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Kate wore layers for her date. It wasn’t as nice as slacks and a pretty blouse, or her new dress. But where they were going called for jeans, thick socks, sturdy boots, and a t-shirt under a long-sleeved shirt beneath her coat. The same things she wore every day until the sun made her peel off the coat and then, if the temperature was right, the long-sleeved shirt so she could be in short sleeves.
She paused at the door to her room and glanced back as she turned off the light. No question about it, this was a date with Leigh. The way Leigh finalized their plans included multiple uses of the word, as well as a suggestion that she dress warm. Summer on Fair Isle was nothing like summer in the States. Back there, Kate would probably be out in a dress, no jacket, and maybe even dipping her toes in the ocean water.
Here on the most remote inhabited island in the UK, though, it was a different story. If Kate had been in her twenties, she might have whined about having to wear a coat, about how there was nothing cute about it, and tried to find a way to compensate. But she was forty-five.
What you see is what you get. Leigh had seen her enough to know what she was getting, so Kate had to let go of shallow concerns.
Despite the chill in the air when she stepped outside, something else warmed Kate through—the knowledge that she was about to see Leigh. Except it wasn’t a coincidence or accident this time. Everything about it was intentional.
Date. Date. Date.
She hadn’t been on a date as a single woman since... Counting down the years was too much work at this point, so she shrugged to herself and gave up on it. The point was, she’d spent her twenties immersed in her career, her thirties trying to make her husband happy, and now her forties were half over and she had no idea what would define this decade of her life.
Leigh could define it, she told herself. Her, and maybe some of the things that used to matter to me. She stopped in her tracks and drew in a deep, cool breath. At first when she’d left her marriage, she’d embraced the numbness that came with it. Sure, there’d been traces of hurt, deep and twisting. Even with the realization that she hadn’t loved David in a long time, his cheating still pained her.
After that, though, the numbness washed away, leaving only uncertainty. Until she set her foot on Fair Isle. Now, the States, her marriage, and the past twenty-something years seemed like a distant memory. This had always been one of her homes, thanks to her family. Maybe it had the potential to be her only home.
Like a beacon in the night, Leigh approached. They’d agreed to meet halfway between her croft and the observatory. This wasn’t like a big city, where one didn’t feel safe walking around at night. Or the country, where large animals might prowl in the darkness. This was practically another world and it was easy to feel as though Kate and Leigh were the only two people in it.
“Hey.” Kate couldn’t stop the smile that tugged at her lips, the first instinctive, unintentional smile in a long time. It pulled so hard, her cheeks hurt and her lips pressed together almost painfully. A good kind of pain.
“Hi. I brought a little something to keep us warm.” Leigh’s tone lilted playfully and Kate barely bit back her response as she heard the gentle slosh of liquid in a bottle. “Whisky, the best homebrew you’ll ever have.”
“Is that legal?” Kate wondered if she sounded naive, especially when Leigh chuckled.
“It’s Scotland, love. We do more than make our own sweaters on Fair Isle. Come on.” She gestured for Kate to follow, her fingers reaching in such a way that Kate thought maybe she wanted to hold hands. Then the sheep farmer turned and trudged toward the North Lighthouse.
One thing Kate had never done was wander the island in the dark. There were too many cliffs and sudden drop-offs into the ocean. Leigh, however, walked with the same surefooted confidence as the freely roaming sheep. Kate bit back her words yet again, even though the urge to question the safety of this walk filled her throat.
“If you’re worried about falling, don’t. I know this island like the back of my hand, but even I’m not stupid enough to go too far.” Somehow, Leigh found a way to reassure her without making Kate feel stupid for worrying. It was a complete one-eighty from their first interactions and Kate couldn’t get enough of it.
So Kate said the words she thought she would never say to another person again in her entire life. “I trust you.”
Leigh’s laughter carried on the ocean breeze. “Good, because sometimes I think I just talk a load of crap.”
Kate couldn’t stop the laughter that also exploded from her. She stopped to catch her breath, but found she had a case of the giggles. Badly. Doubled over, hands on knees, she tried to master herself and failed.
“Now that’s a sound I wondered if I’d ever hear.” Leigh stood by, waiting for her. When Kate straightened again, still choking out a chuckle or two, she saw the sheep farmer’s arms folded, foot tapping. There was just enough light from the full moon...
No, Kate saw as she turned in a slow circle to look at the island. The entire moor was awash in silver light. Even the lighthouse’s beam couldn’t outshine it. “How come I never noticed how beautiful it is out here at night?”
“Because no one in their right mind walks very far at night on Fair Isle. Not when you could be one step away from falling onto the rocks.” Leigh waved at her. “If you’re done with that giggle-fit of yours, we can keep going.”
Kate nodded and sucked in one more breath of the bracing air. Oh yes, something old and familiar filled her senses. Something she hadn’t felt in longer than she could remember. Even the somewhat bittersweet nostalgia that tinged it couldn’t keep her from feeling as though she could fly at this very moment.
They walked until they were several feet from the edges of the cliffs. Ocean waves lapped against rock and there was nothing but moonlit horizon as far as the eye could see. A reminder that they were in northern Scotland, almost at the very top of the world.
Leigh folded her legs beneath herself to sit down on the outcropping. “I’ve seen enough stupid tourists posing for pictures on the cliffs to last me a lifetime. You read stories constantly about people falling to their deaths for the perfect social media photo to post. Isn’t that crazy?”
“You’re talking about death? That sure is a romantic way to start a date.” Kate sat across from her, only a few inches between their knees.
