Right Time for Love Read online

  Right Time For Love

  Lesbian Light Reads 5

  by

  Elizabeth Andre

  Published by Tulabella Ruby Press

  Copyright 2015 Elizabeth Andre/All Rights Reserved

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  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is strictly coincidental.

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  Other titles by Elizabeth Andre:

  Tested: Sex, love, and friendship in the shadow of HIV

  The Time Slip Girl

  Learning to Kiss Girls

  Love’s Perfect Vintage

  Lesbian With Dog Seeks Same

  Bodies in Motion

  Landing Love

  Lesbian Light Reads Volumes 1-6 Boxed Set

  The Beauty Queen Called Twice

  Skating on Air

  Someone Like Her

  Roll With Me

  Stop and Go

  Nice Jewish Girls

  Lesbian Light Reads Volumes 7-12 Boxed Set

  Love Most Likely

  Joy For Julie

  Give Me Thorns: A Lesbian BDSM Romance

  Editor: Cassandra Pierce

  Cover design consultants: Andy, Marc, Patty and Josh

  Right Time For Love

  Lesbian Light Reads 5

  by

  Elizabeth Andre

  Saturday: Embark, New Orleans

  Whiplash. What a way to start a vacation. Okay. I might be exaggerating a bit, but it sure felt like whiplash. I saw Joyce, one of the many desires that had passed through my life unfulfilled and unpursued. She gave me whiplash. When you’re 65 like me you have more past than future, and she was from my far-off past. I hadn’t seen her in so long.

  I first saw her at the orientation for the euchre tournament. I knew she looked familiar, but I didn’t realize who she was until the welcome reception. I had come on this cruise with my friends Anne Marie, Frankie and Carol, to play cards and get some sun. We didn’t care where the ship went, and we didn’t expect any hooking up. Honestly, I’d been single for so long that I’d gotten used to it. I didn’t expect that to change any time soon.

  I had played euchre for a long time. It was one of the things that kept me and my friends together all these years. We’d taken several cruises, but never one where there was a euchre tournament. When Anne Marie, a fellow single lesbian, heard about this one we decided we had to do it. Frankie and Carol, coupled for so long that they frequently said the same thing in unison, teased us, saying that if we played our cards right—ha! ha!—we might be able to pick up some nice ladies while on board.

  I had laughed and probably said something roguish because that’s what they expected. But at the cocktail party, when I realized that the woman with deep brown eyes who had looked familiar at orientation was someone from my long ago past, I wasn’t feeling roguish. Mainly, I was feeling a bit melancholy.

  I have mostly had a good life. I worked hard as an ER nurse in the busiest trauma unit in one of the biggest cities in the country. Sometimes, I felt superhuman, especially when I was younger and working double shifts. I had dated a lot of women and been in three long-term relationships, the last of which wrapped up about seven years ago. They all ended pretty much for the same reason each time. I worked a lot. Well, too much if my exes are to be believed. They were probably right. I never did drugs. Working in a busy, understaffed ER was my drug.

  By the time I retired a few years ago, I was exhausted and alone. My mother and my uncle had taught me how to play euchre when I was kid. I played from time to time as an adult. I had taught a few of my nursing school classmates how to play. I really threw myself into it after I retired. I may have been single, but I had loads of friends. I even started helping organize tournaments at the LGBT center. I wanted to play euchre at sea, but I had to admit I was also looking forward to the romance of it all. Moonlight reflected on water gently lapping at the hull of the ship. Lounging on the deck with fruity drinks. Maybe with a beautiful woman. Over the past several months, I’d watched my downstairs neighbor, Jordan, and her girlfriend Ciara get closer. They really seemed very happy. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a bit envious. I was sentimental enough that I wanted to experience all the romance a cruise ship could offer and more with someone special.

  I loved my friends, but I knew in my heart that I wanted, that I needed, that I deserved more.

  ***

  I knew I should have been paying more attention at the orientation, but the preliminary stuff for these tournaments always bored me to tears. I knew how to play, and the rules didn’t change. Anne Marie was listening so I figured she would tell me if there was anything special I needed to know. She was better with details than me anyway. The people around me were far more interesting. I’d say there were nearly a hundred folks here for the tournament. We euchre players were but a fraction of the total cruise population of about 5,000, but I could already tell we were going to be an eager and boisterous bunch as we gathered in one of the ship’s bars, which was decorated like an English pub.

  I recognized a few of the other players from other tournaments sitting in the deep brown leather seats. And then there was the woman—dark hair with a few grays, smooth skin—who struck a chord of familiarity with me. I had seen her somewhere before, but I couldn’t recall where just then.

  “Ow.” Anne Marie had just poked me in the ribs. “Why’d you do that?”

  “Pay attention. I’m not your girl Friday.”

  “But you’re such a pretty girl Friday,” I whispered. Anne Marie blushed.

  I turned my attention back to scanning the room. I managed to catch another glimpse of the dark-haired woman who looked so familiar. She was heading to the exit. Anne Marie jabbed me again. I turned to Anne Marie to scowl and jerked my head around too fast to see if I’d missed that woman. That’s when I felt a crick in my neck. Whiplash. Ouch. The woman was gone. The man who’d been leading the orientation ended by reminding us of the tournament welcome cocktail reception tonight before dinner.

