by
Written for the Dragon’s 2003 Home Story Challenge
Disclaimers: The story and characters are mine
Sex: None. But there is a loving relationship between women
Violence: None
It was the last week of October and the festivities for the week seemed to already be beginning. The small college town was holding a reunion for the alumni who had attended their college throughout the years. It was a special year. This year marked the 75th anniversary of its conception. When the school had first opened its doors, no one believed they would remain open beyond the first two years, much less 75.
The citizens of this town had remained firm in their beliefs by not allowing the multitudes of people who attended the college to change their way of living. It was a farming community and would always remain that way. The community had grown since that time, but not as much as the developers who came with promises of making this community into a ‘grand’ city would have liked.
And that was just the way Rhea liked it.
Rhea Kitchener had grown up in this small community. Played in the fields with her friends, graduated from high school - even having graduated from the college and had fallen in love.
She walked around the community taking it all in and remembering happier times. It had been quite a while since she had been here. Having joined the Air Force after graduating, getting her Lieutenant’s then Captain’s bars and enjoying the good life away from this small community, three years had passed.
For this week, she just wanted to see her old friends and relax, forgetting her life outside of here…it would catch up to her soon enough once she left.
“Rhea, is that you?” she heard a voice calling.
Looking to her left towards the other side of the street, she saw the person calling. “Patty!” she called out, meeting the woman halfway in a heartfelt hug.
“You look great, how have you been?” Patty asked. “It’s been so long since you’ve been here.”
“Thanks, you look great yourself. I’ve been managing. Yes, it has been a while. This was the first chance I’ve had to get away for this long.” A small lie, but the heartbreak, the reason she left, would have had no chance to mend if she had returned sooner.
“Let’s go to our old hangout and catch up with our lives. Do you have time?”
“That sounds like a good idea and, yes, I have the time.”
****
Their old hangout was the old bar near the college where the students hung out after a long day of studies.
They situated themselves in one of the booths close to the bathroom and jukebox, then ordered something to drink and, since the bar had a kitchen, something to eat as well.
“So tell me, what’s been happening to you since you left.”
They talked long into the afternoon and the evening.
Patty had been Rhea’s first love and when Rhea, despite her fears of rejection and the possibility of losing the friendship proclaimed her feelings to Patty, she had been elated to discover that Patty felt the same. They dated throughout their time in high school, though they did have to maintain appearances of a different order for the rest of the town.
However, as with all things, their relationship came to an end. They knew their paths were headed in different directions, concluding that an amicable parting would be the best thing. They remained friends and would still be seen running around together even after Rhea had started attending college.
~~~~
College had been fun for Rhea. Even if she had not left her hometown, she was able to meet many new people.
She had majored in communications and, although she was a communications officer in the Air Force, was also one of the handful of women jet fliers.
Rhea owed this position to the teacher who had drilled into her students’ heads, especially the female students, that they could achieve anything they wanted.
This Humanities teacher was also the cause for Rhea’s heartbreak.
This older woman, whose outlook of life was invigorating, had captured the young woman’s attention as well as her heart. There was just something about Carla James that could set her entire body pulsing. And every opportunity she received would find her near Carla, even though she was not her teacher in any of the other semesters.
Flirting with Carla had also become a favorite pastime for Rhea, though neither had taken steps to go beyond that point. This pastime continued until the winter of Rhea’s senior year.
Right before the winter break that year, Rhea decided to take a chance and reveal her feelings to Carla. Carla had been shocked yet flattered by the revelation. Though she did like Rhea more than she should, she thought the flirtations to be innocent nothing else. However, the night that Rhea had come to her telling her of her feelings towards her, Carla had felt the overwhelming emotions pulse through her body. Carla allowed those emotions to overtake the sensible side of reason and spent the night in a passionate embrace with Rhea.
That was the last time Rhea had seen Carla James. Carla had disappeared before the next semester. Though Rhea looked and asked for Carla, her questions had gone unanswered.
~~~~
The hollow space within Rhea’s soul left by Carla’s disappearance, to this day, had not been filled. She had tried dating woman after woman, but the emptiness remained.
Now, she was back at the place where the worst hurt of her life had been inflicted. The school looked the same, as if time had not passed. She walked the halls remembering all the good times she’d had within these walls, because despite that one shortcoming, the rest had been good.
She walked down the hall on the second floor of the building, she knew, heading toward Carla’s old classroom. The door to the room was open, so she peeked in hoping to reminisce about her times within the room. Instead, shock stopped her at the doorway, disbelief at what her eyes were seeing. Carla was there!
The woman walking down the middle of the chairs straightening them looked up when she heard a quiet gasp. The shock on her face matched the one on the face of the woman at the door. Rhea. Then a warm smile formed on the once beloved face.
“Rhea, welcome, it’s so nice to see you.”
Those words brought Rhea’s mind out of its shock. “Carla.” She couldn’t believe that the woman who had stolen her very soul was standing in front of her. “Why?”
“A simple question to a very complicated answer.”
“I would still like to know the answer.” Locking her eyes with those, much to her astonishment, she still very much loved.
Nodding her head once, Carla replied, “Okay, but not here. Let’s meet somewhere where we will have some privacy. You remember my apartment? Meet me there in an hour.”
“I’ll be there.”
Carla’s mind was in turmoil. She had thought she had put all her feelings for this younger woman to rest. That one night of total abandonment could and would not be repeated - ever.
She knew that coming back to the same town brought the dangers of crossing paths with Rhea a certainty. However, deep in her heart, she felt that the only way to abate these feelings was to face the fear of seeing her again. Well, after three years, the time had come and the feelings had come rushing back to her, seemingly stronger than before. She had no choice, not anymore.
