Crossings

1. Departures

(part 2)

Kelsey and I drove to the rental agency and returned the Kia. From the parking lot I saw the risen moon, low on the horizon, almost full. It was still just noon. Then I drove Kelsey's econobox because Kelsey wanted to wedge herself into the back seat between Callie and Dani. There was an alehouse on the periphery of the college in town, and I headed there before the three women in the back got so cozy with each other that, well ... Stu and I stood with our backs against the car's rear windows while Stu called Jess to let her know where to meet us. The car was swaying and jiggling behind us. Eventually that stopped and I felt the door opening against me. I moved away, Stu doing the same. The women staggered out. Dani's rich red lipstick was smudged. I had a napkin in my pocket and dabbed her with it. She took it from me, pulled out a compact mirror and a tube of lipstick which she languorously reapplied, her gaze alternating between the mirror and deep into my eyes, challenging. Kelsey, smirking, let Stu wipe away the smudges on her lips and cheek and neck, and ... lower. We walked inside. Summer quarter hadn't begun at the college, so the lunch crowd was light. Kelsey and I ordered house IPAs and Dani ordered a blonde, which made Callie smile, but they didn't have one, then she declined the golden and approved the amber.

"I looked up Mariano's Hidalgo sanctuary," Stu said. "I think he'll be interested."

I was on my second IPA by then, our food orders already sent, including for Jess and Mariano.

They walked in, Jess leading. She seemed elated and he looked like his world had been imploded, not necessarily in a bad way. I looked forward to hearing that story, the latest in Jess' metamorphosis.

"They don't have beaver on the menu, sorry ... I looked," Dani told Jess, laughing. Jess scowled, but I could still see inside her a little, and she actually thought that was pretty funny, though she wasn't going to acknowledge it in front of all of us. She felt me at the edge of her awareness, and we sparred there one last time, playfully, lovingly.

Stu told his story. A group of recently converted Christian cultists were reportedly responsible for defiling Mariano's sanctuary, some artifacts destroyed, though of course the cult leaders denied it. Those converts had previously practiced the old ways there but now found the place offensive to their new God.

"It was the dark mage," Mariano said. "It doesn't matter what the cultists say, they wouldn't have been responsible anyway, but you saw what he could do, even to someone who was supposed to protect that sanctuary, like me. I want to go back." I noticed Jess' expression go slack, then forlorn.

"I'll go with you," I said.

"Me too," Callie said.

"We need a safe place," Kelsey said. 'To have our babies' she didn't say out loud, but I heard it anyway. "I've always wanted to see the Lost Coast, I hear they have new-age-y retreats and lots of Wiccans."

"Mostly women?" Dani asked, already knowing the answer.

"Of course," Kelsey replied, smiling coyly.

"I'll go with you," Stu said.

"I'd like that," Kelsey said to him softly, turned to him, put a gentle hand on one of his cheeks and kissed the other. Tenderly.

"Dani?" I asked.

"I want to go with you, but I also want our baby to be safe," she said.

"Keep him safe," Mariano said, from left field or wherever random thoughts come from now that not so many still follow baseball. A non-sequitur is what I thought it, then.

"I'll come back soon," I said. "Within a month, I'll try my best. But there's someone else I also need to be with."

"Wiccans and New-Agers would welcome healing and birthing magic," Callie said. "I bet you could find a house to stay in together long enough to birth your children and then for a few more months. At least. You might pick up some students."

Kelsey smiled.

"Where will you go?" Jess asked Callie.

"After Mexico? I really love Newberry," Callie said, "more than anywhere else I've ever wanted to live in my life, and I love teaching. Anyone else who wants to go back there would be so, so welcome, I loved it there with all of you, so much, it was the best time of my life. Of course I'll visit wherever you are, whenever I can, but I'll understand if you don't, or can't." She looked at me.

"Jess?" I said. Jess looked truly sundered. I *really* wanted to hear the story of her and Mariano now.

"I want our baby to be safe," she said to me. "I want that very much, but I'm torn. You know I love you, Callie, Bob, all of you, you know it's true and it'll never stop being true, but maybe now would be a good time to tell you that I'm becoming very fond of Mariano, and I would like to be with him even more."

"I love Jess," Mariano said.

"Will you love me for a year and a day?" Jess asked him.

