailing gear. "But you don’t have your stuff. Won’t you get wet?"
Jamie laughed gently. "No, I don’t think so. Uncle David’s boat is closer to the QEII than to Daddy’s racing boat. It’s huge, and slow and never heels much. Besides, the Atlantic is quite warm this time of year. I’m just going to wear my swimsuit and shorts."
"Mmmm…." Ryan let out a strangled groan as images of Jamie in her form-flattering suit flooded her mind. "You look so incredibly hot in that suit…" she began, her voice low and sexy. Her musings were cut off when she heard Jamie say, "No, come on in, Mother. I’ll be off the phone in a minute."
"Say hi for me," Ryan asked. "Tell her to take care of my precious one for me."
"I’ll tell her when I hang up, Babe. Call me on my cell when you get there, and tell me if there’s a phone in your room, okay? I’m not sure your phone will work down there."
"Really? Why’s that?"
"There are a number of pockets down there where there isn’t cellular service," Jamie informed her. "If your cell doesn’t work I’ll have to call you on a land line."
"Will do. Now you stay safe out on the ocean, Jamie. Don’t go falling in like I did."
With a gentle laugh, Jamie agreed. "I’ll take very good care of myself, Love. You too."
"Talk to you later, Hon."
"Bye, Sweetheart. I love you."
"Me too," she agreed wholeheartedly, feeling a stab of longing as she turned off the phone and went to finish her lunch.
"Let me guess," Catherine mused playfully. "That was either AT&T trying to get you to switch to their long distance service, or…Ryan."
"You’re good," Jamie laughed. "You’re very, very good."
Raising one perfectly formed eyebrow, Catherine looked pointedly at the stuffed animal that Jamie still clutched against her chest. "Care to introduce me to your friend?"
Blushing fiercely, Jamie held the tiger out, and her mother grasped it gently. "She’s a very thoughtful woman, isn’t she?" she commented absently, stroking the bright orange fur into place. "She seems very gentle."
Jamie’s mind roamed to images of her partner and let the thoughts of her gentle nature flood her mind. But something about the tone of Ryan’s voice when she talked about her swimsuit snuck in with those thoughts, and Jamie spent a moment thinking of how absolutely fierce and powerful her lover could also be. She had to force herself to banish these tempting thoughts and focus on her mother once again. Giving her a big smile, she agreed completely, "Yes, she’s very gentle. You should see her with her little cousin. There’s a part of her that’s very wild with the baby. They roughhouse and run up and down the hills like banshees, but she can comfort her and rock her to sleep in seconds. Caitlin actually responds as well to Ryan as she does to her parents. She just has a gift for making people feel safe."
"Do you spend much time with this child?" They hadn’t really spoken much about their interactions with the O’Flaherty/Driscoll clan, Jamie realized, and her mother didn’t know how important Caitlin was to both of them.
"Oh yes, we see her every weekend. It’s hard for Ryan to be apart from her during the week, but living in Berkeley has been good for both of us."
"But your weekends with Ryan’s family are important to you too, aren’t they, Dear?"
"Absolutely. It’s so nice to just fit in with the family, and Martin treats me just like another daughter. I’ll miss them almost as much as Ryan this week," she laughed, knowing that she wasn’t exaggerating in the least.
Looking out at the ocean, Catherine’s brow furrowed as she said, "I hope one day that Ryan feels as comfortable with our family as you do with hers."
"She feels very comfortable with you already," Jamie informed her. "But I would truly love it if one day you and Daddy would welcome her into our home in the same way that you did for Jack."
Catherine did not reply to this last comment for a long while. Jamie finished getting ready, bending over to lace up her deck shoes when her mother asked, "Does it bother you to talk about Jack?"
"No, not any longer," she said, realizing the truth of the statement as she made it. "I went to his graduation, you know."
"No, I didn’t know that." Catherine was a bit surprised to hear this, but she was pleased that Jamie and Jack were not antagonistic towards each other. And, as the topic did not upset her daughter, she decided to indulge her curiosity. "How was that for you, Dear?"
"It was pretty dreadful," she admitted, shaking her head at how awful the entire experience was. "I wasn’t prepared for how I felt when I saw him with his new girlfriend."
"Oh, my!" Catherine was truly shocked at this development. Jack seemed like the type to spend a good long while licking his wounds after a breakup, and she wondered if her assessment of him was that inaccurate. " I take it that this was a surprise?"
"A complete surprise. I’d only spoken to him once since our failed attempt at reconciliation, and he hadn’t mentioned it then. I certainly didn’t expect him to be alone for long, but it seemed awfully quick."
"Is he serious about her?"
"What isn’t he serious about?" she replied with a small laugh. After a moment she looked at her mother thoughtfully and asked, "Were you happy that he and I were to be married?"
