The three were out the door just as Meredith drove away. “God, I hope she’ll be all right,” Kellye said as they watched her leave.

“I hope so too,” Brett agreed. “There’s a lot riding on her over the next few months. We would be seriously up the creek without a paddle if something happened to her. But I realize that like Thoreau, she marches to a different drummer than the rest of us, so we’ll just have to accept it.”

“Speaking of marching and being up the creek,” Lu giggled, “let’s get going.”

It was just a short walk over to the winery; Brett, Meredith, and Kellye often walked it for the sake of a little exercise. When they’d left the old mill earlier the place had been mildly busy, with a handful of customers in the tasting room, but things had perked up in the hour or so they’d been gone. The tasting room was almost crowded, and both Samantha and Marty were busy dealing with customers. It looked to Brett like a lot of wine was going out the door.

At a slight pause in the action, Brett stopped Samantha and told her in low tones that they were going to hike up along the mill pond to the swimming hole, if that was all right with her. “Oh, that’s fine,” she told them. “We really don’t mind people going up there, so long as it’s not too many at one time, they don’t make a mess of the place, and they stop and ask first.”

It was the first time Brett and Kellye had been back there. The mill pond seemed small when seen from the tasting room, but it proved that there was a bend that limited the view of the whole thing, which extended up the valley for a ways. It was a pleasant walk; quiet and pretty with spring flowers coming on and the trees getting loaded up with leaves. It wasn’t far though; Brett guessed that the swimming hole Lu led them to had to be about a quarter mile from the mill, and possibly less.

Finally, Lu came to a stop. “This is the place,” she said. “It’s not much, but it’s here.”

Brett looked around. There was a small sand beach, only a step wide, but a look in the clear water showed that it extended out into the pond a ways. There was a huge oak tree overhanging the water, with a rope tied to the limb for swinging out into the water. “That looks like fun,” he said. “I’ll bet this isn’t the last time we come up here this summer.”

“Me, either,” Kellye agreed. “The water has to be pretty cold now, but along about July it’s going to be really neat.”

“So long as we get a lot of rain that’ll keep the creek moving,” Lu explained. “If it doesn’t rain much the pond will get full of algae and duckweed, and it’s not something you’d want to go swimming in. When that happens, we’d be stuck with going to the beach over at Oxford, or finding someone who’d let us use their swimming pool. But that isn’t anywhere near as private as this is.”

“The idea of swimming sounds fine,” Brett commented. “But you’re right Kellye, that water doesn’t look real warm. Maybe that’s what the rope is for, so you get committed and get the shock all at once.”

“I’m not saying I’m going to give it a pass for this afternoon,” she replied, “except that I don’t think I want to try it right now. Let’s find a good spot and lay out in the sun for a bit.”

“I can’t be in the sun very long or I’ll get burned,” Lu told them. “But it’ll feel good for a while.”

“I’ve got a little tan built up,” Kellye said. “Let’s find a spot where there’s some shade close by.”

It didn’t take them long; soon they had towels spread out and had their outer clothes off. Brett noticed that Kellye had on a wine-colored bikini with a patterned top rather more conservative than the almost-thong he’d seen her wearing a couple times in the last week or so. The white one with a handful of scattered polka dots Lu had borrowed from Kellye was also relatively conservative for a tie-on. It didn’t matter a whole lot to him; he thought both of them looked good, although it wasn’t something he wanted to say just then since he didn’t think he knew Lu well enough yet.

Lying out on the scattered grass and dirt wasn’t quite as comfortable as the lawn lounge chairs up at the house, but that didn’t matter much – just being in this place made it different and fun. “I can’t help but wonder how Meredith is doing,” Kellye said after a while.

“Probably nothing much,” Lu replied from a couple feet away. “She’s hardly had time to get there yet.”

“You know, in a way I envy her a little,” Kellye said. “I mean not the hanging out in bars or the looking for hookups, but at least she’s trying. I, well, it’s not the kind of thing I would do.”

“Yeah, me either,” Lu agreed. “I’ve never been one to hang around bars looking for guys. I suppose it’s possible to turn one up there, but what kind of guy are you going to find if you do? Maybe someone who would be fun for an evening, but I’ve always stopped and asked myself, ‘What happens the next night?’ I’m not sure the kind of guy I would hook up with in a bar would be the kind of guy I’d want to have to consider another night with, let alone a life.”

