Ski Lodge Secret

Dot signed the guest book with a pen chained to the desk. The ink came out in a scratchy line. Typical.

"Top floor, end of the hall," Raul said, sliding the key across the counter. He was forty-five, thick through the shoulders, wearing a flannel shirt with the sleeves shoved up. "Room 12. Best view in the place. Don't tell the other guests."

"Wouldn't dream of it," Dot said.

She was forty-two, an architect, and she had not slept with anyone in eight months. Mara had packed her half of the bookshelf into rented boxes and left the twelve-year experiment in a pile by the door three months ago, and for the five months before that they'd slept like roommates. Dot still caught herself buying the wrong kind of coffee creamer.

The room was good, though. Big bed, fireplace, a balcony looking out over the pines toward the peaks. She set her bag down and stood in the middle of the room and did the thing she always did in new rooms. Looked at the ceiling lines. Checked the window trim. Old habit.

Then she sat on the edge of the big bed and felt it.

Dusty. That was the only word for it. A queen bed alone had a specific texture after twelve years of not being alone. The mattress didn't dip on the other side. The pillows stayed fluffed. Nobody rolled in at two in the morning smelling of whatever and put cold feet on her calves. It was a whole climate that had gone missing, and now the room just sat there, warm and tidy and empty, like a showroom.

"God," she said out loud, to nobody. "Get a grip."

She pulled out her phone and texted Glenda. *Arrived. Room 12. The lodge looks exactly the same and also worse.*

Three dots. Then: *It's held together by spite and caulk. Give me 20 min, finishing a lesson.*

Dot knew Glenda from a design conference ten years back. Glenda had been a graphic designer then, back in Denver. Now she taught skiing at Moosehorn and had come out as trans five years ago, and every time Dot saw her she seemed more like herself. It was annoying, honestly. Dot was still working on being herself.

Twenty minutes later, a knock. Two knocks, actually, then a third, because that was Glenda.

Dot opened the door and there she was, thirty-nine, cheeks pink from the cold, holding two bottles of beer by the necks.

"You look like someone who forgot what her own hands feel like," Glenda said.

"Hello to you too."

"It's a diagnosis, not an insult." She handed over a beer. "Hand cramping from work doesn't count. I mean the other thing."

"You can't know that from looking at me."

"I've known you ten years. You have a face you make." Glenda stepped past her, toed off her boots, and sat cross-legged on the floor by the fireplace like she owned the place. She probably did half own it, the hours she put in. "Also you texted me the word 'arrived' with a period. Who texts a period?"

"Everyone over forty texts periods."

"Not a point. Not now." She cracked her bottle on the hearth edge, old trick, and took a swig. "So. How bad is it?"

Dot stayed on the bed, because the only other seat was a wooden chair and this was going to be a long conversation. "Bad how?"

"Don't dodge."

Dot looked at her beer. "It's dusty," she said. "That's the word. The whole, I don't know, the whole apparatus. Dusty. Like nobody's been in the house."

Glenda snorted into her bottle. "The apparatus."

"Shut up."

"No, it's good. Vivid. You were always vivid." She tipped her head back against the bed frame, right next to Dot's knee, and looked up at her. Her hair was still damp at the temples from the lesson. "For what it's worth, I think coming here was smart. You need a weekend where nobody needs anything from you."

"That's the brochure version."

"What's the real version?"

The real version was that Dot had lain awake in Denver counting the ceiling texture and thinking about the last three years of the relationship, all the dinners where Mara talked and Dot nodded, and how she'd stopped mentioning her own work around year nine because Mara's eyes went somewhere else. How she'd caught herself, at the end, sitting in the car in the garage for ten minutes before going inside. How she hadn't cried at the breakup, which felt like a diagnosis of its own.

"The real version is I want to feel like a person again," she said. "Preferably one with a body."

"That can be arranged," Glenda said, and then Raul knocked and stuck his head in without waiting, because Raul.

"You two going to be loud? Asking for the guests on eleven."

"Louder than your floorboards," Glenda said.

"Fair." He had a stack of towels nobody had asked for. He set them on the chair, told Dot breakfast ran seven to ten, told Glenda the groomer was down again, and left. The door clicked. The room went quiet in that particular way rooms do right after a third person exits.

Glenda was still looking up at her from the floor.

"What?" Dot said.

"I've always wondered," Glenda said. "What it would be like. With you."

Dot's pulse did something unhelpful. It jumped, hard, like a stair missing in the dark.

She took a second. She made herself take a second. Ten years of friendship sat in the room with them, and twelve years of Mara sat in the corner, and Dot looked at both of them and then at Glenda's face, still flushed from the cold, waiting, not pushing.

"You've wondered," Dot said. Her voice came out lower than she planned.

"Since before I transitioned, if you want the full timeline. Which I'm only telling you because it's you." Glenda took another pull of beer, unhurried. "You don't have to do anything with that information. I'm not fishing. You just asked how bad it was, and that's part of my answer. Seeing you walk into a lobby after three years and think 'oh no, there she is.' That's part of it."

"Three years?"

"Design week in Portland. You wore the gray coat."

Dot remembered the coat. She did not remember Glenda looking at her in it. Apparently she'd been busy looking at other things, or at nothing, which was more accurate.

"Okay," Dot said. "Wow. Okay."