Catherine looked a little uncomfortable with the question, but she wanted to be more open and frank with Jamie, and this was an opportunity to be just that. Breathing out a small sigh, she said, "No, Dear. I did not think it wise for you to commit to marriage so early in your life."
Piercing green eyes locked onto hers, and Jamie asked the follow-up question that naturally segued from her mother’s answer. "Does that mean that you think it’s a mistake for me to be committed to Ryan?"
I should have married a musician or an artist
, Catherine mused.
Having two people in the family who think in such a linear fashion will be the death of me yet!
Knowing that her answer would not be popular, she nevertheless truthfully admitted, "If it was my choice, I wish you would take a few years to experiment with different people. I think that you truly might be a lesbian, Jamie, so Ryan’s gender has nothing to do with my feelings. I’m just afraid that one relationship with a man and one with a woman are not enough to base a permanent choice on."
Jamie pursed her lips as she considered her mother’s opinion. She nodded her head slightly as she said, "I can see how you would feel that way, Mother. It does seem like I’ve had almost no experience with love. But I’ve had a wish list in my head since I was young. Ryan has every attribute that I could ever want in a partner, and I’m just not sure you can schedule when you meet the person that really clicks with you."
"Tell me about your list," Catherine asked with a gentle smile on her delicate features.
A beaming smile lit up Jamie’s face as she began to speak in an animated fashion. She had obviously spent a lot of time coming up with her list, and she launched right into it. "I wanted someone who was bright and funny, and Ryan is incredibly bright. I feel downright slow around her sometimes. And she’s bright in the areas that I’m not. She’s a genius at math, and she’s a whiz at all of the sciences. She’s also very interested in the areas that she isn’t that knowledgeable about. I guess I would say she’s just a student of life. She looks at me with such concentration when I’m talking about a topic that I know would not appeal to her on her own. Then a few days later she’ll ask me an incredibly perceptive question about what I told her. It’s like she has a computer running in the background all of the time, just processing the little things that go through her mind."
"I can’t imagine anyone making you seem slow-witted, Jamie," Catherine said fondly, "but I’ll defer to your view."
Jamie smiled broadly and admitted, "Well, I guess I don’t feel slow-witted, but she’s really extraordinarily bright, Mother."
"She seems it, Dear, I’m just teasing you."
As these words sank in, Jamie realized that they had rarely teased each other in the past, and she wondered what was causing the change. She knew that her mother had a very droll sense of humor, but it wasn’t often directed at her. She found this lighter, more playful side of her mother very appealing, and she hoped that it continued.
Continuing her list she said, "Ryan has the most delightful sense of humor of anyone I’ve ever met. She can be very cerebral with her humor, but she can also be so silly. She’s like a four-year-old sometimes, and that’s really appealing to me. She has an irrepressible joy that is truly infectious."
"What else was on your list?" Catherine asked with great interest, eager to know more about the young woman who had so enthralled her daughter.
"I was certain that I wanted someone who was very kind, and who cared about others. Someone like Poppa," she said fondly. But she immediately regretted her comparison when she saw a brief flash of pain pass across her mother’s face. She reached over and grasped her mother’s hand as she gave it a little squeeze. "You know how I meant that, don’t you?"
"Yes, Dear, I do know how you meant that," she said sadly. "While I believe that generally your father and I have been kind people, I agree that we’ve never set a very good example in caring for others."
Jamie squeezed her hand again as she said, "I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. I just meant that Poppa has spent his life trying to help other people. I certainly didn’t mean to imply that you are self-centered."
"But we have been, Dear," she said simply. "There’s no need to apologize. Now tell me more."
Looking at the sadness that had settled in the dark brown eyes that regarded her, Jamie was quite uncomfortable continuing with the comparison, but she did so since her mother was clearly waiting for an answer. "Ryan is very much like Poppa in that she thinks about other people first. She has been so busy with work and school and athletics, but she still managed to devote tons of hours to helping teenagers in trouble. And, of course, she participates in the AIDS ride every year. That requires year-round training."
"She’s helping you to be that way, too, isn’t she, Dear?"
Jamie sat on the edge of the bed, thinking about her answer for a few moments. She had always thought that she was committed to helping others, but she had to admit that she had been satisfied with doing so through monetary donations rather than taking an active role. She knew that she would never be satisfied with that remote style again, and she acknowledged that Ryan was the force behind the change. "Yes, Mother, she is. I’m very grateful to her for that." Noticing that the brown eyes had not regained their sparkle, Jamie turned the tables on her mother, and threw the question back to her. "You know, I’m going on and on about Ryan, but I have no idea why you chose Daddy. Will you tell me?"