  “You are a hound dog, Hannah.”

  I rubbed at my sore neck. “She looks so familiar. That’s all. I’m not cruising. Honest. Ouch.”

  “It’s obvious she’s here for the tournament, so it’s a good bet she’ll be at the cocktail party tonight. You’ll get another look at her,” Anne Marie said. “Relax.”

  I certainly hoped so. I had to find out why she looked so familiar and why seeing her made me smile.

  ***

  My friends, Frankie and Carol, joined me and Anne Marie at the cocktail party in a lounge overlooking one of the swimming pools. The air smelled of salt water and the endless squirts of hand sanitizer used to prevent norovirus outbreaks. That bug rarely killed, but could ruin a vacation. We chatted with a few other players about the ghost tour we had taken the day before in New Orleans and excursions we were thinking of signing up for at various ports.

  “I’ve never been snorkeling so I definitely want to try that in the Cayman Islands,” Carol, a recently retired special ed teacher, said. “Do you wanna go snorkeling, Frankie? The brochure says w
e can swim with the stingrays.”

  Frankie and Carol had been together for nearly thirty years. They were a classic butch-femme couple with Frankie being the butch and Carol the femme. I loved them both, but I could never figure out how they managed to stay together for so long. They didn’t seem to have much in common besides liking each other and playing cards. Carol had been the one with the steady, well-paying job. Frankie had bounced around in many jobs over the years. She’d most recently been a short-haul truck driver. The money from that was probably how she’d paid her way on the cruise. They were both very good card players. Euchre was their favorite card game.

  “Nah,” Frankie said. “Other than getting on this boat, I’m a landlubber. Not interested in swimming with the fishes.”

  Carol looked put out, but then brightened up when Anne Marie and one of the other euchre players we were chatting with said they’d go snorkeling.

  Then I saw the dark-haired woman again, and everything else became background noise. She was over by the bar, shaking hands with a couple of other people. She looked happy. Her skin had a subtle sheen, and her eyes had an alluring glimmer. My sense of familiarity would not go away. I knew that I knew her. I just didn’t know how. Then I saw a younger version of her move into view. Seeing them together, I had no doubt that the dark-haired woman was Joyce Yamada. The younger version had to be her daughter. Joyce and I had been at nursing school together in Chicago. We had been part of a little group of students who weren’t native Chicagoans, so we spent a lot of time together. We had shopped, gone to movies, museums and parks together. I had liked Joyce then. I had liked her very much.

  Back in the present, after asking my companions if they wanted me to get them another drink, I put one foot in front of the other and made a beeline to the bar, where I planned on casually bumping into Joyce. I didn’t know if she had seen me or even if she would remember me. My plan was upended when I stumbled—caught my foot on a bit of carpet—and nearly crashed into the bar. I felt people clutching my arms to help me stay upright.

  “Take it easy, hon,” said a masculine voice. “The night’s young.”

  “Oh, I know. I’m all right.” I gently pulled my left arm away from his grasp as I steadied myself on my feet. Then I heard her voice, older and not as girlish as the last time I saw her but hers nonetheless. She was holding my right arm.

  “Hannah? It’s Hannah Becker, isn’t it?”

  I looked to my right and saw her. “Yes, it is. I am. You’re Joyce Yamada.”

  She smiled, let go of my arm, and hugged me. “You remember. But it’s Joyce Nakano now. It’s so good to see you!”

  “It’s good to see you, too, Joyce.”

  I stood back a bit to get a good look at her to see how she wore her years. There were deep lines in her face that framed her cheeks and crossed her forehead, but her lovely crow’s feet made her smile even more glorious. She was more beautiful than I had remembered. I had first met Joyce in the nurse’s residence over forty years ago. Oh, was it really that long ago? I thought. It was indeed. We had been in the same nursing school class. I had grown up in Fort Wayne, Indiana at a time when it wasn’t a paradise of diversity. There weren’t even that many black people and almost no Asians. Joyce was the first person I’d ever met who was of Japanese ancestry, and I’d only ever heard negative things about the Japanese because of Pearl Harbor. I was curious about her. I know I said some cringeworthy things to her when we first met, but, mainly, I remembered her as being friendly and kind with a dry sense of humor. I got the feeling that most of our classmates and instructors didn’t know what to make of her. I was just about to say how good she looked when her younger version spoke.

  “So how do you know Mom?” she said.

  “We were at nursing school together,” Joyce said. “Hannah, this is my daughter, Kristen.”

  Kristen seemed amused by her mother’s reunion with me. We shook hands, perhaps too long. I definitely got a protective vibe from Kristen, like she was trying to decide if it was safe for me to be near her mother.

  “Pleasure meeting you, Hannah.”

  “It’s wonderful meeting you, too, Kristen.”

  Joyce also introduced me to the man who had helped keep me from falling when I stumbled so gracefully over the carpet. His name was Sam. He would be her euchre partner on the cruise.