"You can say no. Say no and we drink the beer and I tell you about the groomer and we never mention it again. That's a real offer, not a trap."

"I know it's real. That's why I need a minute."

She drank. The beer was decent, local, a little too hoppy. Outside the balcony door the light was going gold behind the peaks, and the pines threw long shadows, and Dot sat on the edge of a queen bed in a lodge at the top of Colorado and felt, for the first time in months, not dusty. Feeling something. It didn't matter what the something was. Or it did matter. She couldn't tell yet.

"Glenda."

"Yeah."

"I'm not saying no."

Glenda didn't move. Didn't grin, even, which Dot would have expected. Just stayed where she was, head back against the frame, eyes steady. "Okay," she said. "Then I'm asking. Properly. Dot, do you want to come over here, or do you want me to come over there, or do you want another twenty minutes of beer first?"

"You're asking like there's a menu."

"There's a menu."

Dot set the bottle down on the nightstand. Her hand was steady, which surprised her. "Come here," she said. "Slow, though. It's been a while and I'm out of practice at being looked at."

"I've got all weekend," Glenda said, and got up.

Glenda crossed the room like she had all the time in the world. Which was annoying. Dot's hands had gone sweaty against her knees.

"Stand up," Glenda said. "Sunset's better standing."

So they stood, and went out through the balcony door, and the cold hit Dot in the face like a slap she'd been asking for. The peaks had gone pink. The pines below were already blue-dark. Somewhere down the mountain a snowcat was grinding around, slow and huge, doing whatever snowcats do when the groomer's down and the mechanic's been summoned.

"Raul's going to hear about that all winter," Dot said.

"Raul's heard about worse. He heard about me, remember." Glenda came up beside her at the rail. Close. Not touching. "Same weekend I started here, actually. Five years back. He took it fine. He said, and I quote, 'well, somebody's got to carry the lift chairs.'"

"He would."

"He would." Glenda turned toward her. Her breath made a small fog in the cold air. "Dot. Can I kiss you?"

"Yes."

She meant to say more. She'd meant to say slow, remember, I said slow. But Glenda's mouth was warm and the rest of the sentence went somewhere and never came back.

The first kiss was soft. Almost polite. Lips closed, one hand light on Dot's jaw, like Glenda was checking a temperature. Dot felt it in her sternum. A door she hadn't known was stuck, swinging open on a hinge that needed oil.

"Okay?" Glenda asked, pulling back an inch.

"Again."

The second kiss wasn't soft at all. Dot's back found the rail and Glenda's hand found the back of her head and Dot made a noise into her mouth that she hadn't made in years, maybe ever. The cold bit at her ears. Glenda's mouth was hot. The contrast was doing things to her spine.

She got her hands up under Glenda's jacket, flat against the thermal layer, and felt the shape of her through it. Strong. Skier shoulders, a waist that was solid rather than slim. Dot had spent twelve years with a body she knew by memory and here was a whole new map.

"Careful," Glenda said against her lips, and Dot froze, ready to pull back.

"Bad careful or good careful?"

"Good. Very good. Don't stop."

Dot didn't stop. She mapped. Glenda tipped her head back against the rail and let her, breath fogging upward in fast little clouds, and Dot watched her face do it. Watched. That was the thing. Mara had never looked at her like she was being looked at. Twelve years of dinners, and Dot had done most of her looking from behind.

"Inside," Dot said. Her voice was wrecked already. Ridiculous. "Cold. Inside."

* * *

The fireplace had caught while they were out there. The room was orange and warm and the beer bottles sat where they'd left them, one full, one dead. Glenda shut the balcony door and the wind noise cut off and it was suddenly very quiet, just the fire and Dot's own breathing.

Glenda moved to the edge of the bed. Looked up at her. Waiting again. She was good at waiting, apparently. Dot decided to be bad at it for both of them.

She sat down next to her and took her hand, and Glenda let her, and then Glenda did the thing. Guided Dot's hand down, slow, to her own lap. Pressed it there. Flat.

Dot felt it through the jeans. The shape of it. Hard, thick, laid along Glenda's thigh under the denim, and it twitched under Dot's palm like it knew it had been noticed.

"Oh," Dot said. Stupidly. It was the only word available.

"Okay?" Glenda said. "That's the part where people usually either say oh in a good way or oh in a bad way, and I'd like to know which before we go further."

"Oh in a. Hang on." Dot pressed her palm a little firmer, just to be sure of the facts. Glenda breathed out through her nose, long and controlled. "Oh in a very good way. I just wasn't. I didn't let myself think past the kissing, honestly."

"Most people don't."

"Well, most people are cowards." Dot turned her hand and cupped her properly through the denim. Glenda's hips moved, a small involuntary thing, and Dot felt her own face go hot. Eight months. Eight months of nothing and now her whole body was awake and loud. "God. Okay. Yes. Good way."

"You're sure?"

"Glenda. I'm an architect. I don't commit to load paths I'm not sure about."

"That's the least sexy sentence ever said in this lodge, and Raul once described the septic system to a first date."

Dot laughed, and the laugh broke something loose, and then she was pulling at Glenda's shirt hem and Glenda was pulling at Dot's sweater and they got tangled in each other's arms on the way up and had to stop and sort it out, which made them both