“I’m just saying, I’d listen to me if I were, well, anyone.” Leigh showed her the container that held the sloshing liquid. It was an old flask, the silver of it glinting in the moonlight. “To your future,” she toasted before taking a swig.
“What—you don’t have some wise Scottish saying, like ‘May the road rise up to meet you’ or something like that?” Kate asked.
Leigh glared at her, eyes narrowed. “That’s the Irish and you know there’s a huge difference between us, right? I mean, the Irish and Scots. I know Americans think all of us sound the same, that we’re indistinguishable from each other or the English, or even Australians.”
Kate waved her hands in front of her frantically, desperate to salvage the moment. Maybe Leigh didn’t think as well of her as she’d hoped. Everything now had gone so wrong so quickly. “That’s not what I meant! I know there’s a difference between—”
“Gotcha.” Leigh grinned and offered her the flask. “You think I’d honestly believe that of you? Most Americans, yes. But not you. I was a bit of a jerk when we first met, and I’ve been trying to make it up to you. The truth is, I was a little scared to see you, as well.”
“Scared?” Accepting the flask and drinking from it were two different experiences. Kate found that closing her fingers around the smooth container was the easy part. The whisky, however, lit a fire in her chest and she was grateful she’d only taken a small sip. Otherwise, she would have had a humiliating coughing fit.
Leigh nodded and plucked at a piece of the low-lying brush. “We’re a small community, close-knit, like the wool of a sweater. Each thread is dependent upon the other. If one thread doesn’t fit in, the entire design is off.”
The conversation was already going far deeper than Kate had expected. This called for another sip of the fiery homebrew. “Are you saying people here don’t accept you? My aunt seems okay with the idea.”
“Are you kidding? When you were living with another woman in college, it was your aunt who suggested I get over myself and talk to you.” Leigh looked at her, eyes wide and unblinking. It was that directness that Kate found both refreshing and daunting. “See, the problem isn’t me being gay. It’s the lack of any sort of queer community on Fair Isle. There aren’t exactly a lot of us here.”
“How many, do you think?”
Leigh held up her hand. “Lesbian, party of one. That’s about it. There is a fantastic LGBT group on Shetland and they do a great job of being inclusive, but I’m pretty alone out here otherwise. How many women do you think are going to want to live somewhere remote with a sheep farmer? A woman like that would be a rare find.”
The way the timbre of her voice dropped, became huskier, made Kate’s breath catch. Leigh was talking about her. She was the rare find. Other than academic recognitions, no one had said something to make her feel special in a long time. No one she cared about, anyway.
Their date was barely begun, and she’d gone from giggles to concern to the overwhelming urge to kiss the heck out of Leigh.
Kate wanted to tell herself she was too old for this, for acting like a giddy teenager who couldn’t control herself. You’re never too old to follow your heart. The thought drowned out all the others and, before she knew it, Kate leaned forward to close the distance between them.
It’d been several years since she kissed another woman and the second their lips touched, she wondered why she’d waited so long. Leigh kissed her back gently, not pulling away, but not propelling the moment forward, either.
After putting so much time, energy, and thought into focusing on the idea of who she was or “supposed to be,” giving in to this temptation loosened something within Kate. When she bowed her head to break the kiss and leaned back, the breath she expelled relaxed her completely.
“I am so glad I did that,” she murmured.
Leigh released a delicate snort of laughter. “Trust me, so am I.”
Another smile touched Kate’s lips. That expression seemed to come easier these days, like when she was younger, before she’d changed the direction of her life. “I refuse to say he changed it.”
“Sorry?”
Kate blinked and looked at Leigh. “No, I’m the one who’s sorry. Did I speak out loud?”
“Yeah, you did. Do you want to talk about it?”
She did want to talk about it, but not on a date. How could she possibly say, “I refuse to pretend I’m not responsible for my own choices”? She supposed she could simply say it and let it go, so she tested the words. Leigh’s return smile was answer enough.
“It’s hard, isn’t it?”
“What is?” Kate asked.
Leigh stretched out to lay back on the bed of heather and patted the spot beside her until Kate took her up on the invitation. Together, they lay side by side, staring up at the sky, hands folded over their own stomachs.
“It’s hard when you lose yourself so completely in a person, thinking if you just do this or that, they’ll love you more, enough to make the sacrifices all worthwhile.” The way Leigh breathed out the words was so raw, Kate turned to look at her. In the semi-darkness, all she saw was the woman’s strong profile.
“You sound like you know a thing or two about the subject.”
“Maybe.” Leigh pointed at the night sky, which was slowly becoming dappled by incoming clouds. “Do you see Polaris, Cassiopeia, and Cephus? Before sailors and explorers had compasses, they relied on the stars to guide them home.”
Kate squinted up at the sparkling lights. “They’re pretty, but I’ve never been able to tell one from another. Then again, I haven’t really seen the stars since... since...”
“That’s okay,” Leigh interjected. “Big, crowded American cities and towns don’t make it easy. Besides, you’ve got another thing that guides you home.”
“Yeah. What’s that?” Kate rolled over and propped her head up on her hand, elbow supported by the rocky dirt. It was odd, lying here in the dark with someone who made her heart race. Odd and intoxicating. Whisky had nothing on the woman next to her, skin glowing in the silvery moonlight.
Leigh mirrored her pose and smiled. “Birds. To most of us, they’re just balls of feathers that make pretty noises, just like for you the stars are balls of gas that make a pretty light. But birds mean something different to you.”
Something different in puffins and the other birds that inhabited Fair Isle? Beyond scientific curiosity? “What’s that?”
Leigh reached out, fingertips lightly caressing Kate’s face, and whispered, “They guide you home, too.”
The next kiss wasn’t nearly as short as the first.
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