By Lee Lynch
Excerpt adapted from the novel Beggar of Love by Lee Lynch
Available from Bold Strokes Books in fall 2009
Jefferson pulled Angela to her and kissed her, hot but fast, eyeing the curtain. Angela pressed against her, took the stolen kiss, then moved away, fast.
"I want to run to my mother and father and spill my happiness all over them. I'd shout, 'Jefferson and I are in love! We're going to move in together after graduation.' I'd fling my arms around these two people who made me the woman who loves you. Why shouldn't they be excited too?"
Jefferson could only agree. They'd made Angela bright and attractive, taught her to laugh. Why should she hide the rest of who she was? Why shouldn't they share her happiness?
Angela gave her a look that made her heart race. "It's all I can do not to run and tell them right now."
"They'd keep me away," Jefferson predicted, part of her hoping that wasn't true, although she knew it was. "I'd never get to see you again."
"They couldn't," Angela countered. "What would they do, tie you up?"
Jefferson scowled. "My parents would send me away," she told Angela. "Bury me in some prep school where chapel is a requirement and the girls talk about boys from morning till night."
"I'd come to you. Live in the nearest town. I could get work as a waitress. We'd do it on the chapel floor at midnight. I'd steal you away on weekends, and we could be naked together in my little room at the top of some old lady's big house."
"We'd get away with it for about two weeks. We'd get caught. You'd be sent home. I'd be locked in my room except for classes. The other girls would hound me for being … strange. You're such a kid about these things, Angie. If we don't do everything the way the adults want, they have more ways to punish us than God could even imagine. Your parents would be the same."
"So we're going to sneak around forever?"
"Yes."
Angela got angry then and lashed out at Jefferson. "I think you like all this hiding and conspiracy, Amelia Jefferson. I think you get a charge out of being scared all the time, that's what I think. It dresses up your little-rich-girl country life, like playing cowboys and Indians when you were a kid. In the Bronx, we played Nazis and Jews on our front stoops, while you were rolling down your green hills."
Jefferson stood up to go. "I'm not a rich kid," she protested, although, compared to Angela, she must seem so. "Maybe you're right. Maybe I do make a game of it in a way. Maybe I've always felt safer than you because my family's been in this county since the dinosaurs. Maybe we're too different to be together."
Outside, she was Gary Cooper in High Noon. She could feel the holstered pistols on her hips and scowled at passersby. That did nothing to chase off the black-cloud monster of fear. She swung a leg over her bike and rushed toward the hill.
Lee Lynch ( leelynch6.tripod.com ) has written Sweet Creek and The Swashbuckler. Her column, "The Amazon Trail," has appeared in this paper. Beggar of Love will be available this fall: ( www.boldstrokesbooks.com/Bios/LeeLBio.html ) .