"Longer," he replied. "Much longer."

"A year and a day is a good start," she said, smiling.

"Then yes, I will, with all my heart," he said.

Dani had a long blue silk ribbon in her handbag even though I'd never seen her beautiful long black hair constrained in any way. The ribbon matched her eyes, because of course it did. Callie requested candles and lit them when they came. The food arrived. Everyone rose, Callie prompting me and Jess prompting Mariano ... the women and Stu all seemed to know.

Jess put her hand on Mariano's and Dani looped her ribbon around both, binding them together.

"I will love you truly, wholeheartedly, I will teach you, I will take good care of you," Jess said, looking deep into his eyes.

"I will love you truly, with all my heart and soul, I will do my best to learn everything you want to teach, I will take good care of you, any way I know how, however you want me to," Mariano said, looking deep into hers.

She fed him a bite of her vegetarian panini, he fed her a bite of his Cubano. We raised our glasses, drank our drinks, formed a circle around them, holding hands, blessed them and their union, they hugged and kissed long and deep to scattered applause from the thin crowd, then each of us held their free hands in turn, kissed them gently on the lips. They'd met less than six hours ago. I took Callie in my arms, saying "I remember this ... I love you," and I held her close and kissed her deeply, and as unsure as she might've been feeling, she melted into me a few moments later, and I into her.

Stu would drive Kelsey's little hatchback to Newberry. We left a nice tip for our waitress, blessed the building, a droplet of oregano oil into a lit candle. I got Sati's athletic bag from the car, then we walked behind the building, opened a portal to the gear barn at Newberry and walked through. We would learn, share, and pack while we waited the three hours it would take Stu to arrive by car.

Mariano had nothing but the clothes on his back, so Kelsey stayed with him in the gear barn to pick out some things that might fit. There wasn't much, but it was more than what he had.

Callie, Jess, Dani, and I went into Taylor's old suite to meditate, at first, leaving the door open. I sent out my awareness, sharing every stray thought, every recollection I could with them, all of us helping to weave threads of memory together. We sat immobile, seldom touching for nearly an hour until I was no longer remembering anything new, then we came up slowly, gently, together. Jess said "I want to be first" and we all knew why, and we all approved. With Callie and Dani standing together nearby, hip to hip, breast to breast, sharing warmth and light touch while they watched us, Jess commanded me to fuck her like an animal, me knowing this might be my last time with her, giving her something she wasn't likely to get again soon, holding her ankles up, my shoulders behind them, her sensitive fingers doing something astounding to my temples, and even though we all knew she'd already had a full day's worth of sex with Mariano, she came hard several times, and then I did, that girl is so incredibly wonderfully tight, and now she knew everything I'd learned. When her legs worked again, she stumbled out to her love.

Dani wanted to go next, but not just to get fucked and then go see someone she loved more. Dani wanted back and forth. She wanted Callie, not just me, maybe she wanted Callie even more than she wanted me, sensing she was more likely to spend time with me in the future than with Callie. I don't really know, she's a very perceptive, intuitive woman and I couldn't possibly hope to follow the kinds of things she works out long before I ever could. She kissed Callie's neck, and before long Callie was a puddle who I got to watch melt into ecstatic non-sentience, and I was as hard as if I hadn't just spent myself in beautiful Jess. Damn, I was going to miss this: Jess, Dani and of course Callie, even Kelsey and Stu (and Taylor, and Sati and Ingrid, said the ghost of an echo), this had been the best time of my life, too. Jess hadn't told us yet that she wouldn't be driving to Mexico with us, but Dani wasn't the only one here who knew it.

Dani wanted me inside her from behind, wanted her mouth to be on Callie, who was in no shape to contribute a differing opinion, and while I wanted to be in Dani's mouth more than anything, knowing what she was capable of, being deeper inside her was almost as good, and as I watched her long, dark hair swish across her lovely back, brushing her delicious sacral dimples while she adored my love Callie who was completely out of her mind in ecstasy, my poor overwhelmed inadequate neurons trying to organize sense from how wonderful this had all been, how wonderful it was right then, I released everything I knew, a tiny fraction more than I'd already given Jess, and Dani fucking screamed as much as she could with her mouth full of Callie, and Callie was way too far gone to scream, but the puddle that was Callie sloshed against the boundaries of her self as that self went over the fucking moon.