“I sort of know how you feel,” Brett put in. “Now, I’ll be the first person to admit that there have been occasions when I’ve had fun with another cast member at some play or other, but honestly, even there it’s just fun for one night, and there it ends.”

“Meredith told me you’d done a bit of that,” Kellye observed neutrally.

“Well, I have,” he admitted. “Probably not as much as she said actually happened, but the fact of the matter is that it happened and it felt good at the time, but I was glad that it was just for the one night. I mean, imagine if you were a guy and you wound up getting permanent with a girl like Andrea, you know, the one we met in Greenville.”

“The girl you and Meredith call ‘Rock-tits?’ If I were a guy, and maybe even if I were Meredith, I could see how it could be fun for one night,” Kellye nodded. “But a guy would have to be pretty dumb or pretty hard up to want to get sucked into living life with an airhead like her.”

“My point exactly,” he said. “Or, that snooty blonde who came to the casting call, same difference.”

“You know, after Darrin and I broke up,” Kellye reflected, “I thought maybe I ought to try to have a little fun. You know, hook up with someone just for a little action, maybe for a little good sex, especially since I thought it had never been very good with him. I got a little slutty and tried it a couple times, but really, while it was different it wasn’t any better. So I said the hell with it. It wasn’t worth the effort. A quality boyfriend is a little hard to come by when you’re a girl like me.”

“I know what you mean,” Lu said. “I know I’m not the prettiest girl on earth, and men aren’t going to fall at my feet like they do for some girls I know, but I haven’t reached the point in my life where I’m going to fall for some guy just because he’s a guy. I know too many girls who have done that, and usually it doesn’t work out very well for them.”

Brett looked over at the two girls and said, “I guess I’m right with you on that, at least looking from the other side of the guy-girl coin. I’m not saying that I’m not ready to settle down, but I’d have to give it some thought if what might be the right girl came along. Lu, I know you don’t have the background on it, but while I like what I’m doing this summer, it’s pretty obvious that it’s not something I can spend a life doing. I’m having to hang on by my fingernails doing odd jobs like substitute teaching and substitute milking so I can do some theater stuff now and then. I love doing it but I’m not sure I’m willing to pay the price much longer. I’ve held off on trying to get serious with someone until things settle out with me, one way or the other.”

“At least you’ve thought it out that far,” Kellye said. “Hell, I made that mistake once. You know, just get married and expect that things are going to be happy ever after. It doesn’t work that way; I can tell you that. But I can’t imagine how much harder it has to be for Meredith.”

“How do you mean that?” Lu asked.

“It’s got to be harder for her, at least statistically,” Kellye replied. “I mean, there are only so many girls around who do girls, rather than guys, so the odds aren’t in her favor. She may have a little luck with hook-ups, but I can’t imagine how much harder it would be to find a girl to make a life with.”

“As far as I know, and believe me, I don’t know all there is to know,” Brett mused, “she’s never even come close to finding anyone like that. But I do know, or at least I’m pretty sure I know, that she’d really like to have someone on a permanent basis. She can get goofy at times, and I’m pretty sure a lot of the goofiness comes from frustration. You’ve mostly only seen the good side of her, Kellye. At least, the side that’s in a good mood most of the time. I’ve known her long enough to see some of the bad side, the frustrated side, and she’s not a fun person to be around when that happens.”

“Suppose she were straight,” Lu said. “Do you think the two of you might get together?”

“I’ll tell you that after the last few weeks it would be tempting, but I realize that there’s a bear trap hidden in that grass. We’ve been pretty intensively involved in pulling these shows together, and that’s diverted her attention a little. She’s about as committed to the theater as I’ve been, and really, when you get right down to it, she’s been a little more successful at it than I have. But it’s not going to happen, first, because she’s really serious about being a lesbian, but also because if we were to get serious, I’d probably have to be doing something besides theater, and that might mean we both would. She would hate that.”

“Yeah,” Kellye agreed. “I’ve seen that in her. She loves doing theater, and she’s really good at it. I mean, I love it, and I like to think I’d be good at it if I had the kind of experience she has, but I don’t think I’d want it to be the core of my life, either.”

