Even Still [Beginning]

Even Still
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When Devon watched Lydia Rosaline unwrap the cerulean piece of saltwater taffy she knew she loved her. It was and it wasn't about details. For instance she downright adored the way her hair fell down the back of her cerise sweater. But really she just simply valued how red it was. She got cold chills listening to her carefully articulated midwestern accent, but in particular she experienced a sort of euphoric madness as she spoke, her words drizzling out of her lips like melted chocolate. Lydia's hands were lustrous and feminine, but her fingers were long and tapered and moved with terrifying grace. She had the most well-turned legs, and her walk was a sauntered gait. But, see, she simply stood with this sense of confidence. Devon adored Lydia with this sort of instant love-at-first-sight atraction that had her mind vibrating with possibilities, some platonic, yet others coy and ellicit. She revered her as the most handsome person she'd ever been witnessed to. She craved her seashell ears, her rouged, generous lips, even her slender, soft-skinned neck. But in short, Lydia Hallowind could tell, in those first moments, without a pin-prick of municipal doubt that Lydia was absolutely the one.
Lydia wasn't a lesbian. She prefered the term "sexually curious" because it was much more accepted in society. Devon was exactly the kind of girl she was meant to fall for, and so, upon making eye contact with her for the first time, she knew she was doomed. She placed the salty treat on her tongue and sucked the flavour from it. She was straight forward, at least, in her feelings. Lydia loved Devon on the soul principal that she was a magnificent combination of everything she wanted in a girl. She recognized the passion in her cornflower irises, the fervor in her set jaw, the zeal spirking from her rounded fingertips and had entirely no shame in admitting to herself that the woman standing before her had an immediate and powerful effect on that certain place between her thighs.
The little taffy shop off the marina was owned by Lydia's father, Rutherford Rosaline, a tall, aged Texan with a passion for candy. It was just called "The Taffy Shoppe" with two P's and an E for class. It wasn't the taffy or the class of the shop that drew Devon into the building. She'd been strolling with her cousin Melanie down the board walk when she saw the place just ahead, across the way from the marina. Devon never much cared for taffy. Yet, looking up at the red letters above the door and the blue framed door, she had the feeling she needed to investigate. She'd handed her half-finished soda to her cousin and walked up the incline to the door.
There was no one there save for an aging woman named Naomi who smiled a lot and offered her free samples. She had large, pink cheeks and cotton ball hair that she had piled on top of her head and her fingers were quite chubby. Devon adored the woman instantly missing her mother back home in Ohio who had died so suddenly in a car accident last fall.
Naomi Lansky had only one child and after he joined the Peace Corps, she retired to a life of taffy pulling. She thought that Devon was cute as a button and wanted to ruffle her short tawny hair and pinch her rounded, freckled cheeks. Devon had on peat coat and thin legged jeans and she looked so small and unnurtured. Naomi offered her some taffy and when she turned it down, some coffee out of the back. Devon laughed and politely. The women had just started a conversation about Devon's recent move to Matchstone when the door to the back opened up and a Rutherford Rosaline and his daugther stepped out.
Lydia's parents were divorced and Rutherford was remarried to a housewife named Kathleen who was very practical and in all truth, very boring. Antionette Shelly, Lydia's actual mother, was tall, beautiful, entusiastic and everything Katleen was not. She lived in England now and for the last several years, that was were Lydia had been. She studied poetry and returned to discuss her inheritance in the shop. Her father was very much in his sixties and preferred to think his only heir would take over his business even if she seriously had other plans.
Devon had moved to Matchstone following her graduation from University to live with her cousin Melanie who had just broken up with her long term boyfriend. She was single, had her entire life ahead of her and found the scenery off the coast of Maine breathtaking and excellent sources of inspiration for her artwork. She considered herself a starving artist, although her cousin was very well off from an inheritance from her late father and neither of them had ever gone a day without proper meals. But the general nature of struggle played in her eyes, and perhaps that was why she was so drawn to Lydia.
She was a poet, Lydia, and found everything everyone said to be some sort of stanza and free game for furture sonnet inspiration. She always played guitar and often found herself singing tunes she'd really never heard before. She saw something intensely rhythmatic in Devon, and Devon saw an artistical masterpiece. She wanted to sketch the countour of her face and Lydia wanted to come up with metaphors to describe the way Devon's eyes lit up the room.
Both women would have liked to have been able to say that they said something first, but neither did. Rutherford clapped his daughter on the shoulder, told her to have a wonderful day and left the shop in a tizzy, knowing Kathleen said dinner was at six and it was now six fifteen. Naomi introduced them, so really, if it hadn't been for her, none of this would have ever happened, and there would have been no story at all.
"Lydia, Dear," she said and came bustling out from behind the counter, pulling the five foot six redhead into her short arms, "it's absolutely lovely to see you again! Did you just get in today?"
"Mmhmm," Lydia said and patted the woman on the shoulder. "I did. I'd good to see you too Naomi."
Naomi clapped her hands together. "Oh my! It's just so wonderful having you back. Your Rutherford and Kathleen, well your FATHER anyhow, has been going on about having you home. And now look at you! You're so big now! And all grown-up."
"I hope I'm not too big."
The woman laughed. "Oh no." Her eyes crinkled at the edges and then, remembering Devon, she turned and said, "Oh this is Devon, she's new to town. She just meandering in a moment ago."
Lydia turned then and saw Devon standing by the bins of taffy, trying to look like she was just a casual shopper. She ate the piece of taffy her father had given her minutes ago that she'd been running her fingers over absentmindedly and smiled at the customer.
"It's nice to meet you," she said, her voice smooth and educated. "I'm Lydia."
"Devon," Devon said.
Lydia's mother entertained the lifestyle of bisexuality many years before announcing, casually to her father that she was entirely gay and leaving him for a theatre major. Rutherford never got over it and often made the odd crack about gays and their subhuman anticulture. It was easier for Lydia to deny her feelings than deal with his stern, oldfashioned opinions.
Devon's father, whom she lived souly with until his death last fall of liver failure, had always told her to follow her heart, chase her passions and make her greatest dreams reality. She knew Lydia had an attraction to her. Her father called it the Hallowind gift. What she lacked was the initial gusta to point it out. She smiled at her apologized for not buying anything and exited The Taffy Shoppe.

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