Dani seemed pretty damn pleased with herself. She moved to one side, no longer between Callie's legs, looked up at me, raised a leg and passed it over me, and now I was facing her, still inside her, and she reached for me and I came closer and she took my head between her hands, and commanded "You be good to her."

"I love Callie more than my own life," I said, and knew it was true, and maybe that was a little scary. Dani moved her hands to her tummy, which was just a little rounder now, our child inside.

"I wish this for her," she said. "Not because I don't wish it was ours, I'm so happy we made him together, I didn't know he was a boy until Mariano told us, but he was right. Sometimes I get delirious when I think about him, I have no idea how much more happiness he'll bring me, but just because ... I know how much you and Callie mean to each other, and I wish she had this to keep you close."

It would've taken me a lifetime to fully parse what she'd just said. Whose lifetime, how many lifetimes, these were not answerable questions just then. Damn but Dani had beautiful eyes. I spent two full minutes completely lost in her before I slipped out and she released her hands from my head and grabbed a towel and pressed it to herself and rolled partway over.

"Callie's turn," she said, and I lay down behind her, spooning, my arm across her, her arm on mine. "I love you, Bob," she said.

"Oh Dani ..." I began, but she reached a hand behind her to my mouth, shushing.

"I know you love me too, Bob, I know it," she said. "You've tried to say so before, and I know what you meant to say then and I know it's true, and really, I mean, how could you not?" She turned her head to me and smiled.

"But I'm not done with you, Robert, you'd better know that," she said, and reached an arm behind her and over my head, turning back into me. And kissed me, and well ... you already know how I feel about her kisses ... by the time I regained something like awareness, Callie was riding my cock and Dani was riding my face, and I had one hand on a perfect, yes perfect, sacrum, and a thumb on another woman's perfect, yes perfect, button, one of her strong, slender long-fingered hands clutching me close, my body and hers fitting absolutely perfectly where they were right at that perfect moment and Callie was going to come, and Dani was already coming, again, and I was going to come, and, fuck, is there anything in life that could've been better?

Then, Kelsey. She'd been so supportive for as long as I'd known her. I wasn't her type except under very specific circumstances, but that hadn't ever stopped her from being the woman of someone's dreams, which could've been mine if they'd also been hers. It didn't matter. She came into the room, more than half an hour after my next-most-recent epiphanies, carrying some kind of ... accessory.

"Put that away," I said. I was still prone, not looking in her direction, but I knew. "Just you and me now." I turned my head to her. "Kelsey, I love you, I truly do."

She struggled with that, I think for more than one reason.

I rolled over. "Lie with me," I said, my body on one side of the bed, my arm indicating the emptiness of the other.

"Do you know how that sounds?" she asked.

I replayed my words in my head. I could see what she meant, maybe. "How do you want to do this?" I asked. "Just you and me, and whomever else you want, however you want it, except ... no toys in me or on me."

She plopped onto the bed. She was such a badass, just as much in her way as Callie. But more than that, I did love her. She was such a part of this place, the best place I'd ever known, orthogonal to the part of the place where I normally existed in just one way but nonetheless integral to it, to its energy. She spooned me. I liked that very much.

"I like a big cock," Kelsey said, reaching a hand to play with me, which had exactly the effect you might think. "It fills me in a way I just love, it feels so good inside me, it just does, no excuses. I like you. I do, Bob, I really do, despite what you might think, despite what I might say or want to say sometimes. I don't know what love has to do with it, but you've made me come dozens of times, or more, and I didn't think that could happen, but I fucking loved it when it did. Bob, I like you very much and that's not normal for me, but it's maybe a place I can grow into ... you are a good person, a good man."

I like to think the way she said it suggested more capital letters towards the end of her last sentence.

"I also like Stu," she said. "Because, he, um ..."

"I get it," I said. I wanted to reach back and put my hand on Kelsey's cheek, but I wasn't as flexible as Dani. Or any of the women here. Or half the women in the world. I settled for reaching back *towards* her, touching her cheek, and was very happy I could do that much.

"Au naturale," she said, and rolled onto me.