  “Mom told me she learned how to play euchre when she was at nursing school. Is that where you learned how to play it, too?”

  “No, I didn’t learn how to play euchre in nursing school,” I said. Kristen’s smile was getting warmer. I was pretty sure I was passing whatever assessment she was giving me.

  “She was the one who taught me!” Joyce exclaimed. “She taught all of us. She was a very good teacher, very patient and kind.”

  I smiled. “You were a very good student.”

  “She’s a euchre fiend. She plays whenever an opportunity presents itself,” Kristen said. “I never got into it.”

  “Thus clearing the way for me to be Joyce’s partner!” Sam said. He was nothing if not enthusiastic. He was a big white guy, about my age, no wedding ring, and he seemed nice. I briefly wondered about the whereabouts of Joyce’s husband and/or Kristen’s father, but figured I would learn all about that soon enough.

  Joyce explained that Sam was in the same euchre club as her in Oakland, California. Her original partner and cruise roommate had to back out at the last minute because her mother had died unexpectedly a few days before the cruise. Sam managed to book a last-minute room, and Kristen took Joyce’s former partner’s bed.

  “Mom didn’t want to stay in the suite by herself, and I needed a vacation so here I am,” Kristen said. She didn’t just look like her mother. She talked and moved like her, too.

  “Sounds like a pretty good deal for everyone,” I said.

  At that moment, I noticed that people had started drifting away from the lounge and were heading to dinner. Anne Marie, Frankie and Carol came over.

  “Looks like it’s dinner time,” Carol said. “And who are your new friends?”

  “Meet Sam and Kristen, but Joyce here, well, we’re not new friends,” I said. I so wanted to spend some time with Joyce, just the two of us, if only to find out what had happened over the past 40-plus years.

  “Hey! Let’s all go into dinner together,” Sam said, holding his arms open wide. “I’ll be like a sheik with a harem!” He was far too excited about that prospect.

  Frankie smirked. Kristen rolled her eyes. Carol had a look on her face that seemed to say, “Did I just hear him say that?” I laughed. Joyce looked mildly embarrassed. I took Sam’s arm.

  “Great idea, Sam. I’ve always wanted my own harem, too. I think I’ve got a good start here.” I tugged on his arm. To his credit, he seemed to be a good sport.

  “Why not? It’s a modern world,” he said. “Girls can have harems, too.”

  Sam and I led the gaggle of women from the lounge to the restaurant where long tables had been set aside for euchre tournament players. I made sure that I got a seat next to Joyce. At first, Kristen, who sat on the other side of her mother, asked me loads of questions about where I grew up and about nursing school and what her mother was like then. She was very good at getting me to talk about stuff I hadn’t thought about in years. I complimented her on her interviewing skills.

  “Occupational hazard,” she said in an offhanded sort of way. “Former newspaper reporter, but newspapers aren’t what they once were, so I went to culinary school. I’m the manager of the food department at a very swanky grocery store. Oops. I mean lifestyle center.” When Kristen said the words lifestyle center I could hear the air quotes around them.

  She hadn’t grilled me about my personal life, but I had a feeling that might come later. When I was in nursing school with her mother, I wasn’t out to anyone in our class. It took me a while to figure out my deal, and it was the late 1960s. No one was out to anyone. Being gay was always a secret, if not to y
ourself, then to everyone else who wasn’t “in the life.”

  During my first year of school, I spent a lot of time with Joyce and two other classmates doing fun stuff on weekends. By my second year of nursing school, I knew I was gay and had discovered the gay scene in Chicago with my friend Marty, who worked as an attendant in the morgue at the county hospital. He was the one who took me to my first gay bar, a dark hole-in-the-wall on Chicago’s Northwest side.

  The more I went out to gay bars with Marty and started meeting women like me, the less I went out with Joyce and the other out-of-towners because it was so awkward. I couldn’t tell them where I was going. I couldn’t take them with me. Straight people didn’t go to gay bars in the 1960s. They thought Marty was my boyfriend, a fiction I was happy to go along with.

  I had every intention of coming out to Joyce at some point in this cruise, if the subject came up. I hadn’t come out to anyone in years. I was out of practice, but I didn’t want to come out to her during dinner. Maybe later.

  ***

  After dinner, Joyce and I sat before a couple of slot machines watching the reels roll by. The noisy casino was filled with the sounds of bells, whistles, card dealers, and the occasional winner’s whoop. I liked the act of pulling the lever even though it was possible to play just by hitting a button over and over again. Joyce was hitting the “spin reels” button over and over again.

  “I gave myself a twenty-dollar limit,” she said. The reels rolled by landing on two cherries and a bar. “Yippee! A dollar!”

  “You’re having better luck than I am.” I had already dumped ten bucks into the slot. No joy.

  “So, tell me about your life. Did you ever marry? Have any kids?” she asked.

  Here we go, I thought. I wanted to know about her life. It only made sense that she would want to know about mine. “I’ve had a few long-term relationships, but I wouldn’t have been allowed to marry until very recently. And that’s only if there was someone I wanted to marry.”