Chapter 13
MAYA
“Okay, from here we can pretty much see everything,” Lily said.
They’d finished breakfast, then Lily insisted on showing them around because she was “only giving the tour once, and I don’t want it to interrupt our fun.
” Maya and Hanna had dressed quickly, Maya in her olive green super warm wool coat, dark jeans, and brown leather boots, and Hanna in her classic black all-weather insulated coat, dark jeans and duck boots. Lily provided extra scarves and gloves.
“Ugh you know me too well,” Maya said as Lily popped a sour gummy into her mouth.
Maya loved to eat healthy, but she was a sucker for a sour gummy.
She sucked on the rough candy as she looked over the retreat.
She was glad to have this chance to hang out, given Thanksgiving hadn’t worked out–Lily had been up here with her aunt, and besides, Maggie had needed Maya for their “first holiday not as a family”.
The air was sharp, cold and refreshing. The ground was hard, but there was only a light dusting of snow on the grass that covered the property.
Taking in the site, Maya relished using her tongue to melt away the rough sour powder, revealing the sweet and juicy candy.
Fitting that Lily had put it in her mouth–it was very much like kissing her, a woman ready to melt under you if you show her you’re worthy.
They were currently standing in the center of the retreat, Lily, their guide, looking classic Lily in a purple long puffer, light jeans, and her own duck boots.
The center was a patch of grass with a light dusting of snow between the large building that served as housing and the facility center for the retreat’s guests and a patch of trees.
Maya had been glad that Lily had insisted on doing a walk-around.
She wasn’t exactly sure what she had expected.
But they all hadn’t seen each other physically since fall break.
And while they had continued to text and had quite a few steamy video calls, Maya was getting worried that their thing was growing into one that existed only virtually.
Those were dangerous in that they often continued to evolve in the realm of idealism, too fragile to withstand the external stresses of reality.
Not that a posh winter retreat was reality, but they had all been in the same room for the first time in a couple of months, and nothing had felt forced or awkward.
If anything, the feeling they’d left back at Lily’s house was the tension that comes from anticipation.
Maya was sure they were all feeling the same thing: wanting to touch and feel, but at a loss for how to get started.
Each time they’d fooled around on video, save for one time during a movie night, they’d explicitly known why they were all there. What they needed from each other.
And Maya needed it now. Not just the sex, to feel grounded.
The first round of holidays post her parents’ divorce had been tough.
She didn’t think it would be worse than the emotional tiptoeing her parents had done during the last year before they finally told her they were divorcing—but she had come home to find her mother in an empty house, a shell of herself.
As if something more had happened. Maya worried it was because she had left her mother alone in Maplewood.
A part of her was thankful to have the separation, but another part of her wondered if it would have been better for her mom to have stayed in Boston.
She felt guilty for not applying to any Vermont schools for grad school.
She would just have to wait and see how her mom did, and if she even got in.
The three of them fell into easy silence as they followed Lily towards another “recreational site.” Maya was thankful for the silence, she needed to get her head into the day, into the trip, and she was close—she just needed a minute to sort through what she had left back in Maplewood, her mother in the same bathrobe she’d worn the whole time, oily hair, a despondent look in her eyes. Like something or someone had died.
She was devastated for her parents, for her mother, but relieved that she no longer had to dance around the circles they drew around themselves.
Maya didn’t know everything, she knew that.
She couldn’t even say what had caused the divorce.
She had asked each of them separately. No one had cheated, gambled away money, or lied.
It took them only a year to legally untangle the layers and layers of over twenty years together.
At the end, she wasn’t sure either of her parents had found the answer either.
All of the tension, all of the avoidance, the pressure in her house for four years of high school and three years of college, and there had been nothing, no reason.
Sure, her Dad moved to Manhattan, and she and her mother moved to Maplewood, but that’s where she had found Hanna and Lily and had immediately felt settled in a way that surprised her.
Not only because it had been unexpected but also because it had been something she hadn’t allowed herself to crave for most of her life.
“Through those trees is a path that leads to the lake, which is definitely frozen this time of year, hence, I am taking you skating,” Lily said, pointing.
Lily’s voice brought Maya up from her introspection and then the realization of what Lily was saying clicked.
“Uh wait, what, we are skating on the lake?” Maya said, a prick of anxiety warming her neck.
“Where else would we skate?” Hanna asked, her big brown eyes wide with genuine confusion.
“Like…in a rink, indoors, a rink built specifically for skating on? Something not left up to nature?”
Lily’s pink mouth quirked on one side into a sly smile. “City girl through and through, huh? Well Banana, we are going to show her how us regular folk do it.” She said the word ‘folk’ sarcastically and only teasing, Maya knew.
“Is it safe?” Maya asked.
“I’m sure it’s fine, besides people work here to ensure safety, right Lil?” Hanna said, and Maya could see she was fighting back a smile for the sake of Maya’s ego.