“At least I can contemplate giving it up,” he replied. “The time may come when I have to. Oh, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to totally give it up. If I had to, I’d probably organize local amateur productions or something just to feed the desire, but I’d have to give most of my attention to my real life.”

Lu decided that she’d had enough sun on one side to hold her for the moment, so rolled over into a position where she could look at Brett and Kellye a little more easily. “You know,” she said as she settled into her new position, “That doesn’t sound like a bad hobby. I don’t think I’d ever want to try to make a life out of it the way you’re trying to do, but a little of it could be a lot of fun. I mean, if this deal with the dinner theater works out the way I think Marty and Samantha are hoping it will, I could see me being involved with it for a long time, so long as I was living around here.”

“We’re going to have to make it through this season first,” Brett told her. “Bear in mind, we haven’t even had our first show yet. But unless something goes way goofy, it ought to work out all right. Nothing has been said about future years, though I suspect Marty and Samantha are thinking about it.”

“If they do decide to do it another year, do you think you’d be involved?” Kellye asked.

“It’s much too early to tell, and I won’t even be able to say at the end of the season, either. If they want to do it and I’m available to produce and direct, I could get talked into it. If I’m not available and Meredith is, there’s no reason she couldn’t pull things together, especially now that we have the groundwork laid. Actually, Mike could do it if he decided he wanted to. There’s just not any way of telling at this point.”

“Well, at least this summer ought to be fun,” Lu said. “I guess if it doesn’t work out I’ll have to make do with what I can get out of it.”

“Something like that,” Brett agreed.

“At least it’s nice to be able to do something I enjoy doing and hang out with some friends while I’m doing it. There aren’t many people I know who would be interested in putting in the work it takes to put on a show, and it’s a hell of a lot more work than most people think it is.”

“If you’ve learned that, you’ve learned the most important basic,” Brett told her.

“You’re right,” Kellye said. “It is nice to hang out with friends who are interested in theater, but then it’s nice to hang out with friends, period. I don’t get that much of it.”

“Why not?” Brett asked. “You’re a friendly girl.”

“Mostly because I haven’t had a lot of friends, especially since Darrin and I broke up. I mean, I had a few friends when I was in high school, but mostly they’ve drifted off. Married, moved away, whatever. One of the reasons I got involved with the Grant in the first place was the hope that I could find a few new friends who shared one of my own interests, but it really hadn’t worked out very well until you and Meredith came along. I mean, I was mostly an outsider there, a bit player who really didn’t matter for much of anything. I think I’m going to like doing the bigger roles you have planned for me, but part of the reason for that is that I’m going to be doing it with people who I think of as friends.”

“I know what you’re saying,” Brett told her. “When you get down to it, I don’t have very many close friends, especially outside the theater. Meredith is just about the exception to that rule, and it’s a little frustrating since I know that’s not going anywhere.”

“I’m coming to think of you as a friend,” Kellye admitted. “And really, you too, Lu. It’s going to mean this summer is going to be a lot of fun for me, too.”

“It would be a real bummer if it wasn’t fun,” Brett smiled.

“You know,” Kellye said, “on the subject of fun, I’m starting to get a little warm. I keep looking at that rope hanging there and thinking I ought to use it.”

“I don’t know,” Brett said. “That water looks like it’s pretty cold. I’ll bet that would cool you off right away.”

“Well, it looks cold to me, too,” she smiled. “But I’ll do it if someone else does, too.”

“Oh, nuts,” Lu said. “I’ll do it too, if you’ll do it, Brett.”

“You two go on and have fun. Like I said, that water looks pretty cold to me.”

“Spoilsport,” she wrinkled her nose at him. “I dare you to do it. In fact, I double-dare you to do it.”

“I hope you remember that double-dare means that you have to do it first.”

“Well, yeah. Shit, I’m a country girl, I know what that means. I’ve done it here before, although not in May. Keep your feet under you, it’s not all that deep.” She got up and went over to snag the rope, then walked it up the bank as far as she could reach. After getting a good hold on it, she went running down the bank, swung out over the water, and let go. In an instant there was a big splash where she hit the water, followed almost instantly by a scream.

