For Beth it was almost too much. There was so much to say, so much to excuse, and yet all she wanted was to touch Laura, to make love.
“I’m afraid to stop touching you!” Beth said. “I’m afraid you’ll vanish, I’m afraid I’m dreaming. Oh, Laura, Laura…Just saying your name to you now, knowing you hear me…I can’t bear it.” She felt her own tears well up and she let them come. “I’ve said it so many times to myself, to the bare walls, to nobody and anybody. I feel as if I’ve spent my whole life trying to find you again, as if everything in my life that I’ve done without you doesn’t count. Nothing matters but you. Laura, I was so afraid I wouldn’t find you. I’ve tried so hard, I’ve been so damn scared that you wouldn’t want to see me, that you’d be different.”
Laura turned around and put a finger on Beth’s lips. “Don’t talk,” she said. “It’s so hard to talk. You’ll spoil everything.” She took Beth’s hand and led her into the bedroom. The scent of her pervaded the whole room and struck a whirling exhilaration into Beth. The beds were rumpled and welcoming and the clothes Laura must have worn the night before hung over a chair in the corner.
Laura pulled Beth down on the bed with tender graceful arms, slipping under her as she did so and letting her negligee fall away. For every feverish word Beth uttered Laura gave her a kiss until she had Beth helpless with desire, until all the words were stilled. Beth had not even the time to marvel at it, to be grateful; all that she saved for afterwards, succumbing to the sensual beauty of it now, while it was happening.
She had the feeling, whenever Laura touched her or moved with her, that no one, no living human being, had ever understood her so beautifully, so instinctively, and she felt too that Laura could not have been this way with anybody else. All Laura had to do was speak, and Beth would understand all. Their love was sacred to them. It made her feel that Laura had just been waiting for her all these years. Nothing of significance had happened to either of them since they parted. All their lives, all their actions, all their thoughts without each other lost meaning. It was as if nothing existed but the two of them, and they were more important than the rest of the world put together.
They lay in each other’s arms throughout the rest of the morning, hardly speaking at first, just reaffirming a powerful attraction that had lain dormant for too long, thrilled to feel the remembered sweet response.
“It makes me think of the campus,” Laura murmured. “Do you remember how it was in the spring? How it felt to walk under the huge old elms on the broadwalk and talk about classes and whisper about love? It’s almost like being there, having you so close. I never thought I’d feel it again.”
“Laura,” Beth said, her hands full of Laura’s hair. “I’ve been half dead all these years. I’ve needed you so terribly.” There was a little pause. Laura looked away and Beth knew what she was thinking. “I—I know I could have had you in the beginning,” she went on, hesitant but unable to stem the flood of feeling. “I know I should never have given you up. But you see, I didn’t understand it then.”
She paused, searching Laura’s face for a light of sympathy, but Laura listened to her with her face averted. It made Beth feel, more than words could have, how profoundly she had hurt this exquisite girl. “I thought I had to have a man, then,” she tried to explain. “But Laura, I was wrong. I’ve had to live with one and, believe me, I know. I’ve been sick—just sick with it.”
“You’d have been sick with me too, Beth,” Laura said with a wise smile, unexpectedly. “No matter which one of us you chose, it would have been the wrong choice. You would have spent the rest of your life wondering if you hadn’t done wrong. It wouldn’t have been so much different with me than with Charlie.”
Beth sat up in bed, grasping Laura’s face in her hands, her eyes hurt and shocked. “Laura, you’re the only one who ever understood me, who ever cared so beautifully and completely for me. No man—certainly not Charlie—could ever measure up to you. No man can understand me when I can’t understand myself. That’s why I needed you so desperately.”
“To be understood?” Laura interrupted. She smiled with a sad mouth. In the aftermath of shock and passion, her head was clearing.
“Not just that,” Beth said, feeling somehow as if the ground were slipping out from under her, yet not knowing why. “I love you, Laura. I’ve loved you since we parted.”
“When did you make that discovery?” Laura said. “On your wedding day?” And her smile was sharp now.
“Oh God, Laura, I don’t know when I first realized it—what a mistake the marriage was.”
“Probably the day you had your first quarrel,” Laura said, and her expression hinted that she would have liked to have seen it. She looked suddenly like a minx—sly and taunting. Beth could tell just from her face, her smile, how much she had learned, how much she had changed. She would not be easy and yielding for long.
“Laura, don’t laugh at me,” Beth pleaded. “You don’t know what I’ve been through, what I’ve given up, to find you.”
“What, Beth? Tell me. Your reputation? Your fortune? Your rose-covered bungalow? Or just a little peace of mind?” She got up from the bed while she spoke and began to dress. The