“I did have this scheme to ruin my aunt’s business and name by having two lovers drown on her property, but I don’t know, I’m having second thoughts,” Lily said, laughing. She rested a hand on Maya’s shoulder, and Maya leaned into her touch: she had called them her lovers.
Interesting.
Before Maya could give that more thought, Lily slid her hand down Maya’s shoulder, and grabbed Maya’s hand, pulling her forward. Hanna grabbed her other hand and smiled up at her, “It will be fun,” she said reassuringly. Maya swallowed her fear.
“There’s a bunch of games and stuff, a basketball court and whatnot inside. Plus a heated pool and hot tubs. Over there is where you can pick up a shuttle to take you about forty minutes to the mountain for skiing and stuff,” Lily continued.
“Do a lot of people go skiing? I thought this was supposed to be a wellness and yogi-like retreat,” Maya asked.
“Yeah, it’s about leisure more than community or anything too regimented.
It’s basically rich people paying to feel crunchy and get away for a bit.
My aunt building this near the ski resort was really smart.
” Lily reached to open the glass door to the single story building.
“Shall we? We can grab skates here, and don’t worry, we don’t have to—” Her voice broke off as they were fully inside.
Inside was a bunch of different winter activity equipment: sleds, skis, and, Maya could see behind the counter, ice skates.
Behind the counter stood two women: one with pale white skin and fiery red hair, spiral curls spilling down her back, and the other with deep brown skin with red undertones, her black hair cut into a chic pixie.
The redhead wore green glasses, a purple patterned top and jeans.
She had the most interesting rings on her fingers, Maya noticed, and she was flushed with the heat of the building.
The black-haired woman wore no glasses and had a beauty mark below her left eye and a corresponding one on the right side of her chin, right underneath her lips.
As they got closer to the counter, Maya caught her eye.
She was striking, with obsidian eyes that seemed to pierce into her soul.
“Sruti, you work here now? With Fe?” Lily said, her voice asking the question with a twinge of nerves that Maya wasn’t used to hearing.
Before the woman Lily was talking to could answer, the redhead said, “Felicity, and yeah, I mean I like an equipment shack same as the next girl.”
“As you well know,” the black-haired woman, Sruti, said, not taking her appraising eyes off Maya’s. Her voice was low and sultry, a slight accent punctuating each word.
“Some of us actually work here, Lily, or did you forget that, too?” Felicity said, crossing her arms over her chest.
Finally, Sruti broke eye contact–her gaze was truly magnetic–and turned her head slightly towards Lily. Maya tracked her movement, noticing a silver cartilage piercing in her ear.
“It is good to see you, Lil, your aunt gave me a job here recently, so I’ll be staying for a while,” Sruti said, her voice even and calm.
“A lot has changed since last winter, since you didn’t come up all summer,” Felicity said, and Maya didn’t miss that there was definitely an embedded accusation in the statement.
Maya heard Hanna scoff just as her stomach began to drop.
“I know that look,” Hanna muttered, and walked right up to the counter.
Maya knew that look too. And now when her eyes flitted back to the dark-eyed beauty’s alluring face, she pictured Lily experiencing the same pull, experiencing the desire to lick each one of her beauty marks.
The thought turned something inside her so tightly she found herself momentarily unable to speak.
“Hi!” Hanna said at the counter. “Whatever drama aside, we are looking to get some skates. And can you also definitely confirm that other people are skating and are fine for my friend here?” Hanna indicated Maya.
Maya knew that Hanna was trying to inject some levity into the situation.
Neither of them had any right to be jealous, but Maya was jealous.
It wasn’t that Lily had a sex life, it had been made super clear that Lily had a very healthy sex positive mindset, and Maya loved that for her.
No, it was that this retreat was supposed to belong to her, to them.
She didn’t leave her mother in bed and travel hours to practically Canada to watch Lily get distracted.
Maya had never been possessive before, not with any of her past lovers, but she was so close to screaming most days that she needed this thing, whatever it was, to be only them.
“Your new girl is not used to skating out here in the wild,” the redhead said, nodding her head over to Maya as she looked at Lily, and Maya felt her face flush.
“Fe—” Lily started, her voice dropping an octave.
“Felicity, only my friends and lovers get to call me Fe, and you haven’t been one since you stopped picking up your phone,” Felicity said, and Maya could hear the bite in those words.
Maya’s jealousy took a pause to feel a pang of disappointment, so Lily was the type to love them and leave with no explanation?
She momentarily thought of her mother in her bathrobe back home.
She opened her mouth to share that she was not ‘Lily’s girl’ when she caught the way Hanna was switching her gaze between her and Lily, as if trying to work something out and not liking the result.
Maya’s stomach dropped even further because she knew that Hanna would also be put out that Felicity, whoever she was to Lily, had assumed it was Maya who was Lily’s girl, not Hanna.
Not that either of them belonged to each other.
“Can we go skating already?” Hanna said, turning and pushing past Lily. “Unbelievable,” she muttered and walked out.