“I take that to mean it’s pretty cold,” Brett called to her.

“Oh, yeah, it’s cold, but it’s … refreshing,” she said as she walked out of the water. “Now it’s your turn, Brett.”

Brett still didn’t want to do it but knew he’d been snookered. There was nothing to do but to grab the rope and go up the bank with it like Lu had done, then swing out over the water and let go.

The cold water was a real shock to his system, but it really wasn’t that bad. He’d resolved he wasn’t going to scream like Lu had and managed not to, but he didn’t waste any time getting out of the water, either.

“I guess that means I have to do it,” Kellye grinned – there hadn’t been any question about it since it had been her idea in the first place. She took her turn, swung out and splashed into the water, then let go with a satisfying shriek. “That was fun,” she said as she walked back up on shore. “I’ll do it again if everyone else will.”

“My turn,” Lu smiled, heading for the rope again.

The three of them stayed around the swimming hole for several more hours, sometimes swimming and sometimes taking in the sun and talking until finally they decided to head back. They pulled on their clothes, packed up their towels, and started walking. The parking lot at the winery was still full, but Brett stuck his nose into the tasting room long enough to let Samantha know they were done at the swimming hole.

On the way back up the road to the house, Kellye asked Lu if she’d like to stay around for dinner. “Sure,” Lu said. “It’s been fun hanging out with you two this afternoon. I don’t get to hang out with friends like this very often.”

“Neither do we,” Kellye told her, “and it’s always good to find a new friend.”

Kellye decided to do a meat loaf with baked potatoes, which took a while, but there always seemed to be plenty to talk about. After they ate, Brett pulled out one of the plays he and Meredith had considered and rejected for the dinner theater. Since there was only the one copy, the three of them crowded together on the couch and passed the book around doing a reading, something that was always fun to do, even though Brett hadn’t done it with Kellye much and Lu not at all.

Eventually it grew late, and Lu had to go. “Thanks for a great day, you two,” she said. “I haven’t had this much fun in a long time.”

“We’ll have to do it again,” Brett told her. “Yes, this was a pretty good day. Take care, Lu.”

Brett watched from the door as she drove off. “That was fun,” he said to Kellye. “I could stand another day like that, and she’s a great girl.”

“That she is. I’ve had theater friends in the past, but I’ve never been real close to them. Hanging out with her could grow on you.”

“That it could.”

“I don’t know about you,” Kellye changed the subject, “but it’s late and it’s been a long day. I think I’ll take a shower and turn in.”

“I won’t stop you,” he said, “but I think I’ll wait up for a bit.”

“Waiting up for our wandering girl? Brett, you know you don’t have to do that. She could be half the night, and maybe even not show up until morning.”

“I know,” he nodded. “But still.”

“I guess I understand,” she sighed. “I hope Meredith realizes just how lucky she is to have someone who will wait up for her.”

“Don’t get me wrong, Kellye. I’d do it for you, too, except that I doubt that you’d be out prowling the bars looking for hookups until all hours of the night.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right at that. Thanks for the thought anyway, Brett.”

Before too much longer Kellye was upstairs and in bed, presumably asleep. The house was quiet, but Brett didn’t feel much like going to bed yet. He found a play to read, and just sat quietly in one of the lawn lounge chairs in the living room reading it.

It was very late before he was relieved to see headlights pulling into the driveway. He heard Meredith’s car door slam, and soon she walked into the room, looking a little frazzled and not nearly as sharp as she’d been when she’d left many hours before. “What are you doing?” she asked.

“Couldn’t sleep,” he lied. “So I thought I’d read a play. So how did it go?”

“Lousy,” she said. “The pickings were damn slim. I had a beer with a diesel dyke who drove this great, big-ass honking testosterone-loaded pickup. She was fun to talk to even though I wouldn’t have touched her with a three-meter pole. I also hung out with another lipstick girl, but the way she talked she sounded like a pillow queen, and I just couldn’t get myself interested. I don’t know if I’m going to try that again.”

“You never know,” he yawned. “Well, now that you’re back, I guess I’ll bag it myself.”

“Brett, you waited up for me, didn’t you?”

“Well, maybe a little,” he admitted.

“Thanks, Brett. At least I know there’s someone who cares.”

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