****
Rhea spent the next hour at the bar having a drink to calm her rattled nerves. Carla is here. Has she been here all this time? Did she just wait for me to leave to come out of hiding? These and more questions ran through her shocked mind. A few minutes before the hour was up, she walked out of the bar and headed to Carla’s apartment.
She never, in a million years, suspected a second shock within the span of an hour when Carla opened the door at her knock. A nun…she’s a nun!
Carla had answered the knock wearing her habit in hopes of at least answering one of Rhea’s questions. The pale, stunned look on the woman before her made her think it might have been a mistake. Not certain if the woman would collapse before entering and sitting down, Carla placed a hand on Rhea’s arm and led her to the sofa, then brought her some water.
All these shocks were beginning to be too much for Rhea, thinking she should never have returned at the top of the list. She drank the water Carla offered and felt her system finally calming down.
“Is this why you disappeared?” she was finally able to ask.
“Yes.”
“How long…?” Gesturing to the habit.
“Eighteen years.”
“But why…?”
Rhea couldn’t seem to completely come out of her shock, but Carla seemed to know what she was asking.
“That one is a hard question, but I shall try to explain. As I mentioned, I have been a nun for the past eighteen years. I joined because the calling was very strong. I love to teach and meeting all the interesting people that cross my path. However, when I met you there was something about you that my soul could not ignore. I enjoyed our flirtations and the attention you bestowed upon me. I fought the feelings I was feeling for you with everything within me and I felt I had succeeded, until that night. When you showed up here and bared your soul. I was so happy to know you felt for me what I was feeling for you. In that elation, I forgot myself. The next morning I luckily woke before you. I couldn’t face the events from the previous night, much less face you with the truth, so I ran. I never meant to hurt you. I loved you then and, to my consternation, I love you still. But never again can there be anything between us. I’m really sorry, Rhea,” Carla finished, a trail of tears racing down her face.
Rhea’s tears matched those running down the older woman’s face. “But why did you come back? You must have had a good idea that I might be here and, if not, that I would come back. Knowing my feelings for you why would you come back to torture me. When I met you I dreamed that you and I would make a life together. Live in a nice little house, have some animals, just love one another. When you gave yourself to me that night, the possibility of that dream became a reality to me that was squashed like a bug the next morning. I looked for you everywhere, asked everyone and anyone if they knew where you might be. No one knew. You shattered all that was in my soul. So why come back to torture me knowing there could never be anything between us! I thought I had put a lid on my feelings for you, but I find…I still love you.”
“Oh, Rhea.”
Carla placed her arms around Rhea in a comforting gesture, sobs from both women all that was heard for the next couple of hours. The rest of the night was spent in talking and sobbing, exorcising all the bad feelings that could hinder in the recovery of whatever semblance of life they could have from this point on. The love they had for each other would always be there, but at a more controlled plane.
****
The rest of the reunion week Rhea spent as much time with each of her past loves as she could. She would have to leave at the end of that time and didn’t know when she would come back to see them.
When the day of departure for Rhea came, both of her friends were there to say goodbye and wish her well.
“You take care of yourself and don’t stay away so long. I love you, Rhea.”
“I will and I’ll try to come back soon. You take care of yourself as well. You were my first love and you will always be. Be happy.” A tight hug was shared.
Rhea then turned to Carla, giving her a crushing embrace. “After my initial shock of seeing you again, I was very happy to have gotten the opportunity to have done so. I am also very grateful for the times I was able to feel you in my arms again, even if they were just hugs,” she impishly whispered into Carla’s ear. “I love you. I will always love you. I leave my soul with you for safe keeping, but then again, you’ve had it all this time.”
Releasing her hold and giving Patty one last hug and kiss on the cheek, Rhea walked up the runway and boarded her plane.
****
“Oh, Rhea, how I miss you, my love,” Carla breathed out as she lay in her hospital bed.
Carla had told Rhea the reasons why she had left except for one. She was dying. She had been diagnosed with cancer the year before they met and the doctors hadn’t given her long. Her love for Rhea had been all consuming and now she wished she had taken the chance to live the life offered to her. However, she hadn’t wanted to tie the young woman to a dying woman. Ironic, really.
They hadn’t known that time they said goodbye at the airport, a mere eight months ago, that it would be the last time they would see each other.
Once Rhea arrived at the base, her squadron of fighters had been sent on a reconnaissance mission. It was a simple mission - just fly over the designated area and return - but something had gone wrong, terribly wrong. An enemy ground military group attacked the squadron with two being lost. One of the two was Rhea’s plane. Rhea’s body had been sent home, being laid to rest in the local cemetery with all the military honors.
Rhea had prepared for such an event, buying the plot and, to Carla’s surprise, had bought it big enough for both - if she so wished to be buried alongside each other.
“It won’t be long now, love. I’ll soon be joining you. Nothing will be able to stop us from being together anymore.”
Her mind kept going back to the times they had spent together. Recalling the flirtatious quips from the younger woman, her laughter that one night a lifetime ago.
“I love you,” were Carla’s last words before succumbing to the everlasting sleep.
From the shadows within the room, a figure moved toward the woman on the bed, a hand held out to be taken.
“Come, my love, it’s time.”
Carla opened her eyes and was caught in the loving gaze being cast from Rhea. Reaching out her hand it was grabbed, then she was pulled into a strong, loving embrace, as well as a mind-blowing kiss.
“Let’s go home, we have unfinished business to attend to.”
With one last glance at the empty shell on the bed, Carla and Rhea walked with arms wrapped around each other out of the room, toward the home and new life awaiting them.
The End