In the other suite, Sati's suite, Jess whispered breathily into Mariano's ear, levitating above him, her tongue touching his earlobe: "His method doesn't work on men. I'm sorry."

Kelsey turned around, reverse cowgirl, not looking at me. Took me into her. Rode me.

"I'm not used to this," she said.

"No worries ..." I said.

She was shaking her head. Shaking off what I'd just said. I've been told I can sound too imperative. Unlike some other languages, English doesn't have much of an imperative form, but, OK, I need to ditch that kind of thinking sometimes.

"Please take it, use it, however you want," I said, as unimperative as I could think to be at that moment, which, if I thought about it more then or now, her riding me, was pretty lame, but at least it wasn't the exact opposite of what I'd intended.

"Bob ..." she said. I knew I needed to just shut up. I felt like everyone seemed to prefer the Bob I'd been when I first arrived here, the Bob who couldn't string more than two words together.

She rode me, up and down, side to side, circling, working herself, and I was getting pretty damned close.

"Bob," she said, a little breathless.

"Yes?"

"I love you, too." And she squeezed me, something she'd never done with me before, and as astonished as I'd been when Mari, and Ingrid, and Taylor had squeezed me before, Kelsey's was new, and different, and wonderful, and I'd already been close, and I saw stars and totally fucking came, really fucking hard, and she was already coming, and I gave her everything I knew to give, and then she came again, harder, whispering unsteady moans of her pleasure, and I came again with her.

* * *

"Not through Redding," someone said, because ... duh. I'm thinking that someone must've been me, but I was still reeling from Kelsey.

Stu had found lodging on the coast, already established a rapport with the owner. He, and Dani and Kelsey and Jess, had a place to stay for three weeks, with the door open for more if everything worked out. It was a Wiccan house, spare and simple, welcoming. Ocean view, from a grove. Big outdoor sheltered decks and a garden. It looked and sounded really nice.

We worked out our routes from the dining room table, avoiding Redding, because who knew what the fsck might happen in Redding. We needed to get out of here. We'd stopped for an hour in Weed, plus at least a 10 minute head start at the trailhead minus time at the coffee shack, depending on how long it took Sati and Ingrid (with Lashe) to find a vehicle, if they were coming here at all. I didn't think it would've taken long for them to find something, if that's what they wanted. Callie and Mariano and I would be overnighting in Nevada City, past Mt. Lassen, Susanville, Reno, and Truckee. Callie made the arrangements. Two bedrooms, lots of privacy. I do so love her.

I opened Sati's athletic bag onto the table. Stacks and stacks fell out, hundreds, fifties, twenties, some smaller bills, each stack containing exactly $10,000. "We found this in the car," I said. "We think this is part of the money Sati got for selling Taylor to the dark mage. I know she went to a bank once, before ... this morning, so she probably deposited most of it already. I think we should decide what to do with it, each with a share to do with as we please. We don't need to decide what that'll be now ... but you should all know about it."

I started separating the cash into stacks, one for each of us. No one else was saying anything. Everyone but Callie, who'd already known, seemed in shock. We'd lost Taylor just this morning.

"I can't," Kelsey said, her eyes shining. Stu's eyes were downcast.

"We can't let this come between us," Callie said. "Taylor wouldn't have wanted that. No judging, it's a decision we each have to make on our own."

"Decisions don't have to be final, either," I said. "If someone doesn't want their part right now, we can keep it safe until later."

"Mariano should have a share," Jess said, and we all knew she was right. He'd almost met the same fate as Taylor, from the same source, for pretty much the same reason. Seven stacks now. It didn't take that long to sort - while it seemed like a lot of money, split seven ways it seemed like a lot less.

"$410,000", I said. "Almost 60 thousand each. Not enough to change anyone's life, but it could make a difference for someone or something we believe in. It could help buy or rent a place on the Lost Coast."

"It could help me found a healing center," Dani said. "Taylor would've liked that." Callie nodded.

In the end, Kelsey and Jess gifted their shares to Mariano, to help restore and maintain his sanctuary. Mariano accepted Kelsey's but asked Jess to let them think longer about hers. Jess agreed. Mine would go into an account for Joanna and our kids. Callie's would go towards Newberry, which maybe would become hers though questions about that were likely to persist ... none of us knew legal ownership details. Stu would hold onto his share until